2003 JAPAN LAW: COLLEGE TUITION REFUND
Keywords: Contract, Consumers, Consumer Protection, Colleges, University, Tuition
Copyright 2004. All rights reserved Attorney Roderick H. Seeman
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In a series of court cases in 2003 by plaintiffs seeking a refund of tuition and entrance fees, a variety of results came out in the decisions. It has been the tradition in Japan that when students apply for entrance to a university, the universities require that they pay an entrance fee and prepay the initial tuition. These are extremely expensive, often up to the equivalent of ten thousand dollars. All of this before they even enter the university. If they are unfortunate enough to decide to change their mind and go to another school, the school will not make a refund of those advance payments. ITS ALL IN THE CONTRACT. But then there was the April 2001 amendment to the Consumer Contract Law.

The court decisions for the most part found that these contracts fall under the Consumer Contracts Law and ordered the universities to refund the monies. Most ordered the schools to refund the prepaid tuition. Some, but not most, also ordered the schools to refund the entrance fees. None permitted the refund of the entrance fee if the notification that they were changing schools after the start of the new school year.

In an effort to ameliorate the problem, in June 2002 the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology has ordered universities to make the deadline for payment of the fees after the results of the entrance exam are available. The Ministry at the same time ordered public universities to refund prepaid tuition if the applicant decided to not enroll.