Crossing the Language Barrier : For-Profit Schools Are Catching the Overflow of Public Programs : and Closing a Gap for the Non-English-Speaking Populace

After 22 years in the United States, Eulalia Marquez finds herself studying vocabulary lists--of English words.

Marquez is paying $475 to take 100 hours of group English language instruction at Academy Pacific, a for-profit Hollywood school. She wants to close a language gap between her and her American-raised sons and daughters. “I am the mother of eight children, and I want to go forward with them,” the Los Angeles housewife explained in Spanish.

Given increased immigration to Southern California during the past decade, it might be expected that teaching English for profit would be a bonanza. But the typically low income of many immigrants, combined with the for-profit English industry’s reputation for uneven teaching standards and high-pressure sales tactics, seems to have limited much of the market to foreign students seeking entrance to U.S. universities.

Nonetheless, after half a dozen years of depressed enrollments, companies that teach English for profit are enjoying a modest recovery. Revolution in Iran, the rising dollar, the collapse of several Latin American currencies and the general deterioration of oil-dependent countries’ economies because of falling prices all reduced the number of foreign students coming to the United States in the early 1980s. Now a falling dollar is bringing them back, while overcrowded English courses in adult public schools may be pushing a few more recent immigrants into private sector schools.

“We are seeing an encouraging resurgence beginning last year,” said Stanley F. Pickett, owner and president of American Language Academy, a Rockville, Md.-based chain of 11 for-profit schools.

Enrollment at the ELS Educational Services center in Santa Monica, for example, has risen 10% to 15% in each of the past two years, director Rodney D. Neese said. Culver City-based ELS is a 20-center chain and a subsidiary of San Francisco-based AIFS.

Students Turned Away

About 95% of the Santa Monica center’s 1,000 to 1,300 customers last year were foreigners. “The dollar’s weakening, of course, is helping us,” Neese said. As each yen or deutschemark buys more U.S. currency, the cost of a U.S. education falls in terms of those currencies.

Private schools in Los Angeles that teach English as a second language are also benefiting from the overcrowding of free, public school English courses for adults. In the 1986-87 academic year, the Los Angeles Unified School District taught English to 208,520 adults and turned away 40,000 more, said Jim Figueroa, administrator for adult and occupational school operations. By December of the current academic year, about 25,000 adults were put on waiting lists, of which only 7,000 were admitted, he said. Average class size is 30.

The number of for-profit English schools in the United States peaked in the early 1980s with about 75 to 125 programs geared toward preparing foreigners for U.S. universities and 300 or more other tax-exempt programs owned and operated by universities and colleges, Pickett said. Now there are only 75 to 100 tax-paying schools in the higher education market and a couple of hundred owned and run by universities and colleges, he said.

Precise figures on the industry are hard to come by because it is virtually unregulated and has no trade association or trade publications. California does not inspect, accredit, or license for-profit English language schools, because they are not considered vocational schools, said Roy Steeves, assistant director of the Department of Education’s private post-secondary education division.

Critics allege that many customers are poorly taught at private schools. “These people have teachers that have never stepped into an education course. . . . Out of a hundred schools, if you can find five that are great, good ethical institutions, I’d be shocked,” said Fernando de la Pena, director of the nonprofit Cambria English Institute in downtown Los Angeles. The institute was run as a profit-making company until April, 1987, when it converted to tax-exempt status because it was losing money and already performing much of its work for free for area priests and seminarians.

Opportunity for Fraud

High-pressure sales pitches and exorbitant prices--as much as a $1,000 course entrance fee plus $10 an hour for instruction--characterize schools run by the unscrupulous, De la Pena said. One scam is to delay repeatedly the graduation of a student whose education is subsidized or paid for by the federal government. Another is to mislead the student into thinking that the school has obtained government grants on his or her behalf, when actually the student has signed his name to loans that must later be repaid, De la Pena said.

“There’s profit there, but there’s also opportunity for this type of defrauding. . . . It’s a series of scams connected together like a rosary, and it ends up defrauding the (foreigner) or immigrant who just wants to learn English,” he said. But a few for-profit schools are honest and well run, he added, mentioning ELS in particular.

Latino activists have heard stories of exploitative schools but are focusing their efforts on issues related to the government’s amnesty program for illegal immigrants, said Linda J. Wong, an associate counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund in Los Angeles. “The problem is not as well known or as extensive as (unscrupulous) notaries and immigration consultants.”

Teachers Not Paid Well

Low pay at for-profit schools makes it difficult to attract top-quality staff. In contrast with many careers, those who teach English as a second language tend to be better paid in the public sector than the private. At Cambria, they earn $10 to $15 an hour for daytime teaching.

Academy Pacific instructor Anne Sniderman, who has a masters degree from UCLA in teaching English as a foreign language and who is retired after 30 years as a public school teacher, said she earns $8.50 an hour. “There is a very great demand, but somehow teaching doesn’t seem to command business salaries,” she said, adding that she continues to teach because she loves the profession.

Adult students who are trying to learn English have little recourse if they feel they are being taught poorly, Steeves said. Spokesmen for the Better Business Bureau of South Central California, the Los Angeles consumer affairs department and the consumer fraud unit of the Los Angeles Police Department all said they had not heard complaints about such schools.

“Hispanics just don’t tend to complain to police,” said De la Pena, arguing that many students are embarrassed at being defrauded and may be leery of dealing with authorities, particularly consumer advocates who may speak only English.

A growing number of customers come from Asia, including Japan, Korea and even China. Xu Tiam Wei, a Beijing resident and an official with the Civil Aviation Administration of China, is enrolled in Academy Pacific’s most advanced English course to help him complete a masters degree in business administration at Northrop University in Los Angeles.

“I study English because my country opens the door on the outer world. . . . I plan to go back to help my country because my country needs a can-speak English person,” he said.

$6,000 for 4 Weeks

More than half of the customers at Berlitz Language Centers’ seven Los Angeles and two San Diego centers are immigrants or residents from Asian countries, said Rene A. Alberola, regional manager of Berlitz Language Centers, a subsidiary of New York-based Macmillan. Founded in 1878, Berlitz is the granddaddy of private language instruction and caters to an affluent market, particularly executives.

About 30% of the customers at Berlitz’ 15 centers in California come for courses in English as a second language, Alberola said. Course prices range from $199 for 10 weekly, three-hour group sessions to $6,000 for four, 40-hour weeks of individual instruction.

Part of the demand for less expensive private school courses comes from students who didn’t learn English in public school. Mario de la Pena, 25 years old and Xu’s classmate, moved to Whittier from Mexico City in 1979 and spent his last two years of high school in a bilingual program in Whittier. But he didn’t learn English then, and now is enrolled in his third course at Academy Pacific.

De la Pena plans a career in the travel industry. “I want to travel,” he said in Spanish.