Manny Chong, the lead plaintiff in the suit filed late last week in U.S. District Court, says the online education Northeastern is providing him with during the coronavirus shutdown has been characterized as “inferior” by accreditation associations for his counseling psychology masters degree.
“Instruction supplied substantially or entirely online has been recognized as pedagogically inferior by, inter alia, the Commission on Accreditation of the American Psychological Association,” the suit states.
Northeastern’s campus shut down on March 12, after a letter to students from university President Joseph Aoun announced the closure March 11 as coronavirus cases began to spread in Massachusetts.
A spokeswoman for the university Sunday evening said Northeastern could not comment because it had not yet received the complaint. Chong also declined to comment.
Chong, a 2018 graduate and Canadian living in Boston, began his M.S. in counseling psychology in fall 2019 and paid $23,400 in tuition along with $146 in combined fees for campus resources, according to the suit.
The university breached its contract when students agreed to accept “full responsibility” to pay for educational services, a term undefined in the agreement, attorney Douglas Hartman wrote.
Chong cites accreditation guidelines requiring face-to-face, in-person interaction for psychology instruction, and says none of the school’s 18,000 undergraduates and 9,000 graduate students have been permitted on campus since April.
Northeastern is the latest university to be sued by students over their sudden shutdown amid coronavirus concerns. A separate class action lawsuit against Boston University filed last month is contesting BU’s pro-rated refund offers over housing costs, among other grievances.
Northeastern asked students to move out of their residence halls by March 17. The school, with a reported endowment exceeding $1 billion, announced on its website it will distribute $5.8 million from the CARES Act to students “adversely impacted” by COVID-19, although the exact distribution of funds was unclear.
At least 13 other universities across the country are facing similar federal lawsuits, attorneys in the BU case told the Herald last week.