Ex-college recruiter sues over firing

An ex-technical college employee fired for not recruiting enough students is suing Pinnacle Career Institute for allegedly violating the federal Higher Education Act.

Plaintiff Tatyana Tasheva Gospodinova claims Pinnacle Career Institute breached “clear public policy” when it terminated her for failing to meet enrollment quotas of for-profit online courses, according to a lawsuit she filed Tuesday in Jackson County Circuit Court.

She contended the majority of Pinnacle’s students receive government-backed loans and grants, making the college subject to federal higher education laws that ban the compensation of recruiters based on the numbers of students they enroll.

“Pinnacle is in flagrant violation of the compensation ban,” plaintiff’s attorney Aaron Schwartz argued in the petition.

Efforts to contact Pinnacle officials weren’t successful. Neither Blake Faulkner, Pinnacle’s president and chief operating officer, nor Kari Faken, Pinnacle’s spokeswoman, returned phone calls seeking comment by press time.

Congress passed the Higher Education Act in 1965 to monitor federal financial aid programs. The law later was amended to include the compensation ban as a way to stem fraud and abuse, Schwartz wrote in the lawsuit. Schwartz didn’t immediately return a phone call requesting an interview.

The law specifically bans any commissions, bonuses or other incentives to college or university employees for securing enrollments or financial assistance to students.

“The purpose of the incentive compensation ban was to prevent schools from hiring head-hunters whose only pay incentive was to sign up large numbers of students, regardless of their academic needs,” wrote Schwartz, an attorney with Wallace, Saunders, Austin, Brown & Enochs in Overland Park, Kan.

The compensation ban, which was added in 1992 in response to reports of colleges enrolling unqualified students just to capture federal financial aid, extends to the termination of employees for failing to enroll a sufficient number of prospective students, Schwartz added.

The lawsuit names as a defendant Manufacturers Technical Institutes Inc., which is doing business as Pinnacle Career Institute.

Pinnacle’s corporate headquarters is in Belton. It has two campuses in Kansas City, a campus in Lawrence, Kan., plus a Kansas City building for online class recruitment, where Gospodinova was hired in March 2010 as an online admissions coordinator.

Pinnacle terminated her in June 2010 for “failure to meet performance standards,” according to a July 2010 letter from a Pinnacle human resources manager. The letter was provided as an exhibit in the lawsuit.

The letter outlined that the plaintiff had a goal of submitting 44 applications in a period of five months, but she only turned in 10 applications during that time. The letter notes that she didn’t turn in any applications during the month of July even though she wasn’t employed there that month.

The plaintiff is suing on a count of wrongful termination. She seeks actual damages for lost wages plus punitive damages.

The case is Tatyana Tasheva Gospodinova v. Manufacturers Technical Institutes Inc. d/b/a Pinnacle Career Institute. No case number has been assigned.