"In 1991, the company was not profitable. Curriculums were out of date, and while it was a real company with a nice history, it couldn't support itself," the CEO said in a Virginia Business interview earlier this year. "I saw a tremendous value in a company that nobody had paid much attention to."

But a lot had to change if Bechtle was going to get his students the jobs they wanted. There had to be tougher admissions criteria, more market-driven programs and better facilities. "It became our No. 1 goal to get higher salaries for our students, and to do that we had to produce a quality product," Bechtle said. "And we've been doing that. Our placement rates are as good as or better than many four-year schools."

But on Tuesday, the wind shifted. The Illinois attorney general's office surprised the company with a consumer-fraud lawsuit.

So began a chain of events that pummeled this aggressive training contender.

According to student affidavits and other documents filed in the Illinois lawsuit, Computer Learning Centers wasn't getting the job done at one of its schools in suburban Chicago. Teachers left in the middle of courses, classes were overcrowded, and promises made during admissions interviews weren't kept. A handful of students got fed up and filed complaints with the Illinois State Board of Education and the Illinois attorney general.

Susan Hilty was one of those students. She had been working as a manager for a Circuit City store near Computer Learning Centers' Lombard, Ill., school, which later moved to Schaumburg, Ill. She was making about $50,000 a year, but she was interested in a career in computers. After seeing an ad in the Chicago Tribune, she visited the school. Hilty says an admissions counselor told her that in less than seven months she'd be back to work in a job paying about $50,000. The choice between four years of college or six months of computer training was an easy one. Hilty signed up. It didn't seem to be much of a risk, because the counselor assured her that the school's course credits were transferable to area colleges.

Because Hilty had little computer experience, the counselor said she'd have to take a business systems program before she could enroll in the network administration program she was really interested in, according to the complaint. So she quit her job and paid her first $9,019.84 for classes, books and fees.

She says she started seeing problems with her first class: The school was overcrowded, and books arrived late or not at all. But she stuck with it. Then the network administration program wasn't being offered when she needed it. The delay was costly: She was now in it for 14 months instead of six. She paid the school another $12,850, plus more for books and supplies. When she finally did get the class, the instructor quit two months into the course, but the students kept coming. Hilty says they would sit there for hours, hoping for some word from the director of the school. In February, another instructor arrived, but wasn't certified to teach material required for the course, she says. Anything she learned about computing during that time, she says, was self-taught.

So she wrote to Reid Bechtle, but he never responded to her concerns, she says. Bechtle, who was interviewed in June and July for this story, declined comment last month, referring all questions about Hilty's allegations and the company to Michael Geczi, a public relations representative in New York. Geczi, however, only says that "these guys have been really knocked around this year, and they're tired of commenting."

Hilty's allegations were backed up by other students who filed complaints. Janie Peterlin, Brian Atwood and Edward Youkhanna tell similar stories, and their complaints prompted simultaneous investigations by the Illinois State Board of Education and the state attorney general's office. During the next six months, each group gathered data and interviewed students and teachers.

On Jan. 21, 1998, according to court filings, the attorney general's office sent undercover investigator Edward Gamble to the Schaumburg school. He met with admissions counselor Matthew S. Tolf, who told him that he could expect to earn as much as $62,000 upon graduation. Tolf also said that Computer Learning Centers' credits were transferable to colleges, although they are not.

The attorney general's office decided that it had enough evidence to file a suit alleging that the Schaumburg school violated the Illinois Private Business and Vocational Schools Act and the Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act by giving students misleading and fraudulent information.

The Illinois State Board of Education independently issued an order that prevented Computer Learning Centers from enrolling students or marketing its services for 30 days. Also the U.S. Department of Education put 21 of Computer Learning Centers' schools on heightened cash-monitoring status because many of its students pay for their classes with federally guaranteed loans.

Bechtle denied the charges. But he did admit there had been some management problems at the Schaumburg location. "We're not perfect, but we did not break the law." He says he never lost the belief that his employees were doing the right thing.

Tom Hernandez, a spokesman for the Illinois State Board of Education, would not discuss details of his office's investigation. But the Illinois training centers did get a reprieve. "We opted not to extend the order based on a provisional agreement in which [Computer Learning Centers] agreed to do certain things," Hernandez said earlier this year. But the board kept investigating.

Right after the Illinois flare-up, stock analysts believed the allegations lacked substance. "The complaints, on a percentage basis, do not involve a lot of students, but they are in a heavily regulated business," Robert W. Peterson said in July. Peterson is an analyst with Minneapolis-based Piper Jaffray. "But even one student can make a big ... noise."

Computer Learning Centers seemed to be resolving its problems when it reached a settlement with the state attorney general's office in June. The school denied any liability or violation of any law, but it agreed to pay a penalty of roughly $500,000 and to create an ombudsman program for handling unresolved student complaints.

