Thousands of college students will get hundreds of dollars in compensation as colleges and universities move this summer to settle multimillion-dollar lawsuits stemming from canceled classes and activities during COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns.

While some of the class-action suits against the colleges and universities are still in litigation, and still others dismissed, several major cases have been settled in recent weeks.

The settlements mean students who were charged tuition and fees but weren’t able to use in-person services during the pandemic shutdowns will receive some compensation, though they won’t be refunded for all the on-campus amenities they lost.

The amounts depend on the total settlement figure, minus legal fees and other court expenses. Each case has a different timeline.

Most recently, the University of Delaware agreed in June to set up a $6.3 million fund to partially reimburse tuition and fees that the students paid for classes, housing and activities in 2020. The students argued that they did not receive the full benefit of in-person participation in academics and extra-curricular activities. Each student is expected to receive as part of the agreement.

But the university did not admit wrongdoing and maintained that extenuating circumstances of the pandemic, and the lack of an official contract between the school and each student, meant it was justified in taking the tuition and fees — an argument made by many other schools.

Many universities also have argued that they incurred significant expense in making the almost immediate transition to online classes. In interviews with Stateline, attorneys for some schools argued that the students’ argument was undercut by the fact that many chose to remain in remote classes after the campuses reopened, for convenience or health concerns.

Florida attorney Mendy Halberstam, who was not involved in the Delaware case but who represents other universities that have been similarly sued, said in an interview that the schools feel compelled to defend themselves against cases they believe “are lacking in merit.”

“They are not looking to make life difficult for their students,” he said, “but they also have to make sure of their [lack of] liability.”

There have been about 300 such lawsuits, according to a British publication that partners with The Wall Street Journal on rankings and evaluations of U.S. schools.

The University of Colorado, for example, in April for $5 million.

Attorney Igor Raykin, who represented the Colorado students, said the settlement was “a reasonable offer given the challenges of the suit itself and the legal landscape in general.”

Among the challenges, Raykin said, is the fact that these were precedent-setting cases and that a lengthy legal process meant many of the students have already graduated and gotten on with their lives.

“We wanted to make sure the students would be getting something that would benefit them.” Individual awards will vary, he said, but typically will be in the hundreds of dollars.

In May, the University of Minnesota , allowing students to get bigger refunds of tuition and fees than the school initially allowed. And in June, a judge a group of students in a class-action suit against the University of Washington.

However, early this year a judge in Rhode Island against the University of Rhode Island and several other schools in that state, that there were no enforceable contracts breached in the shutdowns. The plaintiffs argued that the shutdowns denied them university experiences they expected, based on the schools’ marketing materials, websites, course catalogs, student handbooks and the like.

But U.S. District Judge John McConnell Jr. ruled that, “unfortunately for [the] plaintiffs, these general advertisements and distinctions do not create obligations on the part of the university — they are vague and more akin to puffery, rather than enforceable promises.”

Two weeks ago, the Florida Supreme Court it would consider a class-action suit from University of Florida students asking for compensation for being denied services during the COVID-19 shutdown.

But in another Florida case, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals a ruling from a lower court dismissing a student’s lawsuit against the University of Miami, a private school.

The university refunded pro-rated fees for housing, dining, student centers and gyms. The student argued that wasn’t enough, but the court ruled that she was “not entitled to damages stemming from any alleged breach of contract, unjust enrichment, or inadequate refunds on the part of Miami.”

“The pandemic forced students of all ages to learn from behind their computer screens for a period of time, and we certainly harbor a great deal of sympathy for those students whose educations and relationships were affected by the transition,” the court wrote.

“We hope that some comfort can be found, however, in our certainty that despite enduring the hardships created by the pandemic, any student who has earned a degree from a school like the University of Miami retains the unspoiled potential for a fulfilling and prosperous future.”

Florida attorney Jeffrey Ostrow, who represented students in a lawsuit against Barry University, a private school in Miami, said the cases have been “a mixed bag all over the place.” In one of the earliest settlements, Barry University in September 2021 compensation fund for students.

Ostrow maintains that universities did enter contracts for in-person learning and campus activities.

“All these students signed up for a program in class,” he said, noting that schools often charged less for online classes before the pandemic. “Whether [the university] was forced to, or decided unilaterally to shut those things down, it’s not fair for them to keep the [in-class payments].”

He also noted that many schools got pandemic relief payments from the federal government to help them weather the pandemic.

“There was federal money that a lot of the schools were able to get,” Ostrow said. “And we believe that money should have gone back to the students.”

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And the way the government has distributed the funds — through a formula that targets high-poverty schools — left some communities hit hard by the pandemic with insufficient funding to offset learning declines, wrote Kenneth Shores of the University of Delaware and Matthew Steinberg of George Mason University in Virginia in by the American Educational Research Association.

The researchers push for greater accountability, calling a lack of reporting on how districts are using the funds a “policy failure.” When officials learned which districts participated in remote learning longer, they could have made adjustments, Steinberg said.

“There weren’t efforts in real time … to update the distribution of this aid in ways that would try to maximize its reach to the students and communities that would need it the most,” he said.

