New Recruiting Tool: Sue Students Who Don't Attend Classes

Cincinnatti.com reports that the University of Cincinnati is seeking to recover $6300 from Angela Caliguri. Ms. Caliguri claims that she went onto UC's website to look at its course offerings in 2004. She then compared those course offerings to those from Cincinnati State Technical and Community College. Finding UC's tuition too high, Ms. Caliguri enrolled at Cincinnati State. But UC claims that Ms. Caliguri signed up for UC courses before logging out. Although it concedes that Ms. Caliguri did not attend any classes at UC, UC claims that it held a spot open for her in the courses for which she had enrolled.

UC duly billed Ms. Caliguri for the courses in which she had allegedly enrolled. Tuition, fees and health insurance charges amounted to over $3150. Adding interest and collection fees, the University now seeks damages in excess of twice the original bill. Ms. Caliguri's court papers claim that she contacted UC repeatedly in order to explain that she never attended and never intended to enroll, but UC is pursuing its claim nonetheless. It claims that about 2 percent of UC students do not pay their tuition, costing the University $6 million annually. But Ms. Caliguri's case suggests that the University needs to reconsider how it counts its "students."

[Jeremy Telman]