Arizona’s attorney general is seeking restitution for local nursing students who say they were cheated by Brown Mackie College in Tucson and is urging affected students to contact his office, a spokeswoman says.
“We want to hear from current or former (nursing) students who feel they may have been defrauded,” said Mia Garcia, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Mark Brnovich.
The state outreach follows complaints that the for-profit school trained dozens of student nurses using veterinary supplies and unqualified faculty.
Tucson students can contact the Attorney General’s Office online at www.azag.gov/complaints or by calling at 628-6504.
The compensation Brnovich is negotiating for nursing students is separate from a settlement announced Monday that requires Brown Mackie’s parent firm to forgive about $2.7 million in corporate student loans for 2,000 Arizonans who enrolled between 2006 and 2014.
Problems with Brown Mackie Tucson’s practical nursing program came to light after the state nursing board recently investigated and sanctioned the school. Some students told the nursing board they were so poorly trained they feared what might happen to patients once they entered the workforce.
Garcia said the attorney general’s consumer-fraud branch has been investigating complaints against Brown Mackie’s parent firm, Pittsburgh-based Education Management Corp., since January 2014. In Arizona, the firm operates Brown Mackie locations and the Art Institutes chain that includes the Art Institute of Tucson.
The attorney general’s inquiry began after students complained that the chains’ employees used high-pressure recruiting tactics, skewed job placement data and misrepresented the accreditation status of some programs, she said.
More recently, investigators honed in on the plight of the Tucson nursing students after some of them filed consumer-fraud complaints, Garcia said.
Under Monday’s deal, students who enrolled at either Arizona chain between 2006 and 2014 are eligible for loan forgiveness if they started with fewer than 24 transfer credits and quit within 45 days of their first class. Education Management spokesman Chris Hardman said the company will be contacting qualified students soon to provide more details.
Hardman said the firm did not admit fault in the deal, but agreed to the settlement to put the matter to rest and move forward.
Meanwhile, Brown Mackie Tucson also faces a possible accreditor’s sanction over the nursing program problems.
The Accrediting Council for Independent College and Schools will meet during the week of Dec. 7 to consider whether the school should be cited for violating accreditation standards. The council’s decision will be made public within 30 days, spokesman Anthony Bieda said.
