* Walden University, a for-profit school, deliberately set up a scheme to lure and trap students into a cycle of debt and desperation, according to a class action lawsuit filed in federal court in Maryland against the institution . The program primarily targeted black students and female students.

The class action was filed by the National Student Legal Defense Network in January on behalf of several former students who allege the school violated consumer protection laws and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by targeting minorities and women when it misrepresented the costs and credits needed to acquire an advanced degree.

Aljanal Carroll joined Walden University in 2017 for a PhD in Business Administration. At that time, she was told she could complete her course in 18 months. She easily went through the classes hoping to graduate in due time. But she encountered many problems when she arrived at her “synthesis project”. This is his thesis.

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Carroll says the review committee tasked with planning his project took several weeks to provide him with feedback, which slowed the pace. The worst is that they made him make revisions due to simple grammatical errors which had little weight on the general project. Each time, she had to start the process all over again. By the time her project was finally approved, she had invested three years and over $10,000 in tuition.

“It started to make me feel like I couldn’t write or speak, which didn’t make sense because I had just gotten a 4.0 for my master’s degree,” Carroll, 49, told The Times. “I knew it didn’t look right, but I was so far behind that I couldn’t go back.”

The lawsuit makes it clear that Walden intentionally prolonged the thesis process, forcing students to re-enroll for several years and wasting thousands more in tuition than expected. The lawsuit estimates the fees charged at more than $28.5 million in additional tuition. Even former students have come out to complain, saying the school participated in “reverse highlighting” by targeting minority communities and women with its misleading advertisements.

“Walden lured students in with the promise of an affordable degree, then chained them to increase profits,” said Aaron Ament, president of the National Student Advocacy Network. “As if that weren’t enough, Walden specifically targeted black students and women for this predatory program, masking his discrimination with a focus on diversity.”

This is not the first time that Walden has faced such a lawsuits and claims. But he has denied the latest allegations, saying his mission is to serve a diverse community. He filed a motion to dismiss the suit, calling it a “baseless and inflammatory attempt to repackage Walden’s school mission as calculated discrimination.”

Walden also pointed out that it awarded doctoral degrees to more black and female students in 2020 than any other US university.

Black students in the United States have often been victims of student and tuition debt. Many of them end up taking expensive loans because it’s the only way to pay for their education. However, this only pushes them into a financial nightmare as it can take years or even decades to repay loans after graduation.