Contract Law: The Answer to Student Truancy?

The Oxford Student reports on a proposed “contract” which all students would be required to sign.  The contract would make attendance at “tutorials,classes and lectures” compulsory. According to the article, the students would have “to agree to thejurisdiction of the legal system over the agreement, enabling the university orcollege to take any student to court if they are deemed to have breached thecontract.” 

The article reports:

A member of the law faculty, who wished to remain anonymous, said that hefelt there was potential for litigation from students forced to sign thecontract, due to the inordinate powers granted to colleges. “It’s not clearbecause it has not yet been tested in court, but a sizeable body of opinionwould argue that the courts might take an interest in these terms being imposedupon students. There could be a future issue with litigation from students…they come off so weak in this contract,” he said. He emphasised that there hadbeen a problem with presentation of the contract to students, but added:“there’s a real difficulty in tidying this up in writing…I’m not sure whetherthe EU would let the terms be set down in this way.” However, Dame FionaCaldicott, chair of last year’s Conference of the Colleges and Principal of Somerville, said that itwas unlikely colleges would refer cases to the courts.

Apparently, there is still wrangling over the wording of the proposedcontract, with many arguing that the present language is vague.

It seems that the “student contract” is only reiterating attendance requirementsfor graduation which are set forth in the student handbook. Aren’t these provisions of the studenthandbook arguably a binding contract? Ifso, isn’t the “student contract” redundant of the handbook? Perhaps the students should just be requiredto sign a form acknowledging that they have read and familiarized themselveswith the attendance rules set forth in the student handbook. An acknowledgment would look a lot less heavy handed on the part ofthe University, and it would eviscerate any argument of surprise when a student isnot permitted to graduate for poor attendance at “tutorials,classes and lectures.”

[Meredith R. Miller]