We feel betrayed: Kingston College students
Janet Steffenhagen

Vancouver Sun
October 23, 2006

The students who sparked an investigation into Kingston College and punched a hole in a prominent businessman's education empire say they feel betrayed by a country they once viewed as a bastion of education.

"We thought the rules were very strict in Canada," said Sudhir Kodavati, one of seven students who filed complaints against Kingston and brought the 17-year-old institution to its knees.

The students were lured here from India by a promise they could earn a master's degree from American University in London (AUL) or Armstrong University in California, after two years of study at Kingston. They spent tens of thousands of dollars on tuition, books and living expenses while completing the course requirements.

But they now face the prospect of returning home empty-handed because Kingston had no authority to offer such degrees. Last week, the Private Career Training Institutions Agency (PCTIA), which conducted the investigation, ruled the college had misled students and flagrantly broken laws and ordered it shut down.

The agency said it could do nothing for the whistle-blowing students.

"Our time has been wasted -- everything has been wasted," Kodavati said in an interview Sunday. He and three other students who filed complaints late last month said they were shocked by the size of the problem they uncovered, especially given the college's long history and the ties between owner Michael Lo and several politicians.

"We had pictures of him with the premier," Kodavati said of Lo, who was until recently a member of an influential committee that gave Premier Gordon Campbell advice on issues affecting the Chinese community. Lo was also on former Liberal prime minister Paul Martin's Team Canada trade mission to China in 2005.

"He should be punished for not following the rules," they said of Lo, who owns a network of education facilities and services around the world, including Lansbridge University in Vancouver and Fredericton, N.B. The B.C. government said it is also investigating Lansbridge for its handling of scholarships and refunds, but refused to give details.

students away from Canada because of the lack of quality controls, adding: "Canadian education is worse than in India."

The investigative report by PCTIA registrar Jim Wright said Kingston college used "various subterfuges" to conceal its activities after receiving repeated warnings between 2000 and 2004 to stop offering university degrees it had no authority to deliver.

For example, it sent students their letters of acceptance from Toronto and Fredericton, even though the training was to be delivered in B.C., in the belief that it could not then be held accountable in B.C., Wright said in his report.

"What is clear . . . is that Kingston College has engaged in false and/or misleading advertising, has repeatedly and flagrantly breached its conditions of registration . . . policies and bylaws and is in breach of various statutes," the report says.

Yet few students complained. "It appears that as long as Kingston College was able to

fulfil the expectations of students by delivering their degrees, the students had no interest in raising any concerns," the report says. "In fact, it appears the students were complicit in maintaining a code of silence . . ."

Those who did speak out say they don't regret it, although they did so at personal cost. Arvapally, who had been promised a lucrative job in the U.S. based on her Kingston diploma, not the AUL degree she never received, was summoned to the U.S. consulate recently by an agent who revoked her work permit.

The agent said the U.S. is re-assessing work permits based on Kingston credentials since the college is under a cloud.

Robert Clift, executive-director of the Confederation of University Faculty Associations, said the B.C. government has a responsibility to the students because it created the conditions that allowed Kingston to mislead them. But it won't help them because it would then face appeals from many other Kingston students, he added.

"These students have done us a great favour in this province by revealing this mess and finding the weaknesses in our system and they're going to be rewarded by being kicked out of the country without a degree and without their money," he said. "They're just going to be sacrificed in all of this.

"It really is disgusting that we, as a society, allow this to happen," he said Sunday. "It's one thing if we did everything possible and somebody still deceived us. But we didn't do everything possible."

Wright said the students' only hope is to go to court, but Arvapally said that would take time and money, which the students don't have. "We didn't come here to go to court," she noted.

Kingston College has 30 days to appeal the order to cease operations. Meanwhile, both Wright and the Advanced Education Ministry said they intend to contact their counterparts in Ontario to advise them of the results of the investigation, given that Kingston College also has campuses in Toronto and Niagara Falls.

College vice-president Anna Burke said, in a statement last week, that the college's administration made some mistakes but has been working to rectify them.

Advanced Education Minister Murray Coell said last week he forwarded Wright's report to the B.C. Attorney-General for a decision on whether further action should be taken.

Lo was appointed to the PCTIA board by former minister Shirley Bond and was selected to head the agency's quality assurance committee.

Asked if that was ironic, given that his college was at that time in violation of the rules, Wright replied: "Obviously with hindsight, absolutely."

Kingston Education Group also owns a private Vancouver high school, two B.C.-certified schools in China and a New Brunswick certified school in India.

Lo also had plans for major expansions.

In 2004, he told influential guests at his Christmas party that he planned to open a Global Education Village on a 6.8-hectare lot in Richmond to provide one-stop services in education, ranging from grade school through graduate school.

The guests included Liberal MP Raymond Chan; former Liberal MP Sophia Leung; former MLA Patty Sahota; current MLAs John Nuraney and Richard Lee; Vancouver city councillor Raymond Louie; and Bill Cunningham, a federal Liberal organizer.

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