Excelsior College Students Seek Cert. In Nursing Program Class Action

A group of Excelsior College students who claim the private school places endless barriers to prevent nursing program enrollees from actually graduating, have asked a New York federal court to certify their putative class action lawsuit.

Plaintiff Jessica Willis along with numerous other Excelsior student plaintiffs seek to represent all individuals who enrolled in the nursing program since Aug. 13, 2012 and experienced delays in taking the Clinical Performance in Nursing Examination test and/or failed the CPNE within the same time period. 

According to the motion for certification, the lawsuit meets all the requirements for Class certification including “numerosity, commonality, typicality and adequacy of representation.”

The Excelsior class action lawsuit states that the college primarily targets students who are unable to attend a traditional nursing school by promising them that they can finish the program in as little as 18 months.

However, the plaintiffs say that repeated and intentional road blocks delay students from graduating.

The Excelsior College class action lawsuit claims that out of 10,000 students enrolled in the nursing program, less than 10 percent of those end up graduating each year.

Part of the reason why there is such a low graduation rate is because Excelsior hides from students the fact that less than half of them will actually pass the final test, the plaintiffs state.

“For example, whereas the actual CPNE pass rate for 2017 was only 39.5%…Excelsior misled and continues to mislead consumers into believing that the pass rate is and has been 62.2%,” the Excelsior nursing program class action lawsuit alleges.

According to the Excelsior class action lawsuit, the deception doesn’t end there. In addition to the low success rate on the final exam, Excelsior students experience delays of more than one year to even take the test, despite the college representing that students only have to wait three to five months.

Willis claims she was one of the students tricked by the omissions and intentional untrue statements made by the college regarding test pass rates and accreditation.

The plaintiff, who has been an LPN since 2010, says she enrolled in Excelsior’s nursing program in 2015 with the understanding that it would be completed in 18 months.

The Excelsior nursing program class action states that the school hid the fact that the CPNE test had a pass rate of less than 50 percent.

Willis alleges that she received a job offer that was “contingent upon her having an active RN license by July 2018.” In April 2018, the plaintiff was one of seven Excelsior students who took the CPNE and all of them reportedly failed to pass.

The Excelsior college class action claims that the school recognized that the test failure was wrong by stating “the exam administration was [not] in accordance with established protocols.”

However, the college allegedly did not grant Willis a pass which in turn resulted in her inability to take the offered job position.

The Excelsior college class action states that Willis is among many who experienced “insistent, persistent and unending” fraud on behalf of the college.

The Excelsior College students are represented by John Hermina of Hermina Law Group and Gregory Allen of the Law Office of Gregory Allen.

The Excelsior College Nursing Program Class Action Lawsuit is Jessica Willis, et al. v. Excelsior College, Case No. 1:18-cv-04552-NG-CLP, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

UPDATE: The Excelsior College Nursing Program Class Action was dismissed on March 20, 2019. Top Class Actions will let our viewers know if any new lawsuits are filed.