Is Walden University accredited or legit? Is Walden University a good school? If you’re a working professional looking to earn a healthcare administration master’s degree, a Master of Science in Nursing, or a public health doctoral degree—and you want to get your degree at your own pace, online—then you may be considering Walden University. Walden was created in the 1970s by two New York teachers who gave current school administrators the opportunity to work on their dissertation topics in the summer in Naples, Florida, before returning to their respective institutions during the academic year. Since then, the school has grown into a distance-learning institution currently owned by Adtalem Global Education. Adtalem purchased Walden in 2021.
The corporation owns a slew of for-profit education institutions, including the American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine, Chamberlain University, EduPristine, Ross University School of Medicine, Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine, and Walden University.
Walden, in other words, is part of a portfolio of education institutions whose function is to make money for Adtalem. Adtalem is a billion dollar corporation traded on the New York Stock Exchange as ATGE.
When you think about whether or not Walden University is legit, respected, accredited, or worth attending, it’s worth considering that these are all different, interlocking concerns. We’ll talk about Walden’s legitimacy and its accreditation in this post. Hopefully you’ll walk away with more information to help you decide if Walden is the right choice for you.
Is Walden University Legit?
Walden is no stranger to controversy. As a for-profit institution, it has tended to find itself embroiled in the kind of scandal often associated with schools like this. We’ve detailed these problems before in blog posts about places like Capella University, Liberty University, Grand Canyon University, the University of Phoenix,, and WGU.
Looking at these types of universities reveals a pattern: often times, in the parent corporation’s search to optimize for profit, the universities undertake deceptive practices in order to pull in more students who don’t understand how much they’re paying.
Walden itself has been alleged of engaging in these sorts of tactics.
The university talks on its website about a commitment to inclusivity and social change. This goes hand-in-hand with the fact that Walden has graduated the highest number of Black doctoral recipients in the period from 2016 to 2022. In that time, 1,383 Black and African American students earned their doctorates.
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In January 2022, however, the civil rights law firm Relman Colfax and the National Student Legal Defense Network alleged that Walden engages in “reverse redlining,” essentially targeting Black female students while, at the same time, deceiving these potential students about costs and credit hours.
Other possible items of concern for students thinking about Walden include the following:
- Conflicts of interest and financial “back scratching” between former owners Laureate Education, Inc., former CEO Jonathan Kaplan, the federal government, and its profits:
- Former Laureate Education CEO Kaplan served in this role from 2007 to 2018.
- Previously he served as economic policy adviser to President Bill Clinton.
- Clinton was named Honorary Chancellor of Laureate International Universities from 2010 to 2015.
- Clinton made more than $17 million in that role.
- Clinton was Walden’s commencement keynote speaker in 2011.
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- High rates of student loan debt:
- In 2016, it was estimated that Walden graduates had the second highest student loan debt in the U.S., with more than 120,000 students owning nearly $10 billion.
- The default rate was low, but it was clear that students were not able to pay back their balances
- High rates of student complaints:
- In 2016, the Minnesota Office of Higher Education investigated a spike in student complaints.
- Former students filed a class action lawsuit against Walden for prolonging the time necessary to get their degree, increasing their student loan debt loads into the hundreds of thousands of dollars before graduation.
It’s worth noting that Adtalem purchased Walden in 2021, and the above bulleted items happened under the school’s previous ownership. The more recent lawsuits about reverse redlining, however, happened after the Adtalem purchase. Perhaps the best conclusion to draw from all of this is that, again, many for-profit schools do engage in tactics that have been seen as deceptive and corrupt.
This, however, is a separate concern from Walden’s accreditation status.
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While all of Walden University’s learning is all online, its headquarters is in Minneapolis, Minnesota. That means the institution that manages accreditations in the Mid and Southwest of the U.S., the Higher Learning Commission (HLC), is responsible for accrediting Walden.
And, it turns out, Walden is accredited by the HLC. Walden has been accredited by the HLC since 1990.
The HLC is recognized by the U.S. Department of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation as an institutional accrediting body. It’s a legitimate organization that verifies the educational quality of dozens of colleges and universities throughout the Mid and Southwest.
