Overview

• The proposed deal filed on July 1 in Manhattan federal court covers students enrolled from fall 2016 through spring 2022 at Columbia College, Columbia Engineering and the School of General Studies.
• Student attorneys intend to seek up to one-third of the $9 million for legal fees, leaving approximately $6 million for eligible class members.
• Plaintiffs claimed Columbia misreported statistics such as class‐size figures to achieve a No. 2 ranking in U.S. News’s 2022 undergraduate survey.
• Columbia denied any wrongdoing in settling and has since published independently reviewed Common Data Sets to improve data transparency.
• The litigation traces back to a July 2022 report by professor Michael Thaddeus, after which Columbia’s ranking dropped to No. 18 and the university withdrew from U.S. News rankings in 2023.