University ordered to pay BD47,000 to students for fraudulent act

Manama : The High Administrative Court has ordered a private university to pay BD47,000 to four GCC national students for registering them in an unlicensed academic programme. The university is said to have enrolled the GCC national students in a PhD programme, which wasn’t authorised by the Supreme Council for Education and Training. The students are said to have completed the programme, but weren’t given their certificates owing to the licensing issue. They filed a complaint against the university, demanding compensation. 

“We came to Bahrain to obtain a PhD certificate and we enrolled for a programme with a private university. We paid all the fees as per the contracts we signed with the university. However, the university failed to graduate us despite our successful completion of the programme. And this has harmed our future,” the plaintiffs wrote in their complaint against the university. “The university is committed to giving us our certificates since we have completed the programmes. But they have failed to live up to this commitment. We request this honourable court to order the university to compensate us for the damages the issue has caused to us,” they added. 

The High Administrative Court ordered the university to compensate the students as follows: BD3,500 each towards their travelling expenses, BD5,780 each towards their accommodation and BD10,800 each for the tuition fees they paid to the university. The court, in its verdict, blamed the university for registering the students without having obtained the necessary licence from the Supreme Council for Education and Training.