Case Summaries

The student wasn’t satisfied that the new supervisory team had sufficient expertise in their area of study and asked for their former supervisor to be involved going forward.

The provider rejected the complaint that the new supervisory arrangements were not good enough. But it accepted that there had been a delay, and it offered the student an apology, some compensation and a refund of fees for those months.

The student remained dissatisfied and complained to us. We partly upheld the complaint (we decided it was Partly Justified). We couldn’t comment on whether the new supervisory team had enough specific subject knowledge to supervise the student, because this decision involves academic judgment. But we were satisfied that the provider had carefully considered the issue and had met the requirements in terms of the supervisor’s experience. It was unfortunate that the student couldn’t be given more notice of the change, but the situation had evolved rapidly. The provider had recognised its communications could have been clearer.

We identified some concerns about how the complaint had been handled. There were some delays. The complaint had been investigated by someone independent, but the final decision had been made by someone involved in the departmental restructure and decisions about supervision. This had undermined the student’s confidence in the fairness of the process. We recommended that the provider offer the student additional compensation in recognition of the distress caused by these matters.