Former students blast Grand Canyon University over ‘worthless degrees’
Joe Duhownik
PHOENIX (CN) — Grand Canyon University defended itself Tuesday in a class action claiming it deceives students into enrolling in useless degree programs that don’t meet common accreditation and licensure requirements.
Katie Ogdon, a resident of Fresno, California, says she enrolled in Phoenix-based Christian university’s master of science in psychology degree program with the intention of becoming a mental health therapist in California. Two years and more than $20,000 in student loans later, Ogdon learned the degree program GCU counselors encouraged her to pursue is not accredited in California and does not qualify her to be a licensed therapist in the state.
Ogdon says GCU uses deceptive and misleading statements about its degree programs to register as many students as it can and collect federal funding without telling students that the programs may not be useful in their desired field of work, amounting to RICO activities and unjust enrichment. She says counselors are trained to omit relevant accreditation information and have misled thousands of students into registering for unaccredited master’s programs at GCU.
In a federal courtroom Tuesday afternoon, GCU argued that Ogdon has no standing to represent the plaintiff class.
Ogdon’s total fees for her two years at GCU amounted to $20,533 — less than the $22,000 granted to her in federal student loans. Because her student loans were forgiven in 2020, just days before she filed this lawsuit, Ogdon forfeited the right to make any legal claims relating to her student loans, which cover everything Ogdon spent at GCU and more, defense attorney Derin Dickerson argued.
“All of her claims are intrinsically linked to her federal student loans, which are now forgiven,” he said.
Dickerson said GCU’s academic catalog clearly states that its Master of Science in Psychology degree doesn’t lead to licensure. Ogdon and other plaintiffs say they relied on advice from class counselors who told them their degrees were accredited, but GCU says those students could and should have conducted their own cursory research of public information available to them.
If a degree program is not accredited and offers no opportunity for licensure, “what value is that program to the students?” U.S. District Judge Douglass Rayes asked Dickerson.
“There would be some limited value,” Dickerson replied. “It does not lead to a licensed job, but it leads to other jobs that don’t require licensure.”
Dickerson said those who graduate from Ogdon’s master’s program could go into human resources, academia or use the degree to pursue a doctorate.
Finally, Dickerson said if any of Ogdon’s claims survive, they may only be for monetary relief, not injunctive relief.
Representing the plaintiff class, attorney Leonard Aragon said the only injunctive relief the plaintiffs request is an order to stop making false and misleading statements about its degree programs.
The plaintiffs argued that not all of Ogdon’s claims are linked to her student loans, as some fees — like graduation, for example — she paid outside the timeframe of the loans. Because Ogdon brings her claims on behalf of a class, she still has standing to move forward even if her own claims are mooted by her loan forgiveness, plaintiff attorney Annick Persinger added.
Because neither Ogdon nor Gurjit Singh, who represents a subclass of students from New York, intends to return to GCU, the university argues that there’s no risk of immediate future harm. Plaintiff attorneys said the image associated with carrying a GCU degree is harmful enough.
“There’s reputational harm created by Grand Canyon continuing graduating students with these worthless degrees,” Aragon said.
Grand Canyon University is no stranger to the courtroom. In addition to a long fight with the U.S. Department of Education over whether it’s a for-profit institution — the Ninth Circuit has ordered the department to reassess its finding — the Trump administration’s Federal Trade Commission dropped a Biden-era lawsuit claiming illegal telemarketing and deceptive advertising.