Heald Students' Education On Hold

UPDATED: 6:45 p.m.   Heald College has closed its 28 campuses nationwide including schools in Roseville and Rancho Cordova.

About two thousand students at the Roseville and Rancho Cordova Heald College campuses are wondering how they will be able to finish their associate degree programs now that Heald has shut down.

Students who tried to enter the Rancho Cordova campus Monday were turned away by security guards.

Teachers and staff held meetings and carried boxes of paperwork to their cars.

Corinthian College owns the Heald, Everest, and Wyotech colleges.  The U.S. Department of Education notified Corinthian on April 15 that it would be fined $30 million for falsifying job-placement numbers. The company was also told it could no longer enroll new students.

Corinthian sent out an email to students and staff Sunday that wished the students well and lamented the company's inability to find a buyer for the colleges, "... as a result of federal and state regulators seeking to impose financial penalties and conditions on buyers and teach-out partners."

Marletta Stein says she was scheduled to graduate in June with an associates degree in criminal justice."I wanted to be a probation officer. Well I still want to be a probation officer. I'll just have to go to school somewhere else I guess . It's a mess. The whole thing's a mess."

Stein says she has hopes another vocational-training college will honor her credits.

The Department of Education identified 937 cases in which Heald Colleges paid temp services to temporarily employ graduates, included fast-food employment as proof of job-placement services, and otherwise falsified its job-placement success rates.

Michelle Binicewicz taught in the medical program. She says the Department of Education was wrong.

"I'm not a fan of the government right now and the whole federal funding thing. I don't think they had the intention of the students in mind at all throughout the whole process. It was just business and politics which hurt people in the end."

Meiasha Bradley is a semester away from an associate's degree in criminal justice.  She says the school's financial aid office told her she needed to take out more student loans just last week.

"If they knew, they shouldn't have been trying to push the students to do the whole student loans. I feel like they should have had us wait because I purchased my books. I mean one of my books was $201."

California Attorney General Kamala Harris released a statement pledging to,

"...ensure that students get the relief they deserve, providing them with a new path to achieve their educational goals and rebuild their lives,” and,

"Current students attending Corinthian’s WyoTech, Everest or Heald College campuses can visit www.oag.ca.gov/Corinthian to find information on eligibility for debt relief, available resources and the closure status of a specific campus."

The schools will hold meetings with students tomorrow (Wednesday) and Thursday.