Friday March 29th, 2024
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AUC Students' Parents Take Administration to Court Over Tuition Fees

The parents' lawyers are challenging the administration's decision to increase tuition fees by 30%

Staff Writer

After a turbulent year at AUC, in which many students protested the dramatic hike in tuition fees over the past 3 years, a group of students' parents decided to take the university's administration to court over its decision to increase tuition fees by 30%. On Sunday, a hearing to review the lawsuit was held by The Court of Administrative Justice, which will release its verdict on March 12th, Mada Masr reports.

The parents' lawyers are basing their case on the Council of Private and Nonprofit Universities' 2016 decision which prohibits any increases above 5%, only applicable for newly enrolled students, which the lawyers claim the university's administration violated by imposing a 30% increase for all students. The decision also prohibits collection of fees in foreign currencies.

In its defence, the administration's lawyers presented documents to the court which detail the benefits some of the claimants earned through its new grants system, which the parents' lawyers considered a violation of the privacy of financial applications.

The university's vice president for financial and administration affairs, Brian MacDougall, told Mada Masr in an earlier interview, “As we were building the budget for the 2015 year, in consultation with the Parents Association, the Student Union and the University Senate budgetary committee, everyone agreed that we should share the risk. How best to share the risk, but to look inside the formula for the expression of tuition, and denominate the tuition half in pounds and half in dollars, which basically mirrors the realisation of both currencies where you are in a situation that will be self-correction. The university will have to deal with half of the devaluation, and others will deal with the other half.”

Photo by: Nouran Allam