School leaves students stranded abroad

SEATTLE – A Seattle-based study-abroad program has shut down, stranding more than a dozen students in Beijing.

WorldLink Education notified students about the shutdown in an Oct. 23 e-mail in which a program official working at the Beijing host school, the Academy of Chinese Language Studies, said she was waiting for an update from Seattle and that classes would resume once teachers were paid.

“That ticked us off, really left us hanging,” Jed Kim, a student from California who paid for 40 weeks of classes and received only nine and a half, told the Seattle Times. “They didn’t give us a timeline or anything.”

Anders Johnson, who along with his wife owns WorldLink and serves as its president and CEO, for several weeks denied responsibility for the closure, saying the Beijing school had been paid in full.

“We are extremely sad of the circumstances of this crisis,” he wrote to the Times in early November. “But we been working all we can to find solutions since the wish of the students has been to remain in China.”

Students had paid their fees in advance to WorldLink, as much $18,000 for the year, including housing. Kim said 16 of them arrived in Beijing just as the school shut down and never attended a single class.

Most of the 67 students from all over the world have either gone home or arranged for classes at other schools in Beijing. Students who arranged housing through WorldLink were evicted from their apartments for unpaid rent.

WorldLink’s Web site said the company had filed for bankruptcy.