College check

A little-known college in northern Virginia that enrolls mostly students from India was raided by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Thursday morning and will be temporarily blocked from enrolling foreign students.

Computer hardware, paper documents and equipment were confiscated, according to a letter from UNVA Chancellor David Lee, who said UNVA officials were "very surprised" at the raid. He assured students the school will continue operating normally despite its temporary inability to admit foreign students. The university has 30 days to rebut ICE's decision.

An ICE spokeswoman would not detail the reason for the decision, citing a pending investigation Friday, according to the Associated Press.

UNVA came under scrutiny after a May article in the Chronicle of Higher Education compared the school's business model to Tri-Valley University in California, which was shut down by federal investigators at the beginning of this year. According to the Chronicle, investigators said Tri-Valley was a "sham university" that took foreign students' money but did not require them to attend classes. Instead, foreign nationals on student visas worked full-time in "work-study programs" that included jobs at Wal-Mart and 7-Eleven.

While UNVA is popular in India, few Americans have heard of the school, which lists locations in Annandale, Manassas and Springfield. "We don't want people to know us," UNVA owner Daniel Ho told the Chronicle.

Profitable loopholes

To maintain their student visas under the International Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP), foreign students are required to attend classes regularly at an institution that is certified to admit international students. But a top ICE official quoted in the Chronicle piece called the student visas "ripe for abuse."

In the Tri-Valley case, "tuition" became a front for a profitable scheme that, in reality, sold "students" the chance to work full-time in the United States without obtaining an H1-B work visa. Classes were sometimes held only three weekends a month, and students who were supposed to be taking on-site classes in California ended up living across the country.

And thanks to a loophole in the Patriot Act, a college doesn't have to be accredited to accept international students. Instead, school accreditation is regulated by the states. In Virginia, the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia is supposed to oversee such matters.

The university's website claims it is accredited by the American University Accreditation Council, but admits that organization is not certified by the U.S. Department of Education. The Chronicle found that the address listed for the accrediting agency was actually the address of an auto-body repair shop owned by Gary Zhu, acting chairman of the board at UNVA.

UNVA's website, which is rife with grammatical errors, says the for-profit university offers undergraduate, graduate and doctorate degrees. A link to admissions requirements and processes was broken Monday, but tuition and fees seem steep for a non-accredited institution. An undergraduate student would pay $4,200 for a 12-credit quadmester, plus a $60 application fee, a $75 orientation fee, a $25 English placement test fee, a $60 registration fee and a $1,900 "Co-Op Admin. Fee."

It's unclear how many students UNVA actually enrolls. State figures showed 1,216 students in fall 2010, while an article in The New Indian Express claims the university enrolls 2,400 students, 90 percent of them from India.

That's not counting "partner institutions": satellite schools around the world that offer UNVA degrees. There could be anywhere from four to 20 partner institutions across the world, according to varying reports from Ho and Lee. Ho indicated that his business makes over $10 million per year.

The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia can't regulate degrees that the school offers outside Virginia.

"I can sell degrees. I can sell diplomas," Ho admitted to the Chronicle. "But I won't. Who's going to supervise me, control me? Myself."

Few options

Lee met with concerned students Monday morning to answer questions about UNVA's status and future plans, according to the university's website. The ICE is encouraging students to call a hotline to discuss their options, which include either finishing their degree program at UNVA, transferring to another college or facing a return to their home country.

A letter from Lee's office released Sunday urged students and faculty to contact reporters and public officials with their stories. "The UNVA Family knows the truth of what of what has been happening at UNVA," Lee wrote.

"If UNVA will close, I would lose so much that I have worked for," wrote student Erina Rajbhandari in an e-mail to Washington Post reporter Daniel de Vise, one of the contacts listed in the letter. "My parent's hard-earned money will go to waste, the time and effort I have expended to get A in all my classes will all go in vain."

"I have not seen anything illegal going on in the school," she wrote. "It is true that the administration at UNVA is not perfect, but this does not mean they violated the law. [As] for me, I followed all the rules, regulations and laws."

But because of the school's shaky accreditation, credits won't transfer to most other schools. If UNVA closes, that leaves some students with few options.

"If I need to transfer to [another] university, [that] means I need to start from the first step of my master's," wrote Pavan Kumar Kura in an email to the Post. "I cannot pay [the] tuition fee again."

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