The Baker College lawsuit most people are searching for is not a class action by students but a federal enforcement settlement: on January 7, 2025, the U.S. Department of Education fined the Michigan-based private nonprofit $2.5 million after finding it had made “substantial misrepresentations” about graduate job placement, career outcomes, and salaries.1https://www.propublica.org/ The settlement resolves a federal investigation into the school’s marketing, but it does not automatically refund tuition or discharge loans for anyone who attended.
What the Department of Education Found
Federal investigators concluded that Baker violated the Higher Education Act of 1965 by publishing outcomes data that made its degrees look far more valuable than they were. The problems were specific.
Baker advertised an overall “career outcomes rate” of roughly 91 percent, and nearly 96 percent for its automotive program, without ever defining what a “career outcome” was. In practice the figure counted unpaid outcomes such as continuing education, so readers were led to believe nearly every graduate had found paid work. The college also never disclosed how few graduates responded to the surveys behind those numbers.
Investigators found that Baker published a list of more than 100 employers where graduates supposedly worked. Fourteen of those companies had hired the individuals before they ever enrolled at Baker, meaning the degree had nothing to do with those jobs. Salary figures on program pages were pulled from national Bureau of Labor Statistics averages rather than what Baker’s own graduates actually earned, contrary to federal instructions on presenting salary data. Employment figures for the culinary programs were also flagged as inaccurate.
What Baker Agreed To
Under the settlement, Baker College agreed to:
- Pay the $2.5 million fine.
- Submit all marketing materials to the Office of Federal Student Aid for review over a three-year period.
- Notify current students and employees about how to file complaints or report misconduct to the Department of Education.
Do Students Get Refunds or Loan Forgiveness?
No. The settlement contains no restitution, tuition refunds, or automatic loan discharges. A source quoted by ProPublica put it plainly: “there’s no restitution for students” in the agreement.1https://www.propublica.org/
The only path to relief for a former Baker borrower is the federal Borrower Defense to Repayment program, which lets students apply individually to have federal loans discharged if they can show they were misled by their school. Between January 2021 and June 2023, roughly 500 borrower defense applications had already been filed against Baker College, putting it among just five nonprofit institutions nationwide with a high volume of such claims.
Two things are worth knowing before applying. First, a settlement between a school and the Department of Education does not by itself qualify anyone for relief; each applicant has to demonstrate personal harm from the school’s conduct. Second, the department does not share individual claim information with the school, and Baker has said it is “unaware of any open borrower’s defense claims” against it. If you attended Baker and believe the marketing influenced your enrollment, you file directly with the Department of Education, not with the college.
The settlement also does not cover private loans, and it does not address students who paid tuition out of pocket.
Baker College’s Response
President and CEO Dr. Jacqui Spicer said the school “did not commit any misrepresentations” and stressed that the settlement “contains no admission of wrongdoing.” Spicer said the Department of Education “did not assert that the College provided false information” but instead identified materials with “insufficient background or explanation which presented the potential for a statement to be misinterpreted.”
Baker said it cooperated with the investigation and had already begun changing its marketing. In an earlier public rebuttal to media coverage, the college called the reporting “intentionally misleading and riddled with inaccuracies” and said its tuition was among the lowest of any four-year school in Michigan.
How the Investigation Started
The federal probe followed a joint investigation by ProPublica and the Detroit Free Press published on January 12, 2022. The reporters found that fewer than one in four Baker students graduated, the third-lowest rate among Michigan’s 26 private four-year schools. Ten years after enrolling, fewer than half of former students earned more than $28,000 a year. Seventy percent of students who took out federal loans struggled to make payments within two years of leaving.
The reporting also found that during the 2019–20 school year, Baker spent $9.7 million on marketing, about $1.1 million more than it spent on financial aid, and that roughly 72 percent of its tuition revenue came from federal student loans and Pell Grants.1https://www.propublica.org/
Separately, the Federal Trade Commission received about 60 complaints about Baker College between 2016 and mid-2023, a volume ProPublica and The Chronicle of Higher Education reported was “unusual for nonprofits.” Students described feeling “lured” by promises about employability and program quality. Baker said the FTC never contacted the school and that it was unaware of the complaints.
Is Baker College Still Operating and Accredited?
Yes. Baker College remains accredited by the Higher Learning Commission, which in June 2023 assigned it a “Governmental Investigation” designation and required status reports every 90 to 120 days. Baker also holds specialized accreditations in fields including business, nursing, health sciences, culinary arts, and engineering.
The school is smaller than it once was. Enrollment peaked near 45,000 students in 2011–12 and had fallen to roughly 4,000 by 2023, with revenue dropping from $219 million in 2013–14 to $58 million by the end of 2022–23. As of 2026, Baker operates six Michigan campuses: Owosso, Royal Oak, Muskegon, Jackson, Cadillac, and Port Huron. The college has moved from open enrollment to more selective admissions, with the acceptance rate falling from 80 percent in 2018–19 to 35 percent in 2022–23.
If You Attended Baker College
If you enrolled at Baker in reliance on its career outcomes, placement, or salary claims and have federal student loans, the Borrower Defense to Repayment application is filed through the Department of Education’s studentaid.gov. Keep any recruitment emails, brochures, program pages, or advisor communications you still have; individual applicants must show they were harmed by the school’s conduct, and the settlement’s findings about undefined “career outcomes” rates, employer lists, and BLS-sourced salary figures describe the kind of marketing at issue.