Baker College Faces $2.5M Penalty for Misleading Career Claims that Left Students in Debt

University Herald

Thea Felicity

January 08 2025

A nonprofit institution based in Michigan, was fined $2.5 million by the US Department of Education for misleading students regarding their career outcomes.

The institution, Baker College, was found to have offered wrong and exaggerated information to the students when deciding on enrollment. This penalty is a result of a joint investigation conducted by ProPublica and the Detroit Free Press in 2022 on the low graduation rates and high student debt burden at the college.

Detroit Free Press shared that the investigation revealed numerous cases of false advertising. For decades, Baker boasted of a near-100% career outcomes rate, but the figures were based on selective and self-reported data. In some cases, the college listed employers who had hired its graduates without indicating that many of these jobs were secured before the students ever enrolled. Misleading salary and employment figures further misrepresented the actual value of Baker’s programs to prospective students.

Baker College’s Settlement Over Misinformation

In its settlement, Baker College agreed never to make misrepresentations of this kind again. The school will also provide the government with its marketing materials for review in the next three years. In any case, the settlement doesn’t include the college’s admission of wrongdoing.

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, President Jacqui Spice explained that the problem was that its materials lacked the proper background or explanation, not false statements.

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