When Elva Lopez saw a pop up ad for the Caltech Cybersecurity Bootcamp while playing an online game, she jumped at the chance to enroll.
It was the fall of 2020, Lopez had recently lost her job, was battling cancer and was looking for a fresh start during the depths of the pandemic. Part of the allure of the program for Lopez was its affiliation with the California Institute of Technology, or Caltech, the prestigious non-profit college known for producing Nobel laureates and cutting-edge technology.
But shortly after enrolling in the program and taking on $14,000 in private loans to pay for it, Lopez realized her instructor had no affiliation with Caltech and struggled to answer students’ technical questions, according to court documents. One of her instructors was a musical theater major who had recently completed the cybersecurity bootcamp himself, the complaint added.
Now, Lopez is suing Caltech and Simplilearn, the company the suit alleges actually ran the cybersecurity bootcamp. The class-action suit, filed Thursday in San Francisco’s state court, claims the institutions violated California law by exaggerating Caltech’s involvement in the program.
Eric Rothschild, the litigation director at the National Student Legal Defense Network and one of the attorneys representing Lopez, said despite its name, the bootcamp was run entirely — “soup to nuts” — by a for-profit company.
“The only apparent involvement of the school is literally to attach its name to it and promote it on its continuing education website,” he said. “Using that brand without actually participating more in the education is very problematic. It’s hard to see any rationale for the school doing it other than it’s a pretty easy revenue stream.”
Caltech and Simplilearn did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the suit’s claims.
Part of a broader trend
Lopez’s experience as described in the suit is part of a broader trend over the past several years of non-profit and public universities partnering with for-profit companies to provide online courses. Schools’ relationship with these companies, called online program managers, or OPMs, have come under scrutiny from consumer advocates, in part, they say because schools are outsourcing one of their core functions — educating students — to companies concerned about delivering value to shareholders or owners.
In addition, critics say, the structure of many of these deals, where the companies and colleges each get a share of the tuition revenue that the programs generate, can incentivize schools to push up tuition and enroll as many students as possible, regardless of the value their programs deliver. For the program at issue in the lawsuit, Caltech earns about 25% of the tuition revenue and Simplilearn, formerly known as Fullstack, earns 75%, the suit alleges. The suit claims the bootcamp costs at least $10,000.
The Department of Education generally bans colleges from paying recruiters based on how many students they enroll, but a carve out exists for third party companies that do recruiting for schools as long as they perform other services. That’s allowed relationships between colleges and online program managers to flourish. The Department of Education is in the process of reconsidering this loophole.
Colleges often participate in the design of the courses and degree programs offered through partnerships with OPMs. In many cases, members of the school’s faculty will teach the classes, but the online program manager will manage recruitment, admissions and the back end technology associated with the program.
But the cybersecurity bootcamp Caltech and Simplilearn advertise as being a collaboration between the school and the company has a different model, the suit alleges. In this case, the suit claims, the cybersecurity bootcamp is operated completely by Simplilearn, violating California laws aimed at protecting consumers from misrepresentations in advertising.
Proud to get into a Caltech program
After seeing the pop-up ad for the cybersecurity bootcamp, Lopez went to a website for the program to learn more. That site had a Caltech URL, featured the Caltech logo at the top of the page and advertised that students would earn roughly $80,000 in entry-level jobs after completing the coursework, the complaint says. The Caltech continuing education site that housed the website for the cybersecurity program referenced industry experts and subject matter experts as teaching the courses, according to the complaint.
When prospective students wanted more information about the program they could request a brochure from Caltech, the suit alleges. After Lopez subscribed to receive information about the cybersecurity bootcamp, she received an email from a student advisor who had Caltech’s address in their email signature, according to the complaint. The advisor didn’t work for Caltech and worked outside of California, the suit alleges.
“All of this is communicating to the student customer population that Caltech is involved,” Rothschild said. “They’re not hiding the existence of the bootcamp provider but they are in every respect promoting it as their bootcamp in which they are involved and that turns out not to be true whatsoever.”
For Lopez, the idea that the program was part of Caltech was a major selling point, according to the complaint. She was proud to get into a program at such a prestigious university. In addition, Caltech students tend to have good outcomes that would make an investment in a Caltech education worth it — students who began college at Caltech 10 years ago and received federal financial aid earn $104,000 on average, according to Department of Education data.
The bootcamp program was promoted largely to people outside of the cybersecurity industry who were looking to change careers, Rothschild said. For prospective students, hearing from an institution like Caltech that through this program you could successfully switch industries and earn a decent paying salary, “has a huge persuasive effect,” he said.
The marketing was enough to convince Lopez to enroll and borrow $14,000 in private loans to afford the six-month program, according to the complaint. She couldn’t use federal student loans to pay for the course because it isn’t eligible for federal financial aid.
Lawmakers are considering allowing students to use Pell grants, the money the federal government provides to low-income students, for short-term career training programs. There are various proposals circulating in Congress to allow students to use Pell grants for short-term training and some proposals would ban for-profit programs from receiving the funds.
After Lopez enrolled in the Caltech-branded program and began taking classes, she realized it wasn’t what she expected given how it was advertised, according to the complaint. One of her instructors struggled to answer students’ questions and in some cases students appeared to know more than he did, the suit claims.
Once she completed the program in April 2021, Lopez worked with a career counselor from Simplilearn, then called Fullstack, to try to get a job, according to the suit. Lopez attended online career fairs and interviewed for jobs.
She hasn’t received any offers or calls back, according to the complaint.
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