IT school bankruptcy leaves 60 students out of pocket

Dozens of African students have been left in the lurch following the bankruptcy and closure of a private IT school in the European Quarter in Brussels.

Ecole-IT on Rue du Trône offered private bachelor’s and master’s degree programmes in computer science, both in Brussels and at three campuses in France, for a significantly higher cost than a standard university or college.

An administrator has been appointed to oversee the bankruptcy proceedings, but the premises are already empty and the 60 remaining students in Brussels will no longer receive a degree and are unlikely to have any tuition costs refunded.

These degrees - which come at the cost of €7,900 per academic year of study - were never recognised in Belgium, according to an investigation by French-language news outlet RTBF.

The school had already drawn the attention of Belgium’s immigration office last year when, citing concerns that the school would facilitate illegal migration, it refused to grant new visas to its students.

The resulting decline in new students led the school to end the last financial year with a loss of more than €1.2 million, but the RTBF investigation found that Ecole-IT continued to recruit foreign students, particularly from North and Sub-Saharan Africa.

“They carried on recruiting students in Brussels even though the Belgian immigration office had officially stated that no further visas would be granted,” one former lecturer told RTBF. “These shenanigans have to stop.”

All of the school’s students at the time of its closure came from African countries, namely Cameroon, Senegal, Benin, Congo, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco.

“Countless parents in Africa have paid astronomical sums of money to send their children to study in Brussels, and for what, in the end? For nothing,” one 29-year-old student from Cameroon told RTBF.

“There wasn’t a single Belgian at the school. They deliberately sought out vulnerable students.”

Another student said they were worried that they would be forced to leave the country when their student visa expires if they cannot gain acceptance into another programme: “I had two years to complete my studies and they had spent a lot of money. And now, without a degree, it’s as if I’d come to Belgium for nothing.”

The insolvency administrator already informed students that they should not hold out for refunds, as the school’s debt is simply too great, and lecturers at the three French campuses fear they will not be paid wages that have long been past due.

According to RTBF, the two founders of the school have already moved onto new ventures as franchisees of various Delhaize shops in Brussels and La Louvière.

One member of the school’s management team told RTBF, under condition of anonymity, that the school’s financial struggles were the fault of its students, who he said owed between more than €200,000 in unpaid fees.

The same employee claimed that more than €1 million were injected by the shareholders in order to save the school, without success.

An estimated 200 students enrolled in the three French campuses in Valenciennes, Amiens and Orléans are also affected by the school’s bankruptcy and closure.