who serves on the bureau's advisory panel.

California learned this the hard way in 2007, when then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill to extend its previous regulations. For the next three years, California's more than 1,000 unaccredited private schools -- many of them, for-profit businesses sustained by federal student aid money -- operated without state regulation.

The state agency that took its place in 2010 started with a large backlog of tasks, a tiny staff and a hiring freeze that put it further behind, Reiter said. The state audit this year found the bureau, just four years old, had "consistently failed" to guard against fraud and deception at the schools where technical and vocational training can cost more than $20,000 a year.

It noted the bureau took 502 days to completea probe into a sham flight school.

Phoned requests for comment from the for-profit trade association, the California Association of Private Postsecondary Schools, were not returned.

One former trade school student said he hopes the state will protect low-income students from being duped, like he says he was, by promises of financial aid and high-paying jobs that did not materialize.

Oakland resident Pharis Pugh earned an electrician certificate last year at WyoTech in Fremont, but found no work in the field. The instruction was poor, he said, adding that he was misled by financial aid information when he enrolled.

He has stopped making his loan payments, which he says he can't afford, and has given up on a dream inspired two years ago by a television commercial.

"People like me that are down-and-out