COLLEGE: The Newbridge College campus located at 1840 E. 17th St. in Santa Ana.
PENNYSAVER AD: This photo of a Newbridge College ad in PennySaver provided by attorney Scott Schutzman shows the college advertises a "medical laboratory technician" program. Students suing the college claim the program does not qualify them to be medical lab technicians.
ADVERTISING: Attorney Scott Schutzman provided this ad that he says shows Newbridge College changed its advertisement after being sued by students. Previous ads in PennySaver offer a "medical laboratory technician" program, while this ad offers a "medical laboratory technician associate" program.
FILING SUIT: Attorney Scott Schutzman discusses a class-action lawsuit against Newbridge College with two of his clients. A group of students are alleging they were misled about school's medical lab technician program.
CLASS ACTION: Astrid Estrada listens as Ernestine Latimer discusses her complaints against Newbridge College.
COMPLAINTS: Ernestine Latimer, left, and Astrid Estrada, right, discuss their grievances against Newbridge College.
SANTA ANA — Unhappy former students have filed a class-action lawsuit against Newbridge College, alleging they were each defrauded out of $10,000 tuition by promises they could earn good salaries for medical jobs they were ineligible to obtain.
Twelve former students say they were persuaded to enroll on the promise that they needed only training from Newbridge to get lucrative jobs as medical laboratory technicians.
The plaintiffs said they didn’t learn until well into the eight-month program that lab technician positions paying $18-$24 an hour require an accredited associate’s degree that the school does not offer.
Newbridge’s attorney, Keith Zakarin, with the Duane Morris LLP law office in San Diego, said the school makes it clear students will be eligible only for entry-level jobs after they finish their training.
“No one was misled,” Zakarin said.
Newbridge College enrolls about 500 students on campuses in Santa Ana, Long Beach, Monterey Park and Glendale.
The college also reported to the federal government that it was offering a clinical/medical laboratory technician diploma during the 2007-08 academic year for $9,950 to students who completed 36 credit hours over eight months, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
But to become a licensed technician, candidates must have at least an associate’s degree or possess three years’ on-the-job training and pass a tough exam. The jobs pay $30,000 to $47,000 a year, according to state employment figures.
Without the license, students would only qualify for lower-paid jobs as lab assistants, for example, who freeze specimens or prepare blood or urine samples to be tested, said Debbie Wagner of Cupertino-based DeAnza College.
Wagner runs one of only two programs approved by the California Department of Public Health to train medical laboratory technicians.
“Why would they pay $10,000 to be trained for a job that doesn’t pay any more than they earn now?” said the students’ lawyer, Scott Schutzman, who filed the Orange County Superior Court lawsuit in June.
The confusion seems to result from changes in the state law that took place in December, when the Department of Public Health began regulating medical laboratory technician jobs and giving them more authority and pay. Before December, only trained scientists with advanced degrees were allowed to perform blood counts, urinalysis, cholesterol and other laboratory tests in California.
However, because of a lack of a workforce, the state began the process several years ago of changing the job descriptions to allow a newly created breed of trained and licensed medical laboratory technicians to perform those tests.
Wagner said that people in the field had been aware for years that the rules were changing and that, in fact, that’s why she started DeAnza’s program.
Newbridge students said they only learned they were ineligible for the technician jobs during a field trip to a hospital laboratory, when a lab director told them she would only hire them as assistants.
Zakarin said that, prior to the change in the law, medical lab technician programs “did not need DPH approval” except for the aspects that included phlebotomy certification, which involves drawing blood.
The job to which he’s referring, though, is that of a lab associate – essentially an assistant, not a technician who actually performs the tests.
“After the change in the law, the specific MLT job outcome required an associate’s (degree) and because NC’s program is a diploma program; it was not eligible for DPH approval of the entire program,” Zakarin said.
Register news researcher Michael Doss contributed to this report.