Office Closets

Is there anywhere I can lodge a complaint against a college for a badly organised degree course?

I'm not petty but my daughter has been left high and dry after a foundation degree course she was due to enrol on was dropped at the last moment. She had actually secured funding for the course and formally accepted a place and then silence. They didn't even have the decency to contact us to tell us the course wasn't running. I am conscious of the difficulties educational institutions face but I do feel this needs flagging. If anyone could suggest a course of action that could actually elicit tangible results I'd be gratfeful.

Public Comments

1. This old professor regrets to say that this is the way higher education has played the game for decades now. They list lots of courses in their schedule, but when enrollment doesn't reach a level that they consider profitable, they cancel the class--often leaving students with no time to make alternative plans. Any other enterprise that treated customers so shabbily would suffer (and I'm convinced that colleges do suffer, in the long run). And the standards are not consistent; I know of some colleges that believe a freshman-level course is breaking even with an enrollment of seven, and others who insist that anything less than a full classroom of 25 is losing money. Some of the more honorable institutions permit the instructor and students to do the course on an independent studies basis (which enables them to pay the instructor a pro-rated salary so they don't lose money) but most, I fear, aren't even decent enough to try. You certainly have the option to complain to the dean of that college's division, or to your state legislators, or to your state's office of higher education. Frankly, I think I'd save my time and look elsewhere.