In order to build public trust, they recommend that the U.S. Department of Education at least collect data on how a representative sample of districts is allocating the funds. 

National test scores set for release later this month are expected to further drive home the impact of school closures on students’ academic progress and spark more debate about whether districts are making wise choices with the unprecedented windfall. The AERA report echoes growing demands from parents and policymakers for greater transparency from districts. have asked the department for “insight into how schools are using federal dollars to help America’s students catch up,” and parent groups are seeking training in school finance to track the money. The researchers recommend that officials add incentives to get districts to prioritize academic interventions over projects “such as athletic fields.”

The most recent round of funding, the American Rescue Plan, requires districts to spend a minimum of 20% of their funds to address learning loss.

“But nobody had to stop there,” said Heather Tolley-Bauer, co-founder of Watching the Funds-Cobb, a parent-led group monitoring spending in the Cobb County School District, north of Atlanta. The organization is among those that have received from the National Parents Union to track the funds. “When we look at the things they could have spent the money on and the things they did spend the money on, it’s frustrating.”

Her leading example is the $9.7 million the district spent on “Iggy” hand-rinsing machines that dispense a mixture of water and ozone. The company’s points to studies that say the machines kill COVID, but disagree and others say there’s . But even if the technology is effective at killing the virus, the devices at some schools are inaccessible, with plastic over the openings, Tolley-Bauer said. (A spokesperson for 30e Scientific, the company that makes the machines, explained that some of them have experienced “vandalism by unknown individuals.”) 

She understands the district was “in a hot hurry” to address the crisis, but said parents feel excluded from funding decisions. 

“I’m not surprised that the federal government didn’t put a lot of parameters around [the money],” she said. “It would help if the schools would …make very strategic decisions that would impact students positively for years to come.”

Some districts have participated in “halftime reviews” to assess spending patterns, said Jonathan Travers, managing partner at Education Resource Strategies, a nonprofit that helps districts resolve budget challenges. In some cases, districts are waiting two to three months for approval of any changes to their spending plans. Districts were able to spend the money quicker on bulk purchases and HVAC upgrades, while tutoring and other student services have taken longer to implement, he said.

Phyllis Jordan, associate director of FutureEd, a Georgetown University think tank that has been tracking the spending, argued that the department has held districts accountable by requiring them to submit plans for the third round of funds. 

“There is a level of oversight that you haven’t had before,” she said. “You at least have to articulate how you plan to spend it.”

And the department recently proposed that all states participate in a that previously was optional. While it won’t focus just on COVID funds, that spending will be included. 

Impact on Black students 

To reach the $700 billion estimate, researchers drew from multiple data sources and existing studies. One was a that used assessment data to pinpoint how much of a district’s budget would need to be replaced to make up for missed instruction. In high-poverty districts that were in remote learning for much of the 2020-21 school year, it would be over 40% of their budget.

The researchers on the earlier study, led by Dan Goldhaber of the Center for the Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research and Thomas Kane of Harvard University, concluded districts would need to spend all of their relief funds to address learning loss, not just 20%. 

But Shores and Steinberg think that estimate could be too low because it might not account for learning loss among students that weren’t tested and it doesn’t reflect how families and other “non-school inputs” contribute to student achievement. , Steinberg said, shows that student performance depends considerably on what is “happening outside of school.”

Their estimates range from a low of $325 billion to make up for missed instruction to a high of $930 billion, with $700 billion roughly in the middle.

Goldhaber said their estimates could be too high, but he noted that either way, the education system has never faced a challenge like this.

“We’re trying to do across the country what has only been done at a small scale,” he said. 

Shores and Steinberg also draw attention to the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on Black and Hispanic students, regardless of whether they come from low-income families. 

The Education Department’s survey of schools, for example, showed that while the vast majority were open by the end of the 2020-21 school year, the rate of Black and Hispanic students attending full, in-person learning still fell at least 20 percentage points below that of white students. Asian students were the least likely to attend in-person.

Additionally, released last year from researchers at Teachers College, Columbia University, said the racial unrest that broke out during the first summer of the pandemic contributed to higher levels of trauma among Black students and families and that schools were “ill-equipped” to support them.

Distributing the funds through the existing Title I formula, which some argue is across the country, resulted in less funding for districts where the disruption to learning may still have been extensive, Shores and Steinberg wrote. 

But Goldhaber cautioned that “it’s easy to be critical retrospectively. When you’re trying to get money out the door quickly, it’s reasonable to use existing vehicles.”

Shores and Steinberg compare COVID relief packages with the federal stimulus package passed to combat the effects of the Great Recession. There’s “not a single study,” they wrote, that demonstrates the impact of that 2009 stimulus package on student learning.

Shores said he’s been disappointed by the “lack of creativity” in directing COVID relief funds. But it’s not too late to change course, particularly when it comes to spending money from the American Rescue Plan, they said.

With roughly a quarter of the funds spent, Steinberg said there’s still time to redirect the money toward tutoring or other interventions that “seem to have potentially positive returns.”