Lawyer Fights to Keep His School Going

Fighting for its life, a private university here that awards advanced degrees through correspondence programs returned to court Friday seeking to stop the state from putting it out of business.

The legal motion by Kensington University, a 20-year-old institution that claims more than 7,000 graduates nationwide, once again accuses state regulators of not giving the school a fair hearing and relying on faulty evidence in denying it operating approval last December.

The process that led to Kensington’s censure was “grossly unreasonable, draconian and an abuse of discretion,” school owner Alfred Calabro, a longtime Glendale attorney, alleges in the legal request he said was filed in downtown Los Angeles late Friday as part of a pending Superior Court case.

The action seeks no financial damages but asks that the school be granted at least another two years to operate.

Its most immediate effect may be once again stalling a pending closure order that had been scheduled for a court hearing April 25. If a judge upholds the closure order, Kensington would have to immediately stop enrolling new students, although existing ones may have the option of completing their programs.

Officials of the state Council for Private Postsecondary and Vocational Education, which regulates about 200 degree-granting but nonaccredited private schools in California, could not be reached for comment.

But in its ruling last December, the council found practices that strongly suggested “little or no rigor or credible academic standards are necessary in order to be awarded an advanced degree at Kensington University.”

Located in a Glendale office building that also houses Calabro’s law practice, Kensington charges students several thousand dollars tuition to earn bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees by studying at home.

Friday’s filing was the latest round in a nearly two-year legal fight between the school and the state that began in July 1994 with a previous denial to operate. Since then, the school, which claims a current enrollment of 650 students, has won several court-ordered delays that have enabled it to continue operating.

In the latest filing, Calabro accuses state officials of giving him only five minutes to address the council during the June 1994 hearing that led to the initial denial, of refusing him access at that time to evidence in the case, and of failing to answer his request for a continuance.

The motion also challenges the broader process that was used to evaluate the school, saying state bureaucrats rather than a team of educators that visited Kensington shaped the outcome. It also claims the review team made mistakes and improperly examined many older student files.

Calabro has raised many of the allegations previously, and state officials have generally rejected them, maintaining that Kensington’s evaluation was properly handled. A Superior Court judge in 1994 also rejected many of Kensington’s claims of procedural errors.