OAKLAND — Simply weeks earlier than Mills School is to formally be taken over by Boston’s Northeastern College, two of its college students have filed a class-action lawsuit claiming they and different college students have been deceived in regards to the merger.
The lawsuit, filed in Alameda County Superior Court docket this week, accuses Mills of violating the state’s unfair competitors and false promoting legal guidelines by encouraging college students to remain enrolled and telling them remaining levels possible could be conferred in 2023.
The school later introduced it could confer its final levels this yr and scale back the variety of diploma applications, in accordance with the go well with. Mills is holding an undergraduate commencement ceremony Saturday
For college kids like Willa Cordrey, a plaintiff within the case, Mills’ transfer to confer its final levels a yr earlier led to misplaced cash, in accordance with the go well with.
In 2019, Cordrey began a Mills program that may have allowed her to earn her bachelor’s and grasp’s levels in schooling and a educating credential in 5 years. Faculty officers informed her after Mills introduced it was closing that she may end her diploma program, so she re-enrolled . However in January, Mills introduced it was eliminating applications that Northeastern didn't supply, together with Cordrey’s.
“Mills School repeatedly misled Ms. Cordrey about her means to graduate and get her educating credential via Mills School, earlier than lastly stating that the most effective they may do is permit her to obtain her Bachelor’s in Communications or a equally unrelated main via Northeastern College, with no path to obtain her educating credential,” regulation corporations Bryan Schwartz Legislation and Nichols Kaster, PLLP mentioned in an announcement in regards to the go well with they filed.
“I wished to learn to train at Mills, as a result of I felt that my courses and professors have been getting ready me to be the sort of trainer I wished to be. I did the whole lot I may to finish my schooling at Mills,” Cordrey mentioned within the regulation agency’s written assertion. “The administration had an obligation to their present college students, they usually have failed us.”
Requested for touch upon the lawsuit, a Mills spokesperson issued an announcement that mentioned “Mills School and Northeastern College are working diligently to mitigate any points that Mills college students might encounter on account of the pending merger of the 2 establishments.”
Faculty leaders preserve that college students won't should pay extra to finish their levels as the colleges merge, even when they should take longer to complete their programs due to completely different necessities from accrediting our bodies.
The go well with’s different plaintiff, Jenny Varner, was on observe to graduate from Mills in Could 2023 with levels in artwork historical past and historical past and deliberate to stay it out after preliminary emails from the faculty administration assured college students Mills wouldn’t cease conferring levels till after the spring 2023 semester. It was solely later that she acquired phrase from the faculty that she couldn't full her levels, and it was too late to get a tuition refund for the semester she had simply began, Varner alleged in an announcement in regards to the go well with.
The lawsuit is looking for financial damages for Cordrey and Varner, in addition to different Mills college students if the court docket approves the class-action standing of the case.
It’s not the primary time Mills has been sued over its controversial determination to stop operations as a standalone school and merge with Northeastern. Mills alumnae beforehand sued the faculty in an effort to cease the takeover, however the case however an undisclosed settlement was reached earlier this yr.
Teams of former and present Mills college students and others have been engaged in efforts and campaigns to cease the merger. They insist directors have mischaracterized Mills’ monetary standing to justify its “acquisition” by Northeastern.
Mills’ administration has described the faculty’s monetary image as “dire,” and introduced final yr that Northeastern “will assume all of Mills’ monetary property, liabilities, and contractual obligations.”
“College students believed in Mills’ mission, values, and progressive repute as a historic girls’s liberal arts school, and have sacrificed and spent arduous‐earned cash to return right here. As a substitute, they suffered a surprising degree of mismanagement and misinformation by this administration,” Cynthia Mahood
Levin, a Mills alumna and president of the Save Mills School Coalition, mentioned in a separate written assertion.