Temple University Will Pay $5.5M To Settle MBA Ranking Class Action

A $5.5 million settlement has been proposed to settle claims that Temple University overstated its business school rating to entice students.

The settlement will benefit two groups of students. The first group of Class Members will include around 970 students who were enrolled in Temple’s Fox School of Business Online MBA program from 2015 to 2018.

The second group includes around 2,000 students who were enrolled in other online business school programs through Temple University.

Class Members in the first group will split $4 million while Class Members in the second group will split $1.5 million. Together, the settlement funds will pay around $5.5 million to resolve claims that the university inflated their rankings in the U.S. News & World Report.

Temple University had been ranked as the top online MBA program for four years in a row, but was dropped from the list entirely in 2018.

This sudden drop in ranking was allegedly due to the fact that Temple admitted that it had misreported the number of students enrolled in their programs who took the GMAT exam, a standardized test used to predict academic performance in MBA programs.

“Business school rankings are important marketing tools used to recruit elite students, and to attract recruiters from desirable employers,” the Temple University class action settlement states. “In January 2018, Temple notified U.S. News that Temple had misreported data to U.S. News, including by overstating the number of new entrants for Temple’s 2016­2017 [Online MBA] class who had submitted GMAT scores.”

In February 2018, lead plaintiff Kyle Smith filed his class action lawsuit against Temple University, alleging that the school misrepresented test numbers for years other than the 2016-2017 years.

Smith claimed that prospective students relied on representations about the number of students who took the exams, and were duped by Temple’s allegedly fraudulent test figures.

Temple University has not admitted any wrongdoing by settling the class action, but instead said in a statement that they have chosen to settle the suit “in the best interests of the university and its students.”

Under the Temple University settlement, the school will also establish an “ethics scholarship” worth $5,000 which will be awarded to a student in the Fox School of Business. Class Members in the settlement will also receive access to the business program’s “video vault” for three years as well as 12 months of career counseling.

The school will also create an anonymous whistleblower hotline and educate their students and faculty regarding whistleblower laws.

The dean of Temple’s business school has also agreed to consult with an ethics committee and a student advisory council in the future, under the terms of the settlement.

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Settlement Class Members are represented by Steven Bennett Blau and Shelly A. Leonard of Blau Leonard Law Group LLC, and Jason T. Brown of Brown LLC.

The Temple University MBA Ranking Class Action Lawsuit is Smith v. Temple University, Case No. 2:18­-cv­-00590, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.