Johns Hopkins University has been ordered to pay additional funds to students who paid tuition for the first semester of 2020 but didn’t get refunds after the university canceled in-person classes because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The university in Baltimore was ordered on July 31 to pay $2 million into a settlement fund in a class-action lawsuit. U.S. District Judge Julie Rubin signed the order after the university and plaintiffs, led by former student Elena Botts, said they found more students who paid for the 2020 spring semester but did not receive refunds.
Later this year, Johns Hopkins must deposit the money into the settlement fund. The school was previously ordered to pay about $8 million into the fund.
Some 10,851 students or former students have already received or are awaiting payouts from the fund. The amount each receives depends on factors such as how much they paid in tuition, including payments through student loans. Scholarships are exempt from refunds.
Another 2,607 individuals have been identified as fitting the class, or enrolling in Johns Hopkins for the spring of 2020 and not receiving their tuition and fees back. Tuition for a semester at the time ran to at least $26,150, according to court documents.
Johns Hopkins canceled all in-person classes in March 2020, less than halfway through the spring semester that year, but resisted issuing refunds, claiming that offering online-only classes fulfilled the contract it entered with students.
Botts, the former student who brought the suit, disagreed.
“Defendant is attempting to replace the irreplaceable – on-campus life at an elite university – with ‘virtual learning’ via online classes, and is attempting to pass off this substitute educational experience as the same as or just as good as fully [sic] participation in the university’s academic life,” her suit, filed in May 2020, stated.
Johns Hopkins initially asked the court to dismiss the litigation but after a federal judge rejected the effort, the university opted to settle given that “the outcome of this matter is uncertain” and “that a final resolution through the litigation process would require protracted adversarial litigation and appeals; substantial risk and expense,” according to court papers.
In addition to the $10 million being paid to students and former students, the university was ordered to pay $2.2 million to attorneys for the individuals.
Ms. Botts, who paid about $26,600 to attend the university’s School of Advanced International Studies as a graduate student, has been awarded about $16,200 for the work involved with being the lead plaintiff.
Johns Hopkins and a lawyer for the plaintiffs didn’t respond to requests for comment.
