Undercover investigation: CDI College caught misleading students (Marketplace)

Today's lesson, the truth about CDI College. That's not ethical. They are selling something that is not correct. A professional university becomes a school of hard knocks. In many ways, it broke me. We infiltrate to investigate. Why do

students

and experts give a failing grade? But the examples you provided here are pretty abysmal. Do not go anywhere. The class is in session on your Marketplace. Turn this on. We are

undercover

. Looks like we're in business. Investigating CDI university, with more than 20 campuses like this one. And 14,000

students

. It is one of the largest private professional universities in the country.

Many study online. And at the helm is president and CEO Peter Chung, a Vancouver-based businessman and philanthropist who oversees a private education empire. But we found hundreds of negative reviews on various sites, and many online students tell us that their higher education was a big disappointment. It was not organized. It just seems very chaotic. The subjects are outdated, they are things taken from secondary schools. We students were basically teaching ourselves. The problems, we are told, can start from the first step on the phone with CDI admissions. Thank you for calling CDI College. So, we pose as prospective students online, testing the university on three different topics: accreditation, the hard sell, and the cost of dropping out and taking notes on anything else that happens along the way.

Alright. Welcome everyone. -Thank you. -Thank you for having us. Good to see you. So today we are going to talk about something and that something is CDI College. Jennifer Adamock, Sharon Stewart and Michelle Penner are CDI alumni. Have you heard about them? -Unfortunately. -Yeah. Each of them enrolls in online programs that cost more than $15,000. Give me one word to describe your experience. Horrific. Disgusting. Unethical. Harsh criticism, but they say their careers and thousands of student loan debts are at stake. Take a look at some of these photos we have here. When Jennifer is fired from her technical job, she decides that she is ready for a career change.

When you are constantly tearing down or putting together and squeezing, it becomes hard on the body. So my shoulder was really feeling it. You contact CDI in summer 2021 and, after speaking with admissions, decide on the HR and Payroll Coordinator program. So, are you very excited to participate? I was very excited about this. But before you sign up, you want to confirm that the program is accredited. He was going back and forth with her. They promised me that it was accredited and recognized. It seemed like it would be a good fit. You are doing this because you want to change your life.

Professor Glenn Jones of the University of Toronto is an expert in higher education. He says accredited programs can give students an advantage. The idea is that the program must meet a minimum standard. If you meet that standard, according to the accrediting body, you become accredited and that credential has greater value within the system. That greater value is what Jennifer is banking on when she begins the program in the fall. When did you start to have doubts about what you were listening to and whether the program? It was pretty good the first week that I started to doubt it.

Jennifer invested thousands of dollars in the program before finally hearing the truth. Only three of the 20 courses are supported by a third party. Jen, I want to give this to you to take a look at. You're probably familiar with that. It's an email from CDI that says, "The program itself is not accredited." How did you feel when you read that email? I was very upset. I cried. After that, I was also depressed for a good couple of months. She is not alone. Jennifer records this call with other students complaining to CDI staff. And just listen to how this employee responds.

So to know what students are told before enrolling, we call ourselves CDI admissions. Good how are you? Yes. That's Jennifer's show. First, we want to hear about accreditation. Is the human resources and payroll program accredited? Is it recognized? We give these alumni the opportunity to observe us. Wow. I told you if you called them, they would tell you. Like Jennifer, they tell us their program is accredited. We also received incorrect information about the child and youth service worker program that Sharon enrolled in. That is not true. We found an accreditation body, but CDI is not on their list.

That's not ethical. They are selling something that is not correct. We also asked about the online paralegal program. Is the program accredited? But when we go to meet the admissions representative in person... ...the story about accreditation changes. Well. Refers to the Law Society of Ontario. CDI is on their list of accredited programs, but only for in-person study. It does not credit the online program we are interested in. Now, he is guiding us towards studying in class. In fact, we found that none of the online programs we asked about are accredited. So what does the CBI have to say?

They do not address the details of our findings. After we contacted them, they removed the accreditation page from their site. They add that they have a dispute resolution process for dissatisfied students. But that process does not satisfy Jennifer. She withdraws from her program at the beginning of this year and has to pay about $4,600. I'm pretty upset about that. Especially also, I kind of wasted my... I wasted two and a half months on that program, I didn't learn anything. How have you dealt with that range of emotions? In many ways, it broke me. -Did she do it? -Yeah.

I felt pretty lonely for a while. Why do you feel compelled to speak out now? I don't want other people to make the same mistake. All three admissions representatives give us false information about accreditation. Next, we'll investigate the hard sell. We are here in Calgary to meet with a former CDI College employee. Let's see what he has to say. I'm Adam Pollock and my job at CDI is Assistant Director of Admissions. That was his official title, but Adam says his job was mostly recruiting. That function is...essentially a telemarketing function. And it becomes brutally obvious when you show up to orientation, the first day. -How is that? -Well, you are entering a call center with hundreds of people on the floor.

Adam starts in the summer of 2020, but he quits after about a year and a half due to the stress of it all. What type of employer was CDI? -Awful. -Were there objectives? Were there also quotas? The objectives were minimal. Two registrations per week. Well, how many calls are you making to try? Minimum, 100 calls a day. 100 calls a day? Was it completely custom made? No, it was... We had a small base. A very small base and, in addition, a commission. It was a 2% commission. What would happen to people who couldn't produce? They would be fired. Do you think CDI College recruiters misled students?

