Train in Vain

It was an ad in the local Hyderabad, India, newspaper that caught Deepthi Aravapally’s eye. Vancouver’s Kingston College, a private post-secondary institution offering a variety of transferable academic courses, promised a high-quality education in beautiful B.C. and a master of science degree from the American University in London – a British institution that, under an articulation agreement, would grant Kingston graduates an M.Sc. Her father, a bank manager, cashed in family savings of $50,000 to help her pursue her academic aspirations. By September 2003, Aravapally had moved to Vancouver for what she hoped would be a career-advancing education with Kingston College. 


In the spring of 2006, after 2½ years of living and studying in Vancouver, those dreams came crashing down. After completing the program, Aravapally discovered that the degree she’d earned from the American University of London was a fake. She also soon discovered that she wasn’t the only one: Kingston College had been scamming hundreds of students, granting degrees it wasn’t authorized to grant.


Kingston College was one of several private schools operating under the banner of Kingston Education Group, all catering to foreign students. The group had been co-founded in 1991 by prominent Vancouver businessman Michael Lo and his wife, Queenie Tin. In 2006 Lo was a board member of the Private Career Training Institutions Agency (PCTIA) – the industry regulatory agency with which Kingston College was registered. He also sat on the PCTIA quality assurance committee and served as adviser to Premier Gordon Campbell’s Chinese Advisory Committee. 


Given Lo’s profile and involvement in the PCTIA, it was no surprise that when the agency ordered Kingston College to close, the news made headlines. A few months later, another one of the group’s institutions, Lansbridge University, was found to be misrepresenting itself as a degree-granting school and was also shut down; its private high school in Vancouver, Kingston High School, soon followed suit. Hundreds of foreign students lost thousands of dollars and were left holding useless degrees or fast-expiring student visas. Several decided to sue. Before long, the incident had gained the attention of foreign governments that promptly issued warnings against studying in B.C.