Latvian college denied accreditation over illegal immigration risk

The Latvian Higher Education Council has refused accreditation to Latvian Business College amid concerns that its prospective foreign students might pose illegal immigration risks, public television reported.

The college has appealed the ruling at the Education and Science Ministry and is also determined to seek justice in court.

The Higher Education Council refused to accredit the college after security services and other authorities raised concerns that the college's attempts to enroll a very high number of foreign students, might cause illegal immigration risks.

It is thought that the foreign students might have been the college's way of saving its business, as the number of enrollments had been plummeting in recent years.

This past summer, the Higher Education Council started an extraordinary accreditation procedure for the Latvian Business College amid concerns about an unsupervised enrollment of foreign students, more than 20 students' complaints about tuition quality and communication problems, as well as suspicious financial deals.

The college's administration had said in its report that the college intended to admit students from India, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Cameroon and other countries, even though an expert commission had found that the college's teaching staff did not have sufficient language skills to train students from these countries.

Furthermore, applicants were required to pay 200 euros (211.4 U.S. dollars) to the college even before it was clear if they had been admitted or not. The money was not repaid to those who were turned down or did not receive Latvian residence permits.

"It has been written in all agreements with the students that this money would not be returned," said the college's director Normunds Gutmanis.

Last year, Latvian Business College submitted to the Academic Information Center nearly 2,600 education documents for verification. This means that the applicants might have paid about 300,000 euros in total to the college, which is about as much as the college's reported 2015 profit.

The document's examination revealed that nearly 1,000 of the applicants did not even have secondary education and 13 education documents were found to be fake.

The Latvian Foreign Ministry and Security Police also came to the conclusion that the college had not been very particular in the selection of its students and that several of them might have enrolled at the Latvian college with the aim to settle down in an EU country.

This and last year, the Latvian migration authority refused residence permits to nearly 100 foreigners who wanted to study at Latvian Business College, and of the 58 foreigners who were enrolled at the college, 44 had dropped out by the end of the first year.(1 euro =1.06 U.S. dollars) Endit