Many of them, yes. Absolutely. CDI doesn't directly address Adam's allegations, but it does tell us that recruiters can do things that the company won't tolerate. But Adam says focusing on enrollment is part of the culture. I understand that there was some kind of gift that people would receive. Oh, you mean these nameplates? Tell me about it. What's that? So after a year of service with them, they wanted an army. They have the school name there. CDI College. And your name, when you started, and how much tuition money you contributed to the school. That's more than $780,000. So the tactics were high pressure?

Absolutely. It's time to see if those representatives use high-pressure tactics to get us to sign up. Back at university, the paralegal recruiter gives us an impressive statistic. Well. That is not true. In Ontario, only about 34% of in-person CDI graduates find work in their field. Coming soon, will the other recruiters act clearly or increase the pressure? This is a lie. - Is a lie. -Yeah. And we reveal the truth about the cost of dropping out of school. Now I owe all the tuition. Do you have a story you think Marketplace should investigate next? Tell us everything via email, Twitter and Facebook.

This is your Market. Marketplace takes you to school. Investigating one of the largest players in for-profit higher education, CDI College. CDI says it is transforming lives by providing higher education, but many students tell us it is not enough. My classmates called it clown school. Until now, recruiters have given us incorrect information about accreditation and job prospects. And now we come to the hard sell: the pressure to sign up. Why does it have to be a coupon with an expiration date? What I heard that person say and thought was ridiculous was the idea that you will get this after completing the program.

In other words, it's not a scholarship designed to help you finance the program and get you ahead, it's like a reward at the end for completing it. In total, the program costs about $20,000. It's not easy to do in just a couple of months, according to our expert. Absolutely not. This is a lie. - Is a lie? -Yeah. They are selling you a false dream. It's a fairy tale. And even when we point out problems meeting the sobriety requirement for the Children and Youth Services Worker program... Um, no, not really. She's still trying to sign us up.

Well. I struggled a little with some grass, and... and... Okay? From time to time. Later, they tell our producer that she is a perfect fit and is accepted into the program. So that's disgusting. Yes, a drug addict who goes to work with drug addict children doesn't matter. Would you assume that admitting to using illegal drugs is a red flag for sobriety requirements? I would certainly say so. In Ontario alone, CDI receives tens of millions in student grants and loans each school year. But what happens when students drop out? That is our final test. The real cost of abandonment.

If I have to stop, am I like...? You know, am I obligated to pay the full amount or how does that work? Everyone says we only pay a portion of the fees if we withdraw early. They don't tell us that CDI can require full tuition for our programs once you complete a certain amount. Some learn it the hard way. Alright, we just landed in Winnipeg, here to meet another CDI student. Let's meet her. Karlee Hall receives life-changing news while she was enrolled in CDI's social service worker program in the fall of 2021. She was diagnosed with cervical cancer.

So it was a bit of a shock. My first thought was, "Am I going to die when I'm in my twenties?" How did it affect your studies? A lot because it was very difficult to concentrate. Every time I opened my laptop and started doing something, I would have a small panic attack and then my brain would go foggy. She tells CDI about her diagnosis and asks if she can take some time off while she receives treatment. They say that is not possible. What options were you given? They told me if I worked and tried my hardest, I quit or didn't log in for ten days and my name would technically be blacklisted.

I'm thinking, "Okay, maybe I can go ahead with the treatment," which was every day, five days a week, during the week, and then focus everything on the weekends to try to finish my studies, instead to rest. Karlee leaves and then receives more bad news. CDI says she owes full tuition after about four months of school. This amount is based on the refund policy, which says they can charge her full tuition if she completes 30% of the instructional hours. What percentage of the course did they say you completed? -32.3%. Now I owe all the tuition. That's just over $19,000.

We asked the CDI about Karlee's case. They don't address it directly. Basically, not approving a license application that seems legitimate and then using it to get tuition seems pretty unfair to me. You know, we've shown you all this. What stands out for you? I mean, I think the lack of transparency, the misinformation. For me, the notion of any kind of recruiting agreement where someone gets fired if she doesn't recruit that many students per week. That's ridiculous. -Hey hey. -Hello Travis. We have been in contact with the CDI for weeks... -What have we sent them? -We have already sent them everything.

So we told them about the students' complaints. ...repeatedly asking for an on-camera interview with Chairman and CEO Peter Chung. They refuse, saying that there is no one available. They send a statement acknowledging that there have been problems and that they are continually working to improve. But for Chung, some of these issues are not new. His entrepreneurial roots date back to California, where he founded Wilshire Computer College. The state sued Chung and others in the early 1990s, alleging more than 10,000 violations, including deception of students. The ruling ordered restitution of $12 million. My name is Margaret Wrighter and in 1991 I was Attorney GeneralDeputy of the California Attorney General's Office.

She was part of the team that filed the lawsuit. The court said the case involved a persistent and long-standing pattern of fraud and went on to say that it affected thousands of people and cost them thousands of dollars. In the past, Chung has said publicly that she did nothing wrong. After closing her business in the US, she eventually moves to Canada and becomes a director of CDI. But there have also been controversies with her education company, Eminata Group, and her schools here. CDI will not grant us an interview, so we will contact CEO Peter Chung again.

Please wait while I transfer your call. Mr. Chung, this is Travis Dhanraj from CBC Marketplace. I know you are aware that we have been trying to contact you or someone at CDI for an on-camera interview about our

investigation

. We would like to give you another chance to talk to us on camera. Your message has been sent. Meanwhile, these alumni have their own message for the CDI and its leader. What would each of you say, if you could talk to Peter Chung? I'd say you owe a lot of people a refund. You have no idea of ​​the damage and repercussions of this.

I see you sitting there thinking carefully about what you would like to say. -I don't think I can say on television what I would like to say to Peter Chung. And with that, class is over.