Social Work Graduate Students Sue USC Over Online MSW “Diploma Mill”
Students allege that USC misleads students about its expensive online master’s degree program and obscures the fact that its program is actually run by a for-profit education company
BOSTON – Graduates of the University of Southern California’s (USC) online Master of Social Work (MSW) program today filed a class action lawsuit against USC for misrepresentation, false advertising, and other deceptive, unfair and unlawful business practices.
The complaint states that USC deliberately deceives students by claiming that its online MSW program is the “same” academic program as USC’s long-standing on-campus program other than in format, including by charging the same very high tuition (over $100,000) for both programs. In fact, USC hides that its online MSW program is outsourced almost entirely to a for-profit education company, 2U, Inc. Although USC claims that its online MSW program is exactly the same as the campus-based program, it is not. The complaint alleges that program resources, including faculty, course offerings and content, field placements, academic advising, and career services are all different and inferior for the online MSW students. Worse, USC uses aggressive and predatory tactics to enroll students in this inferior program, including racial targeting. The plaintiff students are seeking a return of money they overpaid and to stop USC from engaging in these behaviors moving forward.
The case, Stephanie Luna v. University of Southern California, was filed in the Los Angeles County Superior Court. The plaintiff students are represented by attorneys from The Project on Predatory Student Lending and the San Francisco-based public interest law firm Altshuler Berzon LLP. The putative class includes all California citizens who are or have been USC online MSW students at any time from four years before the filing of the complaint up through when final judgment is entered in the case.
“USC used its brand to deliberately deceive unsuspecting students to create a ‘cash cow’ through its inferior online MSW program at students’ expense,” said Eileen Connor, President and Director of the Project on Predatory Student Lending. “Our clients believed they’d enrolled in a prestigious, reputable, non-profit university but instead wound up in an expensive diploma mill. They paid an unjustifiably high price for a program that was promised to be the same as the on-campus version when in reality, it was run by a for-profit education company. Students were lied to and now are standing up and fighting back.”
The complaint alleges that in its partnership with 2U, USC turned its online MSW program into a large-scale diploma mill. USC’s MSW program has grown from enrolling 300 total students per cohort prior to 2010, to currently enrolling over 3,000 students, almost entirely through online growth, creating tremendous revenue for USC.
Today’s filing details several ways in which USC targeted and misled students about its online MSW program, including:
USC repeatedly, to this day, describes its online MSW program as exactly “the same” as the on-campus program, when in fact the instructors, content, curriculum, advising, externships, and placement are different, inferior, and outsourced.
USC sells its program by claiming that the online students will be taught by its esteemed faculty, when in reality students are taught by contingent employees who have been retained specifically to teach online courses.
USC sells its program by claiming that students will receive the same curriculum and coursework as its cutting-edge and respected on-campus program, when in reality online students are given pre-recorded, outdated coursework.
USC tells students they will have access to USC’s respected and well-resourced clinical placement programs and staff, but online students’ clinical placements and career counseling are run by 2U, Inc.
Students interact with “counselors” and other staff they believed to be employees of USC, with USC email addresses, who are actually employees of 2U, Inc.
USC permits recruiters, employed by 2U, Inc. to pose as USC employees when they are not and to use high-pressure sales tactics to drive up enrollment (and thus revenue to USC and its corporate partner). These tactics have included outright lies about the program, about scholarships and clinical placements that were not available to online students, and other misrepresentations.
Finally, the program has been deliberately marketed toward people of color, as USC viewed these prospective students as better marks for “conversion”—that is, more likely to enroll once they were in touch with an “admissions counselor” (recruiter).
“When I found out the truth about this program and just how much USC lied to us, I was livid. The fact that the MSW program was used as a moneymaker and to deceive people like myself and the communities that I come from is not okay, and something needs to be done because people continue to be recruited," said Stephanie Luna, a plaintiff in the lawsuit. Luna is Mexican-American and a first generation college student. "We were taught that as social workers, our job is to advocate for people who don't have voices and who are from underserved communities, so to have USC preach these values while lying to our faces and taking advantage of us is so hypocritical.”
Eve Cervantez, a partner at Altshuler Berzon representing the students in this case, explains: "California law is perfectly clear: USC is not allowed to profit from deceptively marketing an inferior educational experience as though it were something else. It is not allowed to target that inferior product specifically to people of color. And plaintiffs are stepping forward to ensure USC won't get away with it."
To learn more about the case, visit our website: https://www.ppsl.org/cases/luna-v-usc.
About the Project on Predatory Student Lending
Established in 2012, the Project on Predatory Student Lending represents former students of predatory for-profit colleges. Its mission is to litigate to make it legally and financially impossible for federally funded predatory schools to cheat students. The Project has brought a wide variety of cases on behalf of former students of for-profit colleges. It has sued the federal Department of Education for its failures to meet its legal obligation to police this industry and stop the perpetration and collection of fraudulent student loan debt.
Altshuler Berzon LLP is a San Francisco law firm dedicated to providing the highest quality representation in the service of economic justice and the public interest.
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