20 Students Sue Western Career College for Fraud in Connection With Ultrasound Program
The Sacramento-based law firm of Kershaw, Cutter & Ratinoff, LLP filed a complaint last month in the Sacramento County Superior Court (Case No. 07AS02370) on behalf of twenty former students of the Ultrasound Technology Program at Western Career College ("WCC") in Citrus Heights, California. The students allege that WCC misrepresented the nature and quality of the program and misled students in order to defraud each student of the approximately $26,000 paid for tuition. The lawsuit alleges that WCC induced students to enroll in, and remain enrolled in, the full-time, sixteen-month program with the promise of quality classroom and clinical instruction, comprehensive technical training, professional advice and oversight, national certification, and assistance in obtaining a well-paying job. After graduation, most of those students now find themselves ineligible for certification and either unable to find a job or inadequately trained to perform even an entry-level internship in the industry for which the program was supposed to prepare them.
Sacramento, CA (PRWEB) June 25, 2007 -- The Sacramento-based law firm of Kershaw, Cutter & Ratinoff, LLP filed a complaint last month in the Sacramento County Superior Court (Case No. 07AS02370) on behalf of twenty former students of the Ultrasound Technology Program at Western Career College ("WCC") in Citrus Heights, California. The students allege that WCC misrepresented the nature and quality of the program and misled students in order to defraud each student of the approximately $26,000 paid for tuition. The lawsuit alleges that WCC induced students to enroll in, and remain enrolled in, the full-time, sixteen-month program with the promise of quality classroom and clinical instruction, comprehensive technical training, professional advice and oversight, national certification, and assistance in obtaining a well-paying job. After graduation, most of those students now find themselves ineligible for certification and either unable to find a job or inadequately trained to perform even an entry-level internship in the industry for which the program was supposed to prepare them. Kershaw, Cutter & Ratinoff attorney Stuart Talley said, "[The students gave up their jobs. They gave up their time and their money. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say they were cheated."
Specifically, the complaint alleges, WCC classroom instructors were unprofessional, unprepared, and largely incompetent. The program had arranged for far fewer clinical sites than promised, and clinical hours for the students were cut in half. The promised "program advisory board" was initially non-existent and ultimately failed to provide any meaningful oversight. Despite the highly technical subject matter, the curriculum and procedures of the program were extremely lax, and some students received their graduation certificates without ever having taken their final exams. To date, the program remains unaccredited. Though WCC representatives continue to assure current and former students otherwise, the program's chances for becoming accredited remain extremely bleak. As a result, graduates are ineligible to sit for the certification board exam of the American Registry of Diagnostic Medical Sonography (ARDMS), which is required by most employers in the field. The complaint also alleges that the program's curriculum was so inadequate that even were the graduates eligible for the ARDMS exam, they would be wholly unprepared to pass it. Said Jim Morrell, Director of Imaging Services at the Doctor's Hospital of Manteca, in an e-mail to the director of the WCC program: "I have reviewed the requirements for the ARDMS boards, and do not see where any of your students will qualify. … I hope you will re-evaluate… the quality of the education in the classroom."
Six months after the program's first class graduated, many of the graduates remain unable to find even entry-level work in the ultrasound technology field. Those students who have found internships say that they lack the proper training to perform even the most basic of their job duties, and that their inadequate training is evident to their supervisors and employers. At least one internship site, Sutter Solano Medical Center, has stated that it will no longer be hiring any graduates of the program. Yet WCC remains unperturbed, and continues to enroll students in the same inadequate program. Stuart Talley, says that both former and current students of the WCC Ultrasound Technology program have contacted his law firm with similar ongoing complaints. For more information on the plight of these students and graduates, see the report by Edie Lambert of KCRA 3 News in Sacramento, available at http://www.kcra.com/video/13536423/index.html.
Kershaw, Cutter & Ratinoff, LLP prosecutes class actions and other complex litigation on behalf of a wide range of consumer and investor clients, in state and federal courts across the nation. To visit Kershaw, Cutter & Ratinoff's website for more information on the firm, please go to www.kcrlaw.com.
For more information on the present suit, contact Stuart Talley, at stalley(at)kcrlaw.com or at 916-448-9800.
Contact Person: Stuart Talley
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