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| Jeong Jae-chan FTC chairman |
According to industry sources, FTC investigators tentatively concluded in September that the advertisements for the admission program for entering U.S. colleges were exaggerated because students in the program are not recognized as regular students by the colleges.
It turned out that the investigators knew that students admitted by the schools were regular students but still omitted that information in the report in an apparent attempt to conclude the case in the way they wanted.
In his email to Kim Se-gyum, deputy director of consumer safety at the FTC, on Aug. 18, Kurt Harris, director of global engagement at Southern Utah University (SUU), one of the schools in the program, said clearly that the SUU "admits qualified Korean students."
Through the program, students take one-year language courses in Korea and then study three years in the school to which they applied in order to earn a bachelor's degree there.
In the letter, Harris added, "Over the years, hundreds of Korean students have benefited from the program. These students perform extremely well academically and socially, mainly due to their preparation in Korea."
To make it clear, SUU President Scott L. Wyatt also sent an email to FTC Chairman Jeong Jae-chan on Dec. 17 that the program provides English language courses "only to students who have been admitted to SUU as degree-seeking students."
"We've found that students who take preparatory courses before arriving in the United States are better situated for college level work," he added.
Since 2006, 19 colleges, mainly in the United States, including the State University of New York at Oswego and California State University, Chico, have joined the program.
"Finding whether the advertisements of the program are exaggerated is simple. All you have to do is to ask the schools if they admit the students in the program as advertised," lawyer Lee Hyung-woo said. "Yet the investigation has been conducted for months."
At the FTC's request, the program operators submitted more than 1,000 pages of documents to make their case during the investigation.
In a press release, the FTC said it omitted the SUU email from the report because the school did not mention that it admits students in the program. But that was not true.
Sources said the State University of New York in Korea has allegedly brought the issue to the FTC as it is struggling to attract students due to the Education Abroad Program.
FTC Chairman Jeong Jae-chan and some other standing committee members will make the final decision on the issue today.
The program operators have filed a complaint with the prosecution against two FTC officials over their alleged abuse of authority.
