Urban University

History

2025: Thousands of students took IT credits at university but faculty disappeared

At the end of January 2025, it became known that thousands of students of the Urban University online university, which is registered in Innopolis, were deceived. They took loans for IT training, but the platform teachers disappeared, ceasing to communicate.

Urban University's website says the university specializes in a narrow range of IT professions, which "allows each student to graduate as a true professional." The platform, in particular, prepares iOS developers, Frontend developers, UI/UX designers, QA testers, Python developers and business analysts. The cost of training in all cases begins at 12 thousand rubles per month.

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Фото: Freepik

According to CNews, before concluding a training contract, future students were contacted by Urban Univercity managers, offering several payment options - immediately or in installments. For those students who were not suitable for the first option, managers sent a reference to payment, convincing them to sign a loan agreement. The amount of loans ranged from 140 thousand to 200 thousand rubles.

According to one of the students, communication with teachers took place through chats. However, at the end of December 2024, these chats were closed, and the teachers stopped answering. As a result, students do not receive the promised knowledge and cannot return their money while remaining with loans. Deceived Urban Univercity students from all over Russia have merged into a group in Telegram (Urbanrediska), which includes more than 3 thousand people (as of the end of January 2025). Students appealed to Rospotrebnadzor, the Prosecutor's Office, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Investigative Committee, and also wrote a collective complaint to the presidential administration of Russia. In response to these appeals, as noted by the Office of Rospotrebnadzor in the Republic of Tatarstan, 87 million rubles will be returned to students.^[1]

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