Grand Canyon University Accreditation Standards Class Action

This class action sues a for-profit university, Grand Canyon University, Inc., and related parties, about their online graduate programs. The school offers graduate degrees in areas that are subject to state regulation, but the complaint for this class action alleges that the programs do not meet the accreditation standards for many state licensing boards and thus leave students not qualified to work in those fields.

The class for this action is all persons who enrolled in an online professional graduate degree or certificate program at Grand Canyon University that was not accredited for licensure in the person’s home state. A California Subclass has also been defined for class members who were citizens of California when they enrolled.

The plaintiff in this case, Kate Ogdon, enrolled in Grand Canyon’s Master of Science in Psychology with an Emphasis in Health Psychology. She intended to be a health psychologist in California. However, the complaint alleges, after paying tens of thousands of dollars in tuition, she found that Grand Canyon was not accredited in a way that would qualify her for licensing or practice in California.

The complaint alleges that the defendants in this case—Grand Canyon University, Grand Canyon Education, Inc., and three individuals, Brian Mueller, Dan Bachus, and Stan Meyer—“are engaged in a nationwide racketeering scheme to defraud graduate students” by taking their tuition money and letting them graduate while still unqualified to work in their chosen professions.

In certain fields, like health care and education, workers must be licensed. If the programs do not meet accreditation standards, the complaint alleges, then students will get out of school “only to find themselves deeply in debt and unable to obtain work in their chosen field.”

According to the complaint, recruiters for Grand Canyon “use sophisticated psychological techniques to deceive students,” and are fired for recruiting too few. The complaint alleges that “not only has Defendant Grand Canyon Education been sued for its fraudulent recruiting practices, but the three individual Defendants previously ran another for-profit university that was sued by various government agencies multiple times.”

“While traditional non-profit universities must invest tuition revenues into the educational and charitable mission of the university,” the complaint alleges, “Defendants have structured themselves to ensure that tuition money … is drained out of the university and into their pockets.”

With too much of the tuition going away from “the academic mission,” the complaint alleges, the school cannot offer a proper education. The students thus take out loans, which they will be paying back for years, the complaint alleges, but do not end up with anything more in the way of professional opportunities.

The complaint alleges, “Indeed, no student would ever knowingly enroll in a professional degree program … to obtain a degree that is not accepted because the program is not accredited for its intended purpose.”

Article Type: Lawsuit
Topic: Consumer
Tags: Did Not Provide Adequate Education, Education, RICO laws, Unfair Competition