A lawsuit was filed the lawsuit this week in Los Angeles County Court by three former USC students. The class-action lawsuit, filed by the National Student Legal Defense Network, alleges the USC Rossier School of Education and 2U, a private marketing company, provided fraudulent rankings data to U.S. News & World Report that artificially boosted the program’s rankings. This lawsuit requests tuition reimbursement for alumni and currently enrolled students at Rossier.
2U is responsible for marketing Rossier and they receive a portion of the tuition generated by the school. Some people could certainly look upon such an arrangement as a potential misalignment that could lead to questionable data being used in marketing. Indeed, the lawsuit goes as far as to argue this business arrangement may be illegal.
USC may have an uphill battle fighting this lawsuit. Earlier this year, an internal investigation by Jones Day, USC’s legal counsel, concluded USC “misreported data to US News about the selectivity of its doctoral programs.”
Student Defense Litigation Director Eric Rothschild explained, “It’s not hard to see the throughline here — USC intentionally falsified data to inflate their U.S. News ranking, and 2U used the false numbers to pad their profits.” It should be duly noted that 2U categorically denies the lawsuit’s allegations. Similarly, it should also be noted that Rossier announced the week prior to the lawsuit’s filing that it was withdrawing from the US News rankings.
