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The college moved last year from its cramped quarters on West Pine to the building at 909 South Taylor Avenue, which Barsam and Robinson bought from the Central Institute for the Deaf for at least $2 million, according to city real-estate records.

Inside, framed occupancy permits and sales-tax certificates hang on the powder-blue walls of the school's lobby. A few metal folding chairs surround a large conference table where a perky admissions representative explains all the college has to offer to a prospective student.

On glossy, full-color brochures are photographs of beautiful women wearing stethoscopes and scrubs as they comfort the sick or look thoughtfully at a patient's chart.

Lynn Mareschal of St. Ann visited the city campus in 2002 to enroll in the echocardiogram-technician program. She was told she first needed to complete a patient-care technician program, which cost $8,000.

"The teachers missed class on a regular basis. I only got half the clinical hours I needed, and the classes were three hours, but they usually only kept us for an hour," she wrote in a September 2002 complaint to the Better Business Bureau. "Now I found out that the [echocardiogram] program has been cancelled."

Thirteen students filed complaints with the Better Business Bureau between August 2001 and June 2004.

Former instructor Carol Worth says college officials enrolled pharmacy-technician students even though the school did not have a pharmacy teacher on staff. When it was time to take pharmacy classes in the second semester, adds Worth, "They would tell them, 'Go ahead and go into the coding and billing class -- and you can always come back and take pharmacy for free.'"

Carol Bennett of Lemay says college recruiters told her she'd be a certified medical coder when she graduated. But in complaints to the Better Business Bureau, Bennett and other students claim coding was never taught during the one-year, ten-thousand-dollar program.

"I can't find a job, and I have a huge loan to pay off," Bennett says. "I feel manipulated, lied to and cheated."

When Bennett visited the south-county campus in 2002, a recruiter told her she would need to take an entrance exam to evaluate her reading, writing and math skills. Bennett conceded she was terrible at math.

"He took the math part of the test for me," she admits. "I knew it was wrong, but I wanted to go to school so bad. I wanted to make a better life for me and my family."

Sandy Kaup, the former director of college admissions, denies that prospective students were given answers. But two former administrators say they found exam booklets with the answers written on them.

"The pre-test was supposed to be in the [student] file," explains an ex-campus director. "I would find the pre-test in the trash with the answers on it. Then I went to their file, and there was the same exact test. That's why I left."

Another former instructor says, "I had a student who couldn't read. How did she get in?" Five other ex-teachers confirm that students in their classes couldn't read or write.

Staff members felt pressured to enlist students because those who failed to meet their enrollment goals were fired. Says a former admissions representative: "It is a sales environment."

Dr. David Goldberg, who taught physiology at the college for five months in 2003, says those charges are simply not true. "I was never pressured to pass anyone."

Recruiters may have been fired for "not working," says Sandy Kaup. But he insists the college never required employees to make quotas -- a practice outlawed by the U.S. Department of Education.

Darryl Spencer, the former director of placement, says he battled for years with the admissions department "because they would bring in people who couldn't succeed in the program. I'd tell them, 'Don't fill their heads with dreams.'"

Cindy Ness went to work at the St. Louis College of Health Careers in 2000, a year after the school reluctantly promised the Missouri Board of Nursing that it would shutter its practical nursing program at both campuses.

For years graduates of the nursing program failed the state nursing exam at staggering rates. In 1998 only 47 percent of graduates managed to pass the test, a requirement to be a nurse in Missouri.

Under Ness' tutelage, 90 percent of nursing graduates in the 2000-2001 class aced the state exam. But Ness says she left in disgust after only one year when a school owner ordered her to pass five nursing students who had failed classes.

"We were told to let them into the second semester," explains Ness. "I wouldn't let them in, and that's when they got really upset with me. They went to [an instructor] and told her to do it."

Another instructor confirms that Barsam and Robinson ordered her to re-test students who had failed classes. "In order to get a passing grade in the class, they had to retake tests," the teacher says. "If they failed a class, they would get kicked out, and [the school] didn't want to lose the money -- the financial aid."

Scott Tapp says that when he asked a supervisor how an illiterate student was supposed to pass his anatomy class, he was told, "Shut up. This is what we do."

The college's own catalog states that students with grade-point averages below 2.0 will be suspended and their financial aid will be terminated. Nursing students must maintain a 3.0 GPA. Schools are required by law to adhere to the academic-progress policies outlined in their catalogs, confirms Dennis Mertes, team leader of the Kansas City region of the U.S. Department of Education. However, Mertes declined to comment on specific allegations pertaining to the St. Louis College of Health Careers.

When graduates of the practical nursing program took the state nursing exam this year, only 65 percent passed. That's a far cry from the 80-percent pass rate required by the state Board of Nursing for a school to maintain accreditation. In 2003 only 73 percent of the school's alumni made the grade, and in 2002 only 66 percent passed.

In December the nursing board will consider whether to revoke the college's accreditation, confirms Lori Scheidt, the board's executive director. But despite its past performance, college officials can still reopen a nursing program, just as they did in 2000, she says.

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