Former Students Sue Grand Canyon University Over Allegedly ‘Worthless’ Degrees

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Two former Grand Canyon University (GCU) students claim in a proposed class action that the school lies to prospective students about whether its online professional degree programs are accredited and will help them advance in their fields.

“Students are induced to spend time away from their families and jobs—often hundreds or even thousands of hours—and take out federal student loans that they will be saddled with for decades, for zero return,” the 59-page case states. “The human misery caused by Grand Canyon’s scheme is incalculable.”

According to the lawsuit, GCU aggressively pushes students to enroll in its programs despite knowing that their degrees will not be accepted by the state in which they live. One of the plaintiffs is a Georgia schoolteacher who says she informed GCU that she was seeking to obtain her doctoral degree in order to earn a higher teaching credential in her state. A Grand Canyon recruiter, the case says, pushed the woman to sign up for one of the school’s online programs despite knowing that Georgia’s standards board does not accept Grand Canyon coursework or degrees. The woman says that after she spent countless hours working toward her degree and racked up about $65,000 in student loans, she was told by another student that some states, which she later learned included Georgia, would not accept the GCU degree she was pursuing. The plaintiff claims the coursework she completed was worthless, as she could not transfer her credits to an accredited university nor accomplish her goals by finishing her degree.

The other named plaintiff in the suit says a GCU recruiter specifically told her that the mental health counseling degree program in which she was interested was accredited and would allow her to become a licensed professional counselor in her home state of Ohio. According to the lawsuit, this information was false. After spending $14,000 on tuition, the woman says she was told by a coworker that her program was not accredited in Ohio, which she was eventually able to confirm with her advisor.

The lawsuit argues that Grand Canyon has similarly misled thousands of online students into thinking their professional degree programs are accredited in order to profit off their tuition money. In reality, the university, the lawsuit says, does not meet most accrediting agency standards. GCU, according to the suit, “simply cannot devote the level of resources” needed to obtain accreditation in many fields, specifically in education and healthcare. Without accreditation, online degrees from GCU are “worthless,” the suit says, as they will not allow students to achieve their post-graduate goals.

“No student would ever knowingly enroll in a non-accredited professional degree program that does not serve their goals,” the complaint reads.