The International College of Management Sydney is being sued by former students whose degrees lacked professional accreditation, despite claims in promotional material.
The college has blamed "an administrative oversight" and will defend the Supreme Court proceedings.
A leading private college has been accused of misleading and deceptive conduct in a Supreme Court class action by students who were shocked to discover their degrees were not professionally accredited.
Lead plaintiff Tessa Coddington initiated the lawsuit against The International College of Management Sydney after reading an ABC News article about other accreditation class actions launched against three public universities last year.
Ms Coddington accrued a $45,000 student debt to complete the three-year ICMS Bachelor of Property degree she graduated from in late 2022, an investment of time and money she has come to regret.
Ms Coddington said it took years of emailing with ICMS to confirm the degree had never been accredited, after employers raised concerns about it.
Only in December last year did API confirm the degree had not met its standards and reject the college's accreditation application.
In March this year, Ms Coddington started a diploma at Deakin University to gain accreditation, which involves studying the same subjects again.
The college said it reported its "oversight" to the higher education regulator, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA), and removed the article earlier this year.
Last year, ABC News revealed 160 students from a University of Newcastle engineering degree and 115 from a Western Sydney University master's had started separate class actions after a similar lack of accreditation curtailed their careers.