Why students are consumers and why they're also not
Students, consumer rights and SUs – why the law has never been stronger, and whether students know it.
Recording coming soon
Hosted by
Jim Dickinson
Associate Editor (SUs), Wonkhe
We unpack why students are consumers (and where that analogy breaks down), what the contract between student and university actually covers, and how the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 has tightened every part of the framework universities operate under. We trace the UCL group-claim settlement and what it leaves unresolved, map who does what across the CMA, OfS, OIA and National Trading Standards, and work through OfS Condition C6 – the most significant student-rights regulation in a decade – before its 9 July 2026 consultation deadline.
In this session
What we cover
- Paying for a service, not buying a degree – the gym analogy, and why teaching, facilities, support and assessment are all things students pay for.
- Three levers SUs can pull – lobbying, campaigning and the underused but powerful regulatory lever.
- The contract basics – students as consumers, universities as traders, pre-contract promises that bind, and why re-enrolment isn't consent to changes.
- What "material" means – if it would have mattered to a typical student's decision, the university is on the hook for it.
- The DMCC Act 2024 – how the burden has shifted so that any omission of material information is automatically unfair, with no need to prove influence.
- Banned outright – drip pricing, fake reviews, undisclosed commercial intent and aggressive practices, extended to agents acting on the university's behalf.
- Red-flag clauses – force majeure that wrongly covers a university's own strikes, and blanket variation clauses likely to be unfair and unenforceable.
- What students are entitled to – repeat performance, price reduction, damages and a real, exercisable exit right.
- The UCL moment – a ~£21.25m settlement, pre-action letters to 36 universities, 170,000+ students, and the September 2026 limitation deadline.
- OfS Condition C6 – what it proposes, what it's missing, and why the defaults set in autumn 2026 will shape the student–university relationship for the decade.