Students of a vocational nursing school demanded answers after the college abruptly closed its two Inland Empire campuses.
Some students showed up for classes at Four-D College in Colton on Monday morning only to find its front doors locked and chained together and a letter from administrators taped to the front door telling its hundreds of students the school had closed.
"That's not fair to us," said student Breanna Bryant, who was supposed to graduate in three months. "We have kids. This is a career that we're trying to put ourselves into."
In the letter posted by the Christian college at the Victorville and Colton campuses, students were told that the Accrediting Bureau of Health Education Schools denied Four-D College's accreditation for unspecified reasons.
The closure does not affect any students who graduated between 1996 and 2011, the letter said.
The bureau released a statement that read in part, "The Accrediting Bureau of Health Education Schools (ABHES) has learned that Four-D College has published statements on its website regarding the bases for a recent action by ABHES to deny the school's application for a renewed grant of accreditation and also announcing that the school has closed. ABHES does not agree with the statements describing the bases for ABHES actions. Furthermore, Four-D has exercised its right to appeal the decision and therefore remains accredited by ABHES at the present time pending the resolution of the appeal."
"It's just crazy because I just started and I just got my uniform," student Brianna Brisco said.
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Some workers said they were also blindsided by the closure.
"Two weeks ago, we had a meeting here telling us that they were just rumors, so we went back to work as regular doing our usual jobs, and then all of a sudden this morning we get a text telling us that Four-D closed," said a school employee, who wanted to be identified only as Martha.
Students were left wondering if another college might accept their transcripts.
"Who can we trust, you know?" student Martha Butler said.
The Accrediting Bureau advised students affected by the closure to contact the California Department of Consumer Affairs for Private Postsecondary Education on its website at www.bppe.ca.gov.
