Complaint Review: Brooks College - Long Beach California

I attended Brooks College in 2002 for about a year. I don't even know how I got lured into this school but somehow I found it and thought this was the place for me. Being young and naive and still pretty fresh out of high school, this was the school that was going to make my dreams of becoming a fashion designer true. I met with my advisor that made everything sound so easy and sold me on the idea of how I wouldn't have to come out of pocket on anything because he would take care of all the financial aspects of it through grants, scholarships and a "few" loans. Not knowing anything about loans and the debts afterwards I signed my life away. The whole time he assured me how everything was o.k to sign on my own because I was 18 already and didn't need any parental guidance.

Six months in, I realize how truly hard and demanding it really is and our teachers start telling us how the chances of any of us becoming a fashion designer are slim to none and we'll be lucky to end up as a designer's assistant. Meanwhile, it seemed like the list of materials, supplies and books needed got longer and longer and not to mention the ridiculous cost for them. Not having money for supplies I spoke to my advisor about all these expenses I was promised I wouldn't have to worry about. But ofcourse he had it all under control getting me the "credit" in the student store in forms of thousands of dollars in loans. It seemed like everytime I needed something, I never had enough credit left even though he would request two to four thousand dollars loans at a time. Being completely naive, I never really thought twice about it until now.

After falling behind in most of my classes and starting fail different subjects, I thought this was definitely not for me and I should change my major. With the new semester coming up soon, I decided to talk to my advisor. Come to find out he's no longer there and I have no advisor at the moment! I speak to somebody else and manage to change me major to fashion merchandise.

After our break is over and classes start again, I get my new schedule for my new major. Well turns out none of the teachers on my schedule have me in their classes and I am in still in fashion design classes. I get marked absent which of course is not like missing regular school and coming back with a note. I go through this whole mix up for two weeks! I basically have to find a way to fix it myself with both sets of classes by getting signatures and releases. I finally get tired and drop out. I try to sell my books at the schools book sales to get back some money for them but come to find out none of them are good anymore beacuse there are now new editions and my books are now worthless.

Being that I am now in serious debt and have absolutely nothing to show for it. I decide to continue my education at my local community college. Surprise, surprise none of my credits are transferrable and I have to start from scratch again except now I owe thousands and thousands of dollars for basically nothing.

Fast forward 10 years now. I am married with kids, I have no degree, my debt amount is still to high to add more on for any other trade school. The school is now closed. I still owe over seven thousand dollars in student loans that we are still paying on with nothing to show for it. Iv'e heard of lawsuits floating around out there against Brooks College on the internet but I have never been directly contacted about any of them. I feel like we're just throwing money down the toilet at this point. Is there anything that can be done? Was I taken advantage of with loans I never saw?