Lawsuit Claims AIFS Study Abroad Owes Program Fee Refund After Students Sent Home Due to COVID-19 Crisis

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A proposed class action alleges The American Institute for Foreign Study, Inc. has refused to offer sufficient refunds to Spring 2020 study abroad students who were deprived of the program’s immersive cultural and educational benefits after being sent home due to the COVID-19 crisis.

As a result of sending students home and transitioning to online learning, the defendant, who does business as AIFS Study Abroad, failed to provide the benefits of on-campus enrollment, access to facilities, cultural experiences, activities and other services for which students already paid an all-inclusive program fee, the 24-page case says.

Once classes resumed online after roughly six weeks with no instruction, students received only a fraction of the education they were promised and paid for, and had no in-person access to classmates, faculty and facilities, according to the suit.

“Plaintiff had no meaningful opportunity to interact with other cultures, faculty, or peers after AIFS cancelled her program and sent her home,” the complaint reads. “Completing some coursework via online instruction for a few hours per week is a far cry from the immersive international experience of living and learning abroad.”

The plaintiff, a full-time student at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, says she was enrolled in the defendant’s study abroad program at Campus International De Cannes in Cannes, France for the Spring 2020 semester but was forced to leave the country after AIFS canceled the program in response to the coronavirus pandemic. After flying home on March 15, the plaintiff received no academic instruction at all until April 27, 2020, when the defendant began offering online classes, according to the case.

While the plaintiff received three to seven-and-a-half hours of daily instruction in France, her online French classes upon returning home were split between two professors and cut down by one day. Similarly, the plaintiff’s online art history class was shortened by two-and-a-half hours, and she received only 10 to 20 minutes of instruction per week for her French film class, per the complaint. Moreover, the plaintiff’s classes for the second half of the semester were never in person or in France as paid for and expected, the case adds.

The lawsuit goes on to allege that the plaintiff and other study abroad students were deprived of the in-person cultural experiences paid for by AIFS’ all-inclusive program fee. More specifically, the plaintiff claims she and others in her program paid a higher fee for the Spring 2020 semester because it was intended to include attendance at the world-famous Cannes Film Festival, which the students were unable to attend due to the pandemic.

According to the case, the plaintiff and other study abroad students were deprived of at least 50 percent of the spring semester for which they contracted and paid yet AIFS has refused to offer sufficient refunds of the all-inclusive program fee, offering only partial refunds for room and board.

The lawsuit looks to represent anyone who paid the all-inclusive program fee for or on behalf of students enrolled in the defendant’s study abroad programs for the Spring 2020 semester but were denied in-person instruction abroad and forced to use online distance learning options for the latter portion of the semester.

The lawsuit against AIFS is one of the latest in an ongoing flood of cases against colleges and universities who allegedly refused to refund students for the truncated Spring 2020 semester in the wake of the pandemic.

ClassAction.org’s coverage of COVID-19 litigation can be found here and over on our Newswire.

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