Mount Ida College Class Action Says Students Duped by Bankrupt School

Former students allege in a class action lawsuit that financial information was hidden from them and their classmates, ultimately leaving them high and dry when Mount Ida College closed unexpectedly.

According to the Mount Ida College class action lawsuit, the board of trustees left students with few options after failing to reopen for classes in spring of this year.

The plaintiffs say that officials knew the school was in a tough financial situation as early as 2014 but failed to tell students.

“The defendants intentionally concealed the truth from its students because they knew their students would seize this information and ultimately make an informed decision to enroll elsewhere, seek a transfer or take some other action to avoid being harmed by the school’s inevitable closure,” alleges the Mount Ida College class action lawsuit.

According to the Mount Ida College class action lawsuit, the closure came after years of scrambling by school officials to make the institution solvent.

These efforts, however, were misrepresented to students and ultimately fell through, leaving students with few options to finish their educations.

In a statement, one of the plaintiffs describes her last months at Mount Ida College as “chaotic at best.” She says that she felt the school was “being sold out from under us.”

“Instead of looking forward to my last year and all that it should be, I was now reapplying to colleges like I was a senior in high school all over again — only this time I was doing it at a frantic pace, with decisions needing to be made rapidly,” says one of the plaintiffs in the Mount Ida College closure class action lawsuit.

The Mount Ida College class action lawsuit alleges that school officials intentionally concealed the dire financial straits of the institution from current and prospective students.

Compounding the issue, Mount Ida then sold confidential information about its students to the University of Massachusetts – setting up UMass to funnel desperate students into its programs.

“It was exactly when the students were most vulnerable when Mount Ida released its students’ private information to UMass Dartmouth,” contends the Mount Ida College closure class action lawsuit. “In effect, Mount Ida sold its students, at a discount, to UMass Dartmouth, as an incentive in the land transaction.”

The Mount Ida College class action plaintiffs include a graduating senior and incoming freshman. According to the complaint, the school continued to accept applications from high school seniors for the upcoming year despite awareness that it would close its doors.

“The closing of Mount Ida came so quickly that it felt like I was being punished for something, but had no idea what I did wrong,” said the incoming freshman in a statement. “It was heartbreaking.”

The Mount Ida College class action lawsuit seeks to represent those who were or planned to be students with the institution when it closed.

The students are seeking more than $40 million in damages.

The plaintiffs and proposed Class are represented by Andra J. Hutchins and Michael Tauer of Kerstein Coren & Lichtenstein LLP, and by Joshua N. Garick of the Law Offices of Joshua N. Garick PC.

The Mount Ida College Closure Class Action Lawsuit is Squeri, et al. v. Mount Ida College, et al., Case No. 1:18­-cv-­12438, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.