Dive Brief:
- The settlements continue to stack up for DeVry University, which recently announced a $2.75 million settlement with the New York Attorney General's office to end claims that it falsely promoted employment rates of its graduates.
- The settlement, which officials say is not an admission of guilt, ends a dispute which alleged that DeVry claimed a 90% job placement rate, when most of its students were working as full-time employees when they enrolled.
- The settlement will cover $2.25 million in repayment to graduates based in New York, and comes just months after the company paid $100 million to settle a similar lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission.
Dive Insight:
This lawsuit is another nail in the coffin for proprietary education, which has largely recruited non-traditional learners with claims about easy access to the job market through convenient educational access. But it also presents a problem for smaller institutions which may have similar outcomes based upon gainful employment and loan debt repayment standards.
If some aggressive attorneys decide to begin reviewing federal data on institutions and can effectively argue that the promise of higher education was not upheld by special mission schools like community colleges or minority-serving institutions, this could lead to massive class action suits and extraordinary legal costs for these schools. Trustees and presidents should review these cases closely to determine if there may be any potential for similar litigation on the basis of postgraduate outcomes, or the lackthereof.