A for-profit college that used veterinary supplies to teach Tucson nursing students will find out in December if its accreditor will impose a sanction over the flawed training.
Representatives from the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools visited Brown Mackie College on East Speedway last week to assess how well the school has fixed the problems that prompted a state nursing board crackdown earlier this year.
The program is much-improved, Brown Mackie officials say. They also say tuition was refunded to distraught students who were recently referred to a suicide hotline after the nursing board blocked their ability to graduate.
Officials are compiling a report on what they found when they toured the Tucson site Oct. 7 and spoke with employees and students, Anthony Bieda, a spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based accrediting council, said.
The report, along with Brown Mackieβs response, will go before the 15-member accreditation council at its next meeting in December, Bieda said. Members could decide no further action is needed, or they could vote to impose a sanction for noncompliance with accreditation standards, he said.
The Arizona State Board of Nursing investigated Brown Mackie earlier this year and found problems such as unqualified instructors and student nurses being trained βusing veterinary technician supplies.β Some students told the board their training was so poor they feared what might happen once they entered the workforce.
Chris Hardman, a spokesman for Brown Mackieβs Pittsburgh-based parent firm, Education Management Corp., said the company has made βsignificantβ changes to the Tucson nursing program and its administration since the problems came to light.
βWe are very disappointed in what we, and the board of nursing, discovered with regard to the recent state of our practical nursing diploma program,β Hardman said. βWe are committed to making things right.β
Brown Mackie spokeswoman Anne Dean said tuition refunds were given to about 15 nursing students who were supposed to graduate this past June but were blocked from doing so by the nursing board.
The board ordered all of Brown Mackieβs nursing students β about 40 in total at different stages of training β to be tested for knowledge deficiencies and retrained if necessary at the companyβs expense.
Brown Mackie recently offered all the nursing students a chance to leave and receive a tuition refund, but most have opted to stay in the program, Dean said.
The Tucson site canβt accept any new nursing students for two years under the terms of a May agreement with the nursing board, but it is being allowed to finish teaching those already enrolled, under board supervision.
The accrediting councilβs decision also could affect Brown Mackieβs nursing program in Phoenix, a sister site to the Tucson location.
Bieda said the Phoenix site received an accreditation visit the day after the Tucson visit. It was scrutinized because the Phoenix nursing program has been sanctioned by the nursing board twice in less than a year for problems such as grade-tampering and admitting an unqualified student.
Besides Brown Mackie, the parent firm also operates South University, Argosy University and The Art Institutes chain that includes the Art Institute of Tucson.
Education Management is fighting fraud-related lawsuits in 11 states, public records show. At least 14 state attorneys general β Arizonaβs is not among them β have been investigating the companyβs business practices.