The settlement pushed the company's stock price back up to nearly $30 a share, but as of early 1999, the ombudsman program wasn't working to Hilty's satisfaction. "I got a letter from the ombudsman offering me a $2,000 settlement, and I rejected it," she says. "There was supposed to be an arbitrator appointed to help us with the dispute, but I haven't heard from anyone."

The attorney general's office says that the process is slow but under way. "At this point there are two arbitrators chosen, and we are in the process of working out a schedule," spokeswoman Lori Corral said in December.

Bechtle and others roll out success stories that counter the Illinois complaints. Bechtle says Computer Learning Centers' customers get jobs far quicker than graduates from community colleges and liberal arts universities. Employers are paying Computer Learning Centers' grads nearly $30,000 to fill their growing pool of vacant jobs, he says.

"In the last six months we've hired about 30 ... graduates" of Computer Learning Centers, confirms Gordon Howard, director of information technology for Fairfax-based Information Analysis Inc. His company has been hiring Computer Learning Centers' students for two decades. "All the vacancies we have right now are fueled by year 2000 work. And we find that this is a very good place to start graduates. They have the basics, and then we put them through our training program."

While things were looking pretty bleak in Illinois, things in Virginia weren't too bad. Although student complaints had been filed with the commonwealth's consumer-affairs office in 1996 and March 1998, they had been resolved. And students like Jeff Hendrickson and Alvin Bailey are pretty pleased with their training here.

Hendrickson used to earn more than $80,000 in New York City designing textiles for men's clothing. It was an exciting and lucrative career, but things dried up in the textile business, and Hendrickson lost his job.

He was forced to leave Manhattan and move into the basement of his parents' Ohio home. "I tried to get a job for seven months," he says. "But I just couldn't get hired anywhere." Finally a friend told him he should be working with computers.

"When I heard about the client-server program at Computer Learning Centers, I knew that's what I wanted." He traded designing fabrics for designing web pages. He got a job upon graduating -- he won't say how much it paid -- and just six months later was offered $7,000 more to be a webmaster for Vienna-based CMS Information Services. "This was most definitely worth it," he says of his computer training. "I have been very fortunate."

Bailey, a Computer Learning Centers student in Alexandria, thinks the accusations and negative press are a bad rap. Yes, one of his classes had too many students -- 54 -- but Computer Learning Centers eventually split the class into two groups. Bailey thinks the biggest complainers are the students who don't even come to class. "Those who complain usually aren't doing well," he says. Computer Learning Centers provides the tools, "but you have to want it. ... It's hard work."

After the Illinois settlement, things seemed to look brighter. Computer Learning Centers' stock hovered somewhere around $25 in July, and it looked as if the complaints had settled down.

Then the whole cycle began again.

In November the Maryland Higher Education Commission fined the company $80,000 for violations of state regulations at the Laurel, Md., school. Computer Learning Centers has appealed.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Education is looking into the Alexandria and Manassas campuses, where the agency said it found violations of federal student loan regulations. Computer Learning Centers expects to resolve the issues raised in the report. In Texas, the company was ordered to refund tuition to about 200 students who failed admissions tests but were still signed up for courses. The school is negotiating with state officials to try to reach a settlement in that case.

The company's stock has returned to its downward spiral. Securities analysts have warned of future regulatory problems. Weil, who in June was among the company's defenders, stopped covering the stock in November. "It looked like the clouds had dispelled, but new clouds came on the horizon, ... and in the midst of it all, the company stopped returning my calls for a period of 10 days," he recalls. "I kept trying to get in touch with them. As a securities analyst, I cannot serve my clients if I can't communicate with [management] at critical points."

On Dec. 16, company officials announced that they would hire another top executive, Marie Bennett, to handle regulatory compliance issues. Two days after the higher-education veteran officially joined the team, Illinois flared up again.

The Illinois State Board of Education again ordered the company to stop enrolling students at the Schaumburg school. The school was given until Jan. 19 to respond to the deficiencies cited or face a hearing and possible closure. According to a news release by the Board of Education, the action followed several months of investigation and analysis "that show sloppy record-keeping, especially in the areas of student refunds and job placement, and possible efforts by [the company] to impede the state board's investigation." The board said refunds were "improperly calculated, recorded or paid out" 60 percent of the time for the two years audited, and the school gave students misleading job placement statistics, the release said. "For example, of the 110 students that [the school] claimed it helped find jobs, 72 actually found work by themselves before or during their enrollment."

Bechtle isn't talking about this turn of events, but a company release says there are mistakes in the board of education report. The company notes that half of the miscalculated refunds were for sums less than one dollar, and that "most of the other alleged incorrect refunds were, in fact, correctly made."

After a year of crests and troughs, it's hard to predict what's on the horizon for Computer Learning Centers. The demand for the company's primary service -- work force training and retraining -- is incredibly strong, and its CEP has moved quickly to gain market share.

But Computer Learning Centers' growing pains have been severe, and questions about its business practices are scaring off analysts such as Weil at Friedman, Billings, Ramsey. He believes that waves of uncertainty will continue to buffet the company's stock for some time to come. "It's like being out to sea," he says, "without an anchor."