"Alma Mater" Means "Nourishing Mother" - Litigation-Minded Students Not Buying That

COVID brought remote learning to higher education. And with it the beginning of upheaval in the traditional bonding between students and colleges/universities. That centuries-old relationship was captured in the notion of the institution you graduated from as your "alma mater." The concept means "nourishing mother."

Instead of a nourishing mother during COVID, some students experienced their educational institution as financial predator. They banded together in class action lawsuits to be refunded tuition and fees that had been paid for in-person instruction. 

As a result, now here we are as Bloomberg Law observes:

"The student class-action trend appears here to stay and may indicate a major shift in the student-university relationship."

This time around the litigation focuses on amounts not spent on meal plans. Litigants want those funds back. They contend not refunding violates state consumer laws as in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey about unspent funds on gift cards.

The implications of this embrace of the class-action lawsuit are huge. One involves basic survival of many colleges and universities.

Given the eroding bonding with your institutions of higher education, those colleges/universities can't automatically count on you to support them financially if they're in a pinch. Meanwhile, many alumni are themselves facing unprecedented financial challenges. Those knowledge workers produced by higher education are losing jobs to AI and cost-efficiency that aren't coming back. 

The Wall Street Journal, for example, features the dire plight of private faith-based liberal arts college in Vermont Saint Michael's. Because of declining enrollment and the $70k annual nut for attendance it could collapse. Here in northwestern Ohio faith-based Lourdes University will cease operating at the end of the academic year. 

I wonder if my own undergraduate institution private faith-based primarily liberal arts Seton Hill University, located in smallish Greensburg, Pennsylvania, will be around in 10 years. It has no debt, a decent endowment and strategies such as a three-year curriculum to boost the odds of survival. But its situation mirrors that of so much of higher education.

Overall, also, there is the pull-back from the awe attributed to the power of higher education for upward mobility. Ever since the GI opened college to the masses we had been made to feel grateful to our alma mater for our worldly success. With good reason. Many of those in the Class of 1967, first-generation college like myself, had entered the middle class and above. But that was then. In my coaching I guide youth and their concerned parents for options to traditional higher education as career preparation.

Over and over again, clients and readers of my blogs ask me: Would you have opted for college in 1963? 

Essentially, I reply: At the time, yes. The degree was a required credential to enter the middle class. In our public high school in the middle of the mean streets of Jersey City, New Jersey, the message was that: It's all about gaining access to the middle class. Teachers relentlessly corrected our grammar, a very visible socioeconomic marker. Classmates encouraged my writing. The message there was that I could write my way out of a difficult home situation. And that I did with a full scholarship to that college in PA.

2026 is a very different time. I roll my eyes as Friend of Jeffrey Leon Botstein is positioned and packaged as "saving" Bard College. That is supposed to be an argument in his favor as law firm WilmerHale investigates his association with Epstein and donations from that monster. But, what is supposed to be the contribution to the public good with Bard's not going under? Recently The New Yorker published a very long form article on the current role of the university in society. Well, it's no longer unique. 

It could be the consumers of higher education - that is, the students - who accelerate a massive downsizing. Class-action lawsuits could extend to other flaws in this once revered institution. 

Earning a Good Living in 2026 Involves Mental Combat. The enemy is usually your own thinking.

Complimentary consultation. No Pressure. Solid Guidance. Contact Jane Genova janegenova374@gmail.com.