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But what does it even mean that Walden is accredited? Why does it matter that a university is accredited at all? I’m going to try to answer that question for you here.
I put the following “About Accreditation” section in every blog post of this nature that I write, because it’s a frequently misunderstood term in all of its complexity. If you’ve read this section before in another one of my posts, you’ve read it. Feel free to scroll to the next subhead for more on Grand Canyon University. But if you want to understand more about accreditation, read on.
About Accreditation
Colleges, universities, and all kinds of vocational programs get themselves accredited by outside institutions in order to demonstrate their legitimacy. Accrediting institutions set out specific standards and guidelines for course content and learning objectives that a college or a program must meet in order to become accredited. If a school is accredited by a recognized accrediting body, it means that the school is following best practice protocols to create a relevant, useful, and valuable educational experience for its students.
Drexel University, a globally recognized, private research university in Philadelphia, has put together a guide to accreditation. They write, “Educational institutions are either regionally or nationally accredited. Accreditation is a voluntary process that ensures a college, university, or degree program meets a universal standard for quality. This gives an institution and its graduates credibility with other institutions and employers.”
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This distinction between national and regional accreditation is important to note. National accreditation focuses on vocational or technical programs. Regional accrediting bodies focus on academic institutions, including state-owned and private non-for-profit colleges and universities.
If you’re going to attend a college or university, you want to make sure that it is accredited by a recognized regional accrediting association. Drexel lists those associations on its guide. This will not only ensure that you are attending a well-structured program that will prepare you for whatever step follows graduation, but it will also ensure that you have the ability to do things like transfer courses to another accredited school, should you choose to change directions. Employers and graduate schools will also recognize your accredited institution and be able to better verify your education as legitimate.
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So, yes, Walden is accredited by a verified regional accrediting institution. That means that you can assume that what you learn at Walden meets a specific standard, isn’t a scam, and will give you the knowledge you need to meet a specific threshold within your chosen field of study.
Where is Walden University?
Officially, Walden offers only distance-learning options. The school’s headquarters are in Minneapolis, Minnesota, but you can’t go there and take classes. So, Walden can be wherever you want it to be! Your living room, the coffee shop, your parents’ basem*nt—anywhere you can study is where Walden is.
Walden University Cost
For the 2023–2024 academic year, the National Center for Education Statistics lists Walden’s costs as the following:
- Tuition and fees: $12,498
- Books and supplies: $900
Off-campus living expenses (again, there is no physical campus) will all be dependent on where you live. So, factoring in your own rent, utilities, transportation, and other costs will change the overall cost of your Walden education. You can imagine the dramatic change in the cost of living between a place like Brooklyn, New York and Topeka, Kansas. If you’re looking to save money while studying, living with family or sharing housing with friends or roommates has the potential to dramatically cut your costs.
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The average student in the 2022–2023 academic year received about:
- $3,300 in Pell grants, and
- $7,700 in federal student loans.
This certainly puts a Walden education a bit more in reach, but the average financial aid won’t cover all the costs. Financial aid and the costs of education listed above also don’t take into consideration the cost of living, which students should factor in when considering embarking on a new education journey.
That said, the convenience of an online-only school like Walden is that you can work, live anywhere, and still get an education, which means you can really make the experience as economical as you need it to be. The average rent in Topeka is 59% lower than the national average!
Notable Alumni
Notable faculty include folks like:
- University of Lausanne professor John Antonakis
- South Carolina representative Chandra Dillard
- Former National Security Agency senior executive and whistleblower Thomas A. Drake
- Social worker and politician Monique Holsey-Hyman
- Burmese politician, physician, and businesswoman Thet Thet Khine
Is Walden University a Good School? Is Walden University Accredited? Final Thoughts
Ultimately, choosing whether or not you attend Walden University is a personal choice that should be based on your individual goals and economic situation. If you need an online school that will grant you a specific type of administrative doctorate and you know you can finish the degree with minimal costs in a short amount of time, then maybe it will work for you. If you’re unsure, you might check out other online or in-person learning programs, particularly from our list of the most affordable online universities.
Additional Resources
- Best Online MSW Programs
- Best Accelerated Bachelor’s Degrees Online
- Best Online MBA Programs
