Mayo student owed money by Irish university over cancelled overseas trip

By Stuart Tynan

A third-level student from Mayo is among those affected by an Irish university's refusal to refund dozens of students “thousands of euro” after an international trip was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

A report in the Irish Independent last week said students at the University of Limerick have been campaigning since October to get their money back after the trip - which is mandatory as part of their business degrees – was replaced with a five-day virtual workshop.

Every year, students on several postgraduate courses travel abroad, including to Vietnam last year and 2019, and South Africa back in 2018. The price of the trip was included in their overall college fees and the university is refusing to give a breakdown of the cost ‘due to existing commercial agreements’.

After students were notified that the trip would not be going ahead, they were asked to attend a virtual workshop via Zoom to ‘ensure learning outcomes were met’.

UL students have questioned why they have not been refunded for flights, food and accommodation.

The student from Mayo, who did not wish to be named, told The Connaught Telegraph: “We raised concerns that it would be done virtually but we understood the option to go online, but we felt that we should be offered a refund for food, accommodation and flights we never took.”

The student added that following six months of no engagement from the university, they got a meeting with the dean, which proved unsuccessful.

A letter sent on behalf of the MSc International Management and Global Business class said that: “While the students fully understand the rationale behind the choice and agree with the decision not to travel during a pandemic, we do not agree to pay for an element of the course that was not provided to us.

“The total fee for the MSc International Management Global Business course is €9,515 for non-international students and €15,059 for the international students. As we were not given the breakdown of cost for this trip, we have instead calculated a baseline based on the difference from a comparative of the 2020/21 fees of similar courses and the differential cost would be of €1,662 for EU students and €1,690 for non-EU students.”

Finbarr Murphy, interim executive dean in the Kemmy Business School at UL, said: “The cost of the virtual workshop this year was significant and the time and effort put into the delivery of that workshop was equivalent or greater to the organisational effort for an international trip.

“The cost of delivery between the international trip and virtual workshop or other alternatives cannot be distinguished. While it is true to say that some operational costs such as heat and light have decreased, other costs have increased.

"These increased costs include considerable human and technological resources into pivoting to online delivery at very short notice. These costs are spread across the campus and it is not possible to allocate them to particular programmes.”

Mr. Murphy added that he was ‘enormously sympathetic’ to the students’ situation.

Rania Shadeed, vice-president of the Postgraduate Students’ Union, said students are simply asking to be treated with fairness.

“To be clear, these online alternatives do not replicate the advertised workshop from a financial and experiential perspective, therefore, students have sought a reimbursement of the cost difference between the two,” she said.

“This is both rational and reasonable. However, as discussed in the students’ open letter to the UL President, to date, the institutional response has been wholeheartedly unsatisfactory.”

INJUSTICE

Sinn Féin Deputy and Spokesperson for Higher and Further Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Rose Conway-Walsh, rose the matter in the Dáil with the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Simon Harris, and has written to Mr. Harris to ‘urgently intervene’ in the matter and ensure students gets refunded, calling it a ‘deep injustice’.

“On top of the highest student fees in Europe, post-graduate students are being sold on an experience. But it is not being provided and it is absolutely wrong,” Deputy Conway-Walsh told The Connaught Telegraph.

“Students left, right and centre have been affected in the pandemic, and the minister needs to be way more assertive in these matters,” Deputy Conway-Walsh said.