"What is it really like to be a student with a disability at USC?" asks
Office of Student Accessibility Services' (OSAS) lack of responsiveness that she ultimately decided "that the next time a student needs accommodation, she will deal with it herself to ensure students get the help they need."
In 2019, USC was at the center of a federal investigation into a conspiracy by very wealthy individuals to gain admissions for their children at several highly ranked universities by bribing senior members of the athletics departments. In 2021, USC's School of Social Work was accused of partnering with a for-profit education platform to aggressively recruit low-income communities into an expensive but "inferior" online Master's program, leaving students with tens of thousands of dollars in debt and poor job prospects after graduating. A class-action lawsuit alleges that USC engaged in deceptive recruiting practices and "reverse redlining" by targeting vulnerable people who were "most likely to accept an admission offer," according to the Los Angeles Times. Internal documents show that the marketing team developed personas characterizing different types of applicants according to race, social status, and probability of enrollment.
In 2020, USC began requiring students to use facial recognition technology to access certain dorms. According to reporting by USC Annenberg Media, "the South Korean company that provided and maintains the technology boasts of doing business with the federal departments of justice and defense, as well as local law enforcement agencies."
U.S. News ranked University of Southern California 27th in 2025, an improvement from 28th place last year.
On Sept. 23, 2024, I learned the hard way that USC does not know how to handle students experiencing mental crises. In hopes of managing “problem students,” USC didn’t rely on mental health professionals to help me during my time of need, but armed Department of Public Safety officers who came to my door and demanded that I let them in, talk to them and to a counselor on the phone, and if I didn’t, they would have no choice but to take me away and 5150 me.
I had answered the door with tears already streaming down my face; seeing a team of DPS officers sent me even more over the edge. I knew being 5150’d would mean being held involuntarily in a psychiatric hospital for 72 hours, where I would be evaluated and monitored constantly. I was also terrified that these officers knew where I lived, as I had no idea how they even got my address to begin with.
I have never felt as small as I had when the DPS officers started asking questions about my situation. They asked to see my phone, as the person who had called DPS on me had mentioned that I had been sending concerning messages. They told me that I had to talk to a counselor and set up an emergency appointment and that missing this appointment would mean seeing them again.
The stress of the situation was too much for me to handle. I felt that my privacy and my security were violated and that my apartment was no longer safe for me to stay in.
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Dr. Melani Cargle attended medical school at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine from August 2015 to June 2020 and was diagnosed with ADHD during her first year by a psychiatrist at UCLA.
After graduating, she was admitted to the Keck School of Medicine’s orthopedic surgery residency program. The suit alleges that, in the USC program, Cargle endured discrimination on the basis of her ADHD, saying that the hand surgery program’s chief resident yelled at her and called her names, including “stupid,” “useless” and “idiot.”
Cargle’s suit also stated that she was denied an accommodation request during a meeting with her supervisors at the Keck program. While she had asked to chart in a way that was better for her and her disability, the supervisors refused and insisted that she chart only in the way that they had asked her to, the suit alleges.
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Over the past decade, the University of Southern California has used a for-profit company to help enroll thousands of students in its online social-work master's program.
The nonprofit school used its status-symbol image to attract students across the country, including low-income minority students it targeted for recruitment, often with aggressive tactics. Most students piled on debt to afford the tuition, which last year reached $115,000 for the two-year degree. The majority never set foot on the posh Los Angeles campus but paid the same rate for online classes as in-person students.
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The school formulated marketing campaigns to woo applicants, using demographic profiles of the kinds of students they would recruit, internal documents used by the marketing department and reviewed by the Journal show. The profiles include cartoon characters depicting potential recruits; in one depiction, a Black woman dubbed Needy Nelly "needs hand-holding" and "calls and emails everyone" because she has trouble with her application.
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Content note: This article excerpt contains references to sexual assault.
USC acknowledged Friday a “troubling delay” in warning the campus community about allegations of drugging and sexual assault by a fraternity last month as a rare faculty protest added to mounting criticism about the university’s handling of the crisis.
In a message to the campus community Friday night, USC President Carol Folt said that a university confidential reporting program received five to seven disclosures of possible drugging and possible sexual assault at a fraternity in late September. The information, however, was not shared with the campus community until Oct. 20, when the Department of Public Safety posted an alert that the university had received a report of sexual assault and reports of drugs being placed into drinks at the Sigma Nu fraternity house, “leading to possible drug-facilitated sexual assaults.”
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