A legal advocacy group for students is suing the University of Southern California and 2U, alleging that the school and the company that runs its online graduate programs in education defrauded students by using misleading U.S. News & World Report rankings to promote the courses.
According to the suit, filed in Los Angeles County Court, USC’s Rossier School of Education used rankings that covered their in-person programs to highlight the strength of the online offerings, even though they had different selection criteria and student populations. The suit also says those rankings, even if they had been relevant to the online programs, were based on inaccurate information the school used to improperly boost the school’s score. …
“USC intentionally falsified data to inflate their U.S. News ranking, and 2U used the false numbers to pad their profits,” said Eric Rothschild, litigation director of the National Student Legal Defense Network. …