Caltech said Monday that it would end its relationship with an e-learning company after a class-action lawsuit alleged the firm and the university misrepresented a cybersecurity boot camp and misled students by suggesting the course had close ties to the Pasadena campus and instructors, even though the connection was minimal.
In an email to the Caltech community, President Thomas F. Rosenbaum and Provost David A. Tirrell said the university would halt its ties to the firm Simplilearn after current courses finish in November.
They also said Caltech would launch a faculty oversight committee for other learning programs under its Center for Technology and Management Education, which offers dozens of courses for professionals, to “guide and inform future initiatives” and “advise on strategy, curriculum, and education programming.”
Caltech and Simplilearn, as a part of a court settlement, did not “admit or concede” to allegations in the lawsuit or violating laws. Still, the move by one of the nation’s most prestigious universities was a significant win for students and advocates who have made complaints nationwide over colleges lending their names to online courses that have few ties to campus faculty or typical university oversight.
Online university programs have grown by the hundreds since 2011, when the Education Department released guidelines that allowed revenue sharing among universities and third-party course providers to proliferate, prompting backlash and scrutiny.
Last year, the California state auditor cited UC, saying it made “limited use of online program management firms” yet should have “increased oversight” of them. Two states, Ohio and Minnesota, have passed laws regulating “online program managers” that partner with universities.
New America, a liberal think tank that has tracked the growth of such courses, wrote in a recent report that the quality of online program managers “can be questionable. Students have complained of low-quality instruction and programs that do not fulfill the promises made by recruiters.”
Students often earn certificates issued by the course providers and “graduate deep in debt, only to find their credential carries little or no weight in the job market, or that they lack the skills needed for their chosen career,” the New America analysis, published last month, said.
The Caltech Cybersecurity Bootcamp, which each year enrolled roughly 500 people across eight classes, became the center of a lawsuit in 2023 after a student who had signed up three years earlier said the university used its name recognition to sell classes taught by people unaffiliated or loosely affiliated with the Caltech brand.
Named plaintiff and former student Elva Lopez filed the suit in state court in San Francisco before it was approved as a class-action legal proceeding. She alleged the university and Simplilearn violated consumer protection laws and that the program she enrolled in was part of Caltech “in name only.” She said she took out $14,000 in loans for classes where one instructor was someone whose credentials included graduating from the same program.
As part of the settlement they signed last week and the court released Monday, Caltech and Simplilearn agreed to not “hire or use boot camp instructors whose only credentials for teaching cybersecurity are that they have graduated from a cybersecurity boot camp.”
They also said they wouldn’t “represent that boot camp students have access to Caltech services that they do not have access to,” would create a “directory page listing all current boot camp instructors and their affiliation,” and would require Simplilearn recruiters to use Simpilearn email addresses.
The settlement, which still needs judicial approval, also said Simplilearn would refund tuition to 263 people who paid a total of $2.4 million. On top of legal fees, the settlement said Simplilearn would pay $340,000 and Caltech $60,000 to be distributed to class members.
A spokesperson for Simplilearn did not respond to a request for comment.
Although some parts of the agreement have little practical effect after Caltech’s Monday announcement that the partnership would soon end, a lawyer who represented the plaintiffs said it was a “great playbook” for other schools with similar programs.
“This settlement provides meaningful relief to Elva Lopez and other Caltech bootcamp participants. It achieves their goals of accountability and transparency for students who attended the Caltech Cybersecurity Bootcamp or will in the future,” said attorney Eric Rothschild of the National Student Legal Defense Network. “The changes Caltech and Simplilearn agreed to are a great playbook for other schools offering these kinds of programs to follow.”
Although it is distancing itself from Simplilearn, Caltech said it still prided itself on its other professional and executive-level programs under the Center for Technology and Management Education.
Each year, the center “administers more than 40 distinct extended education programs, which are available as open-enrollment courses for individuals as well as customized certification programs developed in collaboration with corporate partners,” including Aramco, Boeing, John Deere, NASA, Northrop Grumman and Toshiba, Rosenbaum and Tirrell wrote Monday.
The center, they said, has “a strong reputation for delivering certification programs and training that enhance professional skill-sets and prepare the workforce to meet the increasingly complex technological demands of modern industry.”