Class Action Claims Flatiron School Has Touted False Job Placement Rates, Avg. Starting Salaries for UX/UI Design Program

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The Flatiron School faces a proposed class action in which a former student alleges the New York-based trade school has falsely and misleadingly touted inflated job placement rates and average starting salaries for UX/UI design program graduates while distorting the nature of the program itself.

Despite reaching a $375,000 settlement with the New York State Attorney General in 2017 after it was sued over improper marketing and bogus job placement and starting average salary claims, the Flatiron School has continued to distribute to students, in particular those in the newly acquired UX/UI design program, a “grossly misleading job report summary” backed by “no relevant data or statistics,” the lawsuit alleges. 

Per the case, the Flatiron School acquired a user experience and user interface—UX/UI—design program called Designation in 2018. Broadly speaking, the suit says, the purpose of the UX/UI program was to offer skills necessary for those looking to learn to design the client-facing interface of a product, website, software or location, stressing that Designation differed from the coding bootcamp previously offered by the defendant.

Though the Flatiron School had no UX/UI program prior to its acquisition of Designation, the institution nevertheless distributed to potential students a misleading job report summary in which it claimed to have a 94-percent job placement rate for online students who accepted job offers, the complaint says.

In reality, however, Flatiron lacked any relevant data or statistics to back up its UX/UI program job-placement claims, including the assertion that data collected for 99 percent of students showed an average starting salary of $66,774 for those who accepted full-time salaried roles, and $28 per hour for those who accepted full-time contract, internship, apprenticeship or freelance positions, or part-time work, the case relays. 

According to the complaint, none of the job placement summaries distributed by Flatiron—including the 2019 report in which it claimed “boldly and in large font” a 93 percent job placement rate and average starting salary of $72,000 per year—so much as mention the defendant’s recent acquisition of Designation, or stats concerning the success of those who participated in the program prior to its acquisition. 

“In fact, in reality, these job reports and job report summaries contain no information whatsoever as to graduates of the UX/UI program,” the lawsuit says. “However, that fact was entirely omitted from the summaries and carefully buried in the job reports in order to hide the fact from potential students.”

The lawsuit goes on to allege the Flatiron School, with respect to its online programs, has gathered data from only one specific, narrow group of students: those enrolled in the defendant’s Self-Paced software engineering program, which, according to the case, is “designed for students who either already had ‘prior coding experience’” and are therefore ahead of the pack with regard to full-time job placement, or are “looking to complete the program while still working full or part time,” meaning they would already have a job after graduation. 

By cherry-picking data from only the Self-Paced group, the Flatiron School has ensured “highly inflated, skewed, and misleading outcomes” that mislead prospective students into believing graduating from one of the defendant’s online programs would improve their job prospects, the case avers.

“Plaintiff and all other students who viewed the jobs report summary relied upon this jobs report in selecting the Flatiron UX/UI program,” the suit reads. “The jobs report and job report summaries were material information upon which a customer would reasonably rely, and those materials were substantially misleading.”

Lastly, the plaintiff alleges Flatiron has misled potential students about the nature of the UX/UI program, in particular with regard to the supposed experience of instructors.

According to the case, while Flatiron represented to proposed class members and New York State that its UX/UI instructors had “almost two decades of industry experience,” its lead instructor had no prior UX/UI experience until January 2018, and worked as a ride-share driver and bartender prior to signing on with Flatiron. 

“He had no certification or education in UX/UI design until 2019, at which point he became a ‘lead instructor’ for Flatiron,” the suit alleges.

Further, another of the plaintiff’s instructors had no UX/UI experience until 2015, the case claims. Beyond the alleged experience of Flatiron’s UX/UI instructors, the plaintiff says the “poor quality” of the school’s teachers led there to be “little to no learning” that actually took place, falling far short of offering a “robust and comprehensive UX/UI education.” 

For instance, the fourth phase of the program, in which students were sold real-world design problems with business clients, offered neither meaningful feedback nor directions on how the actual work should be done, the lawsuit claims. In all, by the time phase five of the UX/UI program rolled around, students approaching graduation had no meaningful portfolio to present, further hampering their chances of landing a job, according to the case.

The lawsuit, which has been removed from state Supreme Court to New York’s Southern District, looks to cover all individuals who enrolled in or graduated from the UX/UI program offered by Flatiron School from 2018 to 2020.

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