Instructor Jim Smith suspected something was amiss at the Computer Learning Centers’ Schaumburg campus when a newly arrived school director asked how to use a mouse.
“He couldn’t even check his own e-mail,” Smith said. “And this was a guy at a computer training school.”
When the same director ordered him to pass students who had been absent so often that they deserved automatic failures, and to teach 36 students in a class–six more than the limit set by state law–Smith called the Illinois State Board of Education in January 1997.
At first, he got no response. But State Board of Education officials finally contacted Atty. Gen. Jim Ryan’s office after more than a dozen students lodged complaints alleging that the school’s teachers were unqualified, its classrooms were overcrowded and its computers and books were in short supply. The students said the shortcomings were made worse by what they described as misleading promises that graduates could easily land lucrative jobs or transfer course credits.
More Top Picks Does Medicare Cover An Lvad Or Heart Transplant
In March, Ryan’s office filed a consumer fraud lawsuit against the school in Cook County Circuit Court. Evidence uncovered in that investigation now has prompted Ryan’s office to look into operations at the school’s other Illinois outlet, on South Michigan Avenue, across the street from the Art Institute of Chicago.
Tribune interviews with former employees and students of Computer Learning Centers, along with affidavits filed to support Ryan’s suit, depict a school that has used hard-sell techniques to deliver a steady flow of new students, most of whom qualify for federal student grants and taxpayer-backed loans, which provide 73 percent of the company’s revenue.
Classes, ranging from eight to 16 months, can cost up to $16,500–slightly more than a year’s tuition at Northwestern University.
While Ryan’s office is trying to revoke Computer Learning Centers’ permit to operate in Illinois and impose hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, another branch of state government–the State Board of Education–says it is satisfied that the company is operating lawfully.
Earlier this month, the board lifted an order that had prevented the school’s Schaumburg campus from recruiting or enrolling new students. The action came after Computer Learning Centers submitted a plan to correct deficiencies at the school.
The action by Ryan’s office has prompted federal officials, as well as those in two other states, to raise questions about the operations of Computer Learning Centers. The U.S. Department of Education has begun an audit of federal funds that have financed student aid at Computer Learning Centers’ campuses nationwide. Meanwhile, authorities in Texas and Virginia are reviewing the school’s operations in those states.
Based in suburban Washington, D.C., Computer Learning Centers Inc. has 12,000 students and 25 branch campuses in the U.S. and Canada. Its niche: attracting people with little or no experience but a desire to “get into computers.” Most students are not eager to attend traditional colleges yet hunger for training in computer skills, from basic word processing to managing computer networks.
Company President and CEO Reid Bechtle acknowledges some problems but said Computer Learning Centers invested $25 million in new computers and facilities last year. He declined to make employees and students available for interviews, citing Ryan’s lawsuit. But he maintained that his schools are operating lawfully.
“We’re a business,” said Bechtle, 46. “People at times have conflict with that. It’s very much like medical care. Can you be in medical care and make a profit? Can you be in education and make a profit?”
For Bechtle, the answer is clearly yes. Until Ryan filed his lawsuit, Computer Learning Centers was regarded as a Wall Street wunderkind.
The company was founded in 1957 in Los Angeles as a training school for office workers who used punch cards and tabulating machines. A group of investors bought the company in 1987 and took it public eight years later.
Since then, its stock has shot up from less than $3 to $39 a share earlier this year. Revenues surged from $46 million in 1996 to $97 million last year. It boasts among its clients the U.S. Senate and House, where Computer Learning Centers trains clerical workers.
But since Ryan filed his suit, Computer Learning Centers’ stock price has plummeted about 60 percent, and the company has been hit by at least five shareholder lawsuits alleging that top officers sold millions of dollars in stock while withholding knowledge of the government investigations. Company officials deny that the stock sell-offs were unlawful, and Bechtle said he owns more stock than ever.
Fueling the company’s revenue growth have been steady enrollment increases. But the imperative to enroll, critics say, lowers entrance standards, creating a ripple effect of trouble: admissions representatives likely to overstate the school’s benefits and sign up ill-suited students; teachers frustrated by overcrowded classes and a lack of computers and space; and placement directors with the Herculean task of finding jobs for graduates who may not speak English or have no clue about basic workplace behavior.
Critics also say the company’s quest for money has caused it to lose focus.
Computer Learning Centers officials were fond of saying, “We are a school that’s a business, and a business that’s a school,” said Les Francis, a former assistant director at a Computer Learning Centers school in Alexandria, Va., one of several under investigation by the Department of Education.
“But I realized after a few months they were much more concerned about business and had very little concern for education,” Francis said. “The focus was on bringing in the students, getting them to sit in a small glass cubicle and closing the deal with a very strong sell.”
At the downtown Chicago campus, employees used to joke about mock Computer Learning Centers entrance exams, such as asking applicants to breathe on a mirror to see whether it fogged.
“We used to say, `Anybody who could walk and talk,’ ” said Shelley Vargas, 41, who formerly worked at the Michigan Avenue campus trying to find jobs for graduates.
Once, an admissions representative signed up a group of 25 recently arrived Russian immigrants who barely spoke English, Vargas said. Remarkably, the group sailed through an English entrance exam and walked out of the course holding Computer Learning Centers diplomas.
“I didn’t know how to sell them to anybody but the Russian consulate,” she said.
More often, as Vargas launched into seminars for graduates on employer expectations, she faced perplexed students who thought they had been “guaranteed” jobs by school recruiters.
“What I would hear is, `I don’t need to worry about this because you’re guaranteeing me a job,’ ” she said. “There were so many of them that thought they didn’t have to do anything except show up for class.”
Scott Peterson, a 24-year-old Army veteran, turned to Computer Learning Centers’ Schaumburg campus to improve his prospects after earning a high school equivalency diploma. He found a job immediately after finishing classes–as a Computer Learning Centers teacher.
More Top Picks Top 20 Products To Elevate Your Home Furniture
Although he wasn’t certified to teach, he figured, “Well, I can read out of a book as well as anybody,” he said.
Told that a just-graduated student had been pressed to teach almost immediately, Bechtle asked for the student’s name and said the scenario was “impossible.”
Susan Hilty enrolled at Computer Learning Centers in Schaumburg and plunked down three times the cost of a year’s in-state tuition at the University of Illinois: $12,150 in cash and student loans.
Beyond ill-prepared, ever-changing teachers, a dearth of computers and a textbook shortage, she said, she was duped by promises that she could transfer her credits into building blocks to a college degree. She brought her official-looking transcripts to Harper College in Palatine, the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn and Elgin Community College.
“They all just laughed at me,” Hilty said. “They didn’t even know what a Computer Learning Center was.”