Columbia University agreed to pay $9 million to settle a proposed class action by students who claimed it submitted false data to boost its position in U.S. News & World Report’s influential college rankings.
A preliminary settlement, which requires a judge’s approval, was filed on Monday in Manhattan federal court.
Students said Columbia artificially inflated its U.S. News ranking for undergraduate schools, reaching No. 2 in 2022, by consistently reporting false data, including that 83% of its classes had fewer than 20 students.
They said the misrepresentations enticed them to enroll and allowed Columbia to overcharge them on tuition.
The settlement covers about 22,000 undergraduate students at Columbia College, Columbia Engineering and Columbia’s School of General Studies from the fall of 2016 to the spring of 2022.
Lawyers for the students called the accord fair, reasonable and adequate. Columbia denied wrongdoing in agreeing to settle.
The university said in a statement that it “deeply regrets deficiencies in prior reporting,” and now provides prospective students with data reviewed by an independent advisory firm to ensure they receive accurate information about their education.
The litigation began in July 2022, after Columbia math professor Michael Thaddeus published a report alleging that data underlying the school’s No. 2 ranking were inaccurate or misleading. Columbia’s ranking dropped to No. 18 that September.
In June 2023, Columbia said its undergraduate schools would stop participating in U.S. News’ rankings.
It said the rankings appeared to have “outsized influence” with prospective students, and “much is lost” in distilling education quality from a series of data points.
Some other universities, including Harvard and Yale, also stopped submitting data to U.S. News for various schools. U.S. News also ranks graduate schools.
Lawyers for the Columbia students plan to seek up to one-third of the settlement for legal fees, leaving about $6 million for the students.
