Job Discussion Forums

[Isotope]

College head under investigation struck from board
Jeff Lee, Vancouver Sun
Published: Friday, October 06, 2006

The provincial government rescinded the appointment of prominent businessman Michael Lo to a board that oversees private training institutions as questions mount over the conduct of his private post-secondary school, Kingston College.

Advanced Education Minister Murray Coell said late Thursday that it was inappropriate for Lo to continue to sit on the board of the Private Career Training Institutions Agency while Kingston is under investigation for offering degrees from a United Kingdom-based university.

Coell said he is alarmed at information that indicates Kingston, which caters to international students, continued to offer degrees to the "American University in London" even after the ministry had repeatedly told it to cease relations.

"I have rescinded Mr. Lo's appointment to that board this afternoon. I think it is appropriate that while this investigation is going on he would not be associated with the Private Career Training Institutions Agency," Coell said. "I think this is the important thing to do at this point."

Calls to Lo for comment were not returned by the newspaper's deadline.

Lo, whose company Kingston Education Group owns a network of education enterprises in Canada and China, was appointed to the agency board in 2004 by the former advanced education minister, Shirley Bond.

Coell said he has instructed agency registrar Jim Wright to do a full investigation into Kingston's activities, and to determine why it apparently ignored warnings by the agency to sever ties with AUL, which was apparently based in an office over a betting shop in London. He said the province may undertake legal action to protect international students who paid for degrees that may be worthless.
"Jim Wright and PCTIA are investigating, and they will make recommendations to us, and if necessary we will work with the attorney-general to see what our options are," he said. "We want to ensure that when people come to Canada to study that they are assured of having quality education."

On Wednesday, Wright suspended Kingston's registration and ordered it not to enrol any more students after The Vancouver Sun published complaints from several students from India who said they each had given the college $15,000 for a two-year degree from AUL, only to be told the college can't deliver on the promise because it isn't associated with the university anymore.

Wright said Kingston was told to cease relations with AUL in 2001 because Kingston was not authorized to offer AUL degrees. "It appears they never did, they just went underground with it," Wright said Thursday.

But in information posted on its own website, Kingston continues to promote AUL as a degree-granting university, and an online AUL course calendar dated 2005-06 noted its sole Canadian affiliates are Kingston's Vancouver, Burnaby and Toronto campuses.

According to documents obtained by The Sun, as recently as July of this year, Anna Burke, the dean of admissions for Kingston College, was writing letters of reference for students saying they would receive degrees from AUL.

It now appears that AUL itself was also not accredited in the United Kingdom, and was fined last January in Highbury Corner Magistrates Court in London for misleading students.

In a ruling issued when it fined AUL company director "and self-styled university chancellor" Hussein Alzubaidi a total of 10,000 pounds sterling, the court said AUL had been warned as early as 2004 it couldn't bill itself as a university. "It is a substantial deception and should be discouraged by this court," the magistrates said.

In publicizing the finding, the Islington council government billed AUL as a "bogus university."

Burke would not answer questions about why Kingston continued to associate with AUL, and why she wrote letters this year saying students would be getting degrees from it.

"Right now, what I can say is that because PCTIA has launched an investigation I would rather wait for the results. At this time any speculation would deny all parties due process. I believe when the report is done we will be able to add additional comment."

The validity of the university was raised in 2003 when the Guardian newspaper interviewed Alzubaidi in the university's office, which it described as a "book-lined office above a William Hill betting shop."
The newspaper noted that AUL's degrees were not recognized by U.K. universities, and that while it "suggests that it has accreditation from the American and Islington chambers of commerce; on closer inspection, it is simply a member of these chambers."

The Sun's attempts to contact Alzubaidi were unsuccessful.
The university severed all of its links on its website and removed all contact information. Another site promoting institutions that cater to international studies provided an AUL phone number that was not answered Thursday.
[email protected]
?amp;nbsp;The Vancouver Sun 2006

[Isotope]

Rumour has it that the teachers at Kingston schools in China were not paid for September. some receiving as little as $88 deposited into their NA accounts, while owed $1000s. The word is this has happened at ALL the Kingston school teachers in China. This hasnt been verified.

Golden Week Autumn holiday and the teachers were left virtually penniless for the week. Schools closed. They didnt receive the pay they had coming to them.

Take this warning VERY seriously DO NOT WORK FOR ANY OF THE KINGSTON SCHOOLS

[Isotope]

Also Kingston teachers have no medical coverage in China. They are told they have coverage and get sick and no medical insurance for them. The Western hospital is very expensive and the teachers must pay their own costs for treatment and a flight back to NA or to hospital in China.

This is very dangerous. The time is come to stop these Canadian schools from harming Canadian teachers.

