Students Score a Victory Against USC as Court Gives Approval for Discovery in Class Action Lawsuit to Move Forward
Graduate social work students are suing USC for misleading students about its expensive online MSW degree program and operating a “diploma mill”
BOSTON – The Los Angeles Superior Court issued an order on April 2, 2024 in the class action lawsuit Luna v. USC, allowing discovery to move forward and denying most of USC’s requests to dismiss the plaintiffs’ claims and strike certain allegations regarding USC’s misrepresentations about its online MSW program.
Graduates of USC’s online Master’s in Social Work program, which was largely outsourced to the for-profit online program manager 2U, Inc., filed the lawsuit against USC in May 2023. The complaint in that lawsuit 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, the complaint alleges, USC hides that its online MSW program is outsourced to 2U and provides a fundamentally different and inferior program experience.
"This ruling is a big win for these students who bravely spoke up and fought back against USC’s predatory and misleading tactics,” said Eileen Connor, President and Executive Director of the Project on Predatory Student Lending. “We look forward to moving ahead with discovery and reviewing documents that we're confident will further expose USC’s wrongdoing and validate our clients’ claims.”
This latest order rules in the students’ favor in most respects. The court granted USC’s request to dismiss plaintiffs’ claim for racial discrimination under California’s Unruh Act, but gave the plaintiffs an opportunity to amend their complaint to make additional allegations to support this claim.
Danielle Leonard, of Altshuler Berzon, explained: “This decision is a very important step forward in the students’ case. The Court allowed all of the misrepresentation claims to proceed. Even the ruling on the Unruh Act discrimination claim permits the students the opportunity to add the facts that the Court believed were missing regarding USC’s unequal treatment of students by race in its recruiting efforts. We will take that opportunity and move forward.”
In the lawsuit, the plaintiff students are seeking a return of money they overpaid and to stop USC from deceiving online MSW students moving forward and otherwise correct its unlawful business practices.
Case Background:
Graduates of the University of Southern California’s (USC) online Master in Social Work (MSW) program filed a class action lawsuit against USC in May 2023 for misrepresentation, false advertising, and other deceptive, unfair and unlawful business practices.
The students allege that although USC claims that its online MSW program is exactly the same as the campus-based program, it is not. 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, the students allege that USC uses aggressive and predatory tactics to enroll students in this inferior program, including racial targeting.
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. The filing details several ways in which USC targeted and misled students about its online MSW program. Subsequent to the filing of this lawsuit, USC announced it was ending its contractual relationship with 2U.
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.
To learn more about the case, visit our website.
About the Project on Predatory Student Lending
The Project on Predatory Student Lending (PPSL) is the leading legal organization representing student borrowers against predatory for-profit colleges and the policies that enable institutions to exploit and cheat students. PPSL uses bold, strategic litigation and advocacy to demand accountability in the higher education space and influence policy solutions to create a more just and affordable education system. PPSL represents more than one million student borrowers and its work has resulted in cancellation of more than $16 billion 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.
