A Class Action Suit Against Columbia

There’s been more fallout from Columbia University’s misreporting of data to US News & World Report. The school, which has announced it will not participate in next year’s ranking and which was removed from this year’s ranking after previously ranking in a tie for second, has been hit with a class action lawsuit filed by a recent graduate from the Class of 2018. And what’s the basis for the lawsuit, you ask? The alumnus argues that he was duped into attending Columbia because of its high ranking in the publication but did “not receive the benefit” of attending, according to his complaint filed in federal court for the Southern District of New York.

As Irie Sentner writes for The Columbia Daily Spectator in a piece entitled “Columbia hit with class action lawsuit over U.S. News misreporting allegations,” “Columbia was hit with a proposed class action lawsuit on Tuesday for allegedly misreporting data submitted to the U.S. News & World Report’s 2022 Best Colleges ranking, which recently ‘unranked’ Columbia from its No. 2 position. The suit calls the University’s alleged misreporting ‘immoral, unethical,’ and ‘unscrupulous’ and proposes the creation of a class of over 30,000 students enrolled between 2016 and 2022 seeking over $5 million. The suit, filed by Ravi Campbell, CC ’18, in the federal court for the Southern District of New York, alleges that the University ‘knew that the misreporting of critical data … was necessary for it to retain its extremely high ranking as an educational institution,’ and that this high ranking ‘provided significant leverage’ in increasing enrollment and tuition rates. Campbell filed the suit on behalf of a proposed class that ‘decided to enroll at Columbia largely due to the prestige associated with Columbia’s extremely high [U.S. News] ranking’ and ‘paid a premium’ to attend a top-ranked school, but ‘did not receive the benefit.'”

And what do we have to say about this proposed class action lawsuit filed by Columbia alumnus Ravi Campbell? It’s absolutely ridiculous! He only attended Columbia because of its ranking in a magazine? He didn’t receive the benefit of attending the storied Ivy League institution? He didn’t get a top notch education? He didn’t make lifelong friends who are going to be movers and shakers in our world? Please. It seems Mr. Campbell is more interested in trying to grab money from his alma mater than anything else. Yes, Columbia may have misreported data but, Mr. Campbell, you still attended one of the very finest institutions in all the world. If you don’t recognize that, the fault is yours and yours alone.