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For years, Dr. Aljanal Carroll was too ashamed to look at her degree from Walden University, let alone put it on display.
Even after months slogging through reams of graduate work that earned her a doctorate in business administration in 2020, which she sought in hopes of a promotion inside a company dominated by white men, the process left her feeling robbed of a sense of accomplishment.
Dr. Carroll was promised that the program would take 18 months. Instead, it took three years and about $15,000 in additional tuition, after the school repeatedly delayed the approval of her capstone project — akin to a doctoral dissertation — with her advisers dragging out their reviews for weeks and coming back with small grammatical revisions that would start the clock again.
Only after the university settled a class-action lawsuit this year that was brought by students with a similar experience did Dr. Carroll, one of the plaintiffs in the suit, decide to take her degree out of the corner of her office.
“Now I really feel like this degree means something to me,” Dr. Carroll said.
On Thursday, a federal judge in Maryland approved a final settlement against Walden of $28.5 million in damages for as many as 2,300 former and current students. It came as a breakthrough after a previous class action against Walden was dismissed in 2017.
The complaint, filed in 2022, claimed that Walden employed “enrollment advisers” to give false information to prospective students, estimating that they could finish a doctoral program in business in three and a half years, and at a cost of $43,000 to $60,000.
In reality, lawyers representing the group said, students were forced through an intentionally drawn-out process to complete far more credits than advertised and pay an average of $34,300 more than anticipated.
Beyond the settlement, legal experts say the case is significant because it relies on a theory of racial discrimination known as “reverse redlining” to argue that the school violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act.
In contrast to traditional redlining, which refers to race-based exclusionary tactics in housing, the plaintiffs argued that Walden deliberately courted minorities and women with dishonest claims about the costs and credits required for its advanced business degree.
“It was a novel strategy that we thought had the potential for a huge impact, not just for our clients but in terms of changing practices in the sector,” said Aaron Ament, the president of the National Student Legal Defense Network, which represented the students alongside the civil rights law firm Relman Colfax.
Walden has maintained that its efforts were aimed at building a diverse class of students and creating pathways for students to advance their education even while holding full-time jobs.
A representative for the university said that the school had “made modifications to the programs at issue” and that the settlement “makes no admission of wrongdoing.”
According to National Science Foundation data cited in the lawsuit, the school granted 1,383 doctoral degrees to Black students between 2016 and 2020 — more than 11 percent of all doctoral degrees bestowed on Black students across the United States during that time — a fact that was prominently advertised on its website. That figure came in more than five times higher than the next highest-ranking institution, Howard University, a historically Black school, which graduated 266 Black doctoral candidates during the same period.
The lawsuit claimed that behind the eye-popping numbers was a predatory enrollment strategy, designed to lure Black women in particular with promises of affordable and convenient graduate credentials that trapped students in a prolonged and costly process.
Regulators have taken note of the outcome of the case.
The reverse-redlining theory has been cited in subsequent litigation, including by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and by nursing students in a case against the Health Career Institute in Florida.
Last year, the Education Department levied a $37.7 million fine against Grand Canyon University after finding that it had similarly misrepresented the cost of its doctorate programs. It also pulled federal student aid from Florida Career College, a for-profit chain, over its enrollment practices, prompting it to shut down this year.
The department declined to acknowledge on Thursday whether it was pursuing a similar investigation into Walden’s doctoral programs that could lead to further penalties. A representative for the university said the department had sent a request for information with which Walden has cooperated.
Students and their lawyers in the Walden case said they hoped the settlement would help spur the department into action, and that the precedent it set could lead to more forceful oversight of the for-profit education industry.
“I expected rigor, but I did not expect a rip-off,” said Dr. Tareion Fluker, a plaintiff in the case. “We were a conduit to that money, and we’re left holding the bag for those loans that we signed off on.”
Dr. Fluker said she had nearly 20 years of marketing experience, but sought out a doctorate from Walden in 2011 to bolster her credentials as she branched out to start her own consultancy firm.
She was told that it would take 20 capstone credits and two years to receive her doctorate in business administration, with a specialization in marketing management; instead it took 80 capstones and six years, and more than $155,000 in student loan debt.
Like many Walden students, Dr. Fluker said the process for completing her dissertation involved a full year spent on correcting commas and other small demands from her teachers. Despite years of experience at big-name marketing firms, she hired two professional editors to help her navigate the process.
“At every point,” she said, “it was like screaming into a void, trying to get someone to listen to me and hear me out.”
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