[Isotope]

Controversial college head cuts ties with Liberals
Jeff Lee, Vancouver Sun
Published: Saturday, October 07, 2006
The man at the centre of a growing controversy involving an international private education enterprise in Canada has resigned from an influential advisory committee that gave advice to B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell on issues affecting the Chinese community.
Michael Lo also stepped down Friday as an organizer for the B.C. Liberals, a party to which he and his companies have contributed at least $61,000 in campaign donations over the last four years.
Lo is co-founder of Kingston Education Group, whose Vancouver-based Kingston College this week was suspended by the province over questions raised by The Vancouver Sun about its association with questionable degree-granting "universities".
Liberal campaign finance records filed with Elections BC show Lo and his companies were frequent contributors to the Liberals, and he also made much of his connections to a number of influential current and former politicians, including former federal multiculturalism minister Raymond Chan and Patrick Wong, B.C.'s former minister of state for immigration and multicultural services.
On Kingston Group's website, which promotes its own Lansbridge University, a new campus catering to international students, Lo advertises relations with a number of cabinet ministers, MLAs, MPs and Asian and Chinese diplomats. That support helped raise his profile with the Liberals as he built an international corporation offering high school and post-secondary education to international students, many of them from China, India and Indonesia.
The political campaign donations took place before and after the provincial Liberals rewrote legislation governing private career training institutions in 2003, abolishing the government-run Private Post-Secondary Education Commission. In its place the government created an industry self-regulated body called the Private Career Training Institutions Agency.
A year after the change, the Liberals appointed Lo to the PCTIA. He was chair of the agency's quality assurance committee, which is supposed to ensure institutions registered or accredited with the agency meet certain standards.
Lo has other connections to the government. He and his partner Queenie Tin, own Grand Canadian Academy, which operates a pair of schools in China that are accredited by the B.C. government to offer the Dogwood diploma for children completing a Grade 12 education. They bought Grand Canadian Academy from Chan, the former federal Liberal MP and multiculturalism minister.
On Thursday, Lo's influence with the provincial Liberals began to erode. Faced with allegations that Kingston College had repeatedly ignored provincial warnings that it could not offer degrees through the "American University in London", Advanced Education Minister Murray Coell rescinded Lo's appointment to the PCTIA.
Coell also ordered PCTIA registrar Jim Wright to begin an investigation into Kingston's activities. Wright said he knows of at least 20 students who have complained they haven't received Kingston-arranged degrees from the "American School in London."

Lo also quietly resigned from the Premier's Chinese Community Advisory Committee on Thursday, but his resignation was not made public until the following day when The Sun questioned his role in government.
Chad Pederson, director of communications for the Liberal party, said Lo also quit Friday from a "Chinese community outreach committee" that the party uses to raise funds and memberships.
Lo has refused The Sun's repeated requests for interviews. But in a statement sent to The Sun, he said Kingston is cooperating with the PCTIA and that the college will continue to provide programs and services. He did not address his decision to quit the Liberals or the premier's advisory committee.
Just how much influence Lo had with Campbell is unclear. The existence of the 17-member Chinese advisory committee was not widely announced, although his office issued a list to Chinese media identifying the members. They include Wong, the former minister; former Vancouver councillors Tung Chan and Maggie Ip, former radio station owner Hanson Lau, former federal Liberal candidate Mason Loh, Chinatown Merchants Association president Albert Fok and others.
Andy Orr, the executive director of the government's Public Affairs Bureau, said the committee met a few times at the premier's cabinet offices in Vancouver. Its job, he said, was to keep Campbell in touch with issues affecting the Chinese community.
In an interview Thursday, Coell said he could not comment on whether Lo's government connections involving Grand Canadian Academy schools in China are are under review. But he said he has asked Wright for recommendations on how to better protect students, and has also hinted he wants the Ministry of the Attorney-General to investigate.
Rob Fleming, the New Democratic Party critic for advanced education, said the Liberals were warned not to weaken government oversight over private career training institutes.
"This is a larger issue than Lansbridge University and Kingston College," he said. "I think we're starting to see a lot of warning signs that what happened in 2003, the dissolution of the government regulatory body that we used to have, was a bad idea."
He said the new act doesn't allow for students to complain to the ministry, meaning the government isn't getting "early warnings" when a college or training institute fails to live up to its promises.
"The NDP has been saying for many months that the new act and the new self-regulatory organization, is failing British Columbians."
[email protected]

[Lobster]

For the Ministry to say they were ignorant of the goings-on at GCA is definitely a crock. Ex-teachers and the former principal wrote detailed letters of complaint to the BC Ministry of Education years ago. Of course there was no response because it was owned by an influential MP. Another kick in the teeth for Canadian-owned schools in China.

RED