TRENTON, N.J. (Legal Newsline) - Rutgers University has defeated a class action lawsuit that accused it and its business school of lying to obtain higher rankings.
New Jersey federal judge Georgette Castner on Aug. 30 tossed part-time student Lorenzo Budet's case, finding he couldn't allege an injury. His lawsuit alleged prospective business school students were misled into attending Rutgers because it had submitted false employability statistics to places like U.S. News & World Report and Financial Times that rank colleges and universities.
"Without describing a measurable diminution in the value of his degree - demonstrated by, for example, a measurable drop in Plaintiff's employability because of RBS's fraudulent reporting or a quantifiable shortfall in the quality of education that Plaintiff received - Plaintiff alleges an injury that is conjectural or hypothetical," Castner wrote in dismissing the complaint without prejudice.
"As long as Plaintiff ties his injuries solely to RBS's rankings, and those rankings remain unchanged, Plaintiff cannot allege that he suffered a concrete and particularized injury."
Budet hoped to represent a class of students in the school’s Master of Business Administration program and other master’s degree programs. Rutgers had argued whatever data it submitted to ranking publications pertained only to full-time students.
Castner ruled Budet failed to show which rankings he relied on when selecting Rutgers.
"Even if the Court assumed that Plaintiff relied on the full-time program's rankings in deciding to enroll in the part-time program, it would still be unclear what concrete and particularized injury Plaintiff allegedly suffered," she wrote.
RBS hired unemployed MBA students and placed them into token permanent positions to boost employability stats, it is alleged. RBS hired them through a temp agency and spent more than $400,000 to finance their positions, the suit claims.