Colby McCaskill: Welcome back to Demise Of The Crown. A story about a college in crisis, the things we do to stay in business, and how publicized faith can not always be what it seems. Today we are continuing our investigation into one of the more public forces behind The King’s College’s most recent financial crisis: Primacorp Ventures, and the head-honcho behind it.

Julia Jensen: That’s right. On our ride this week, we’re covering the trail of supposed mismanagement. Of reportedly unfulfilled promises. Of possibly shady business that threatened to devour King’s.

Colby McCaskill: In this episode, we are going to make four stops. We’re going to hear about what happens when a desperate college merges with Primacorp. Then, a story about King’s from a voice we weren’t able to squeeze into the last episode. An in-depth profile on Primacorp’s founder and CEO. And finally, a conversation about accountability and public apologies.

Julia Jensen: Before we get started, we just want to remind you that we are doing the best we can to tell you the story in full. But, as is the case with every story, there are decisions we have to make about the things we touch on. If you would like to know more about the topics and stories that we mention in our program today, our sources, like always, are in the show description, and linked in the transcript. With that, stand clear of the closing doors please. Here is episode three: Previously.

Colby McCaskill: From The Empire State Tribune, in collaboration with Broadway & Exchange podcast, I’m Colby McCaskill.

Julia Jensen: I’m Julia Jensen, and this is Demise Of The Crown. 

Katie: Well they've had financial problems for a while.

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Because it's a small school that got started up on a big $100 million diamond mine loan or something. I think it was a donation. But $100 million, it doesn't go far in secondary education. So they're having some money troubles. And they ended up partnering with Primacorp in 2020 I think during pandemic stuff. 

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And they're saying they're suspending academic operations. They’re not saying closing. But the word suspending academic operations is a very PC way to say ‘we're closing’ because there is no money. If there are no academic operations, then there is no school. There's physical campus and facilities and such, but they can’t accommodate students.

Colby McCaskill: No, this isn’t some student explaining the situation at King’s. This is Katie. She’s an alum of a Canadian college, called Quest University. I first met Katie over a game of Mahjong on the East Side in Manhattan. Katie’s younger brother is my age, and I was up there for dinner and games. In early March this past spring, I was up there once again. When I mentioned the name Primacorp, explaining what was currently going down at King’s, his eyes grew wide and the kitchen became quiet. Katie had recently graduated from Quest University, another college who had a damaging encounter with the investment firm. I got her on the phone the next day.

Katie: I got emails regularly saying: ‘Will you donate?’ I'm still a poor student so I haven't. But I'm sure some of those were during the time that Primacorp was involved and I was honestly less inclined to donate when I knew that there was a big corporation behind it. I thought: Oh, we're good now. I'm not as worried about the longevity of the school because now there's this agreement which I thought was gonna fix things.

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I thought everything was good as far as the alumni knew. With our updates and everything was A-okay. We had a couple of rough patches with the board or what not else, but everything seemed to be flying smooth, smooth sailing. No worries. And then about three weeks ago maybe now, there was one news article posted in the local paper and Squamish BC that was like: ‘Quest university has financial troubles.’ We were like, okay, nothing new. No big deal. That's never been our strong suit as a school. And then a day later there's an announcement from the board being like: ‘We are closing at the end of April 2023.’

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Yeah, I'm not pleased about it. It was a real gut punch to hear that the school is actually—and they're saying they're suspending academic operations, are not closing. But the word suspending academic operations is a very PC way to say ‘we're closing’ because there is no money. If there are no academic operations, then there is no school. There's physical campus and facilities and such, but they can’t accommodate students. So they're currently transferring students who are not graduating this spring. They all have to figure out a new places to go finish their education.

Colby McCaskill: So yeah. Just as Katie said, Quest University collaborated — merged, partnered, whatever word you want to use —  with Primacorp in 2020. I first heard about Quest University when Paul Glader, of our Journalism Department reached out to EST staff to propose writing an Op-Ed about Peter Chung and his involvement in this whole thing. The article was called “We Don’t talk about Peter Chung...and why we should” In the section of the article called: A Cautionary tale of Quest University, Paul summed up the conversation pretty succinctly. You can go read that. We’re also going to expand on that in just a second, including the striking similarities between Quest and King’s.

Julia Jensen: Tell me if you’ve heard this before. Quest University is not like other colleges. Quote, “Quest is unique. Its groundbreaking approach to postsecondary education began as an experiment. Today, Quest University is one of Canada’s important institutions of higher learning.”

Colby McCaskill: Quest is fairly new. It was established in 2007, about, what? 15-16 years ago? The main guy who founded it was named David Strangway. He was a retired President of University of British Columbia, and a well-accomplished geophysicist, having worked for NASA and M.I.T. One of the main guys who funded the whole thing was named Stewart Blusson. He was behind the 100 million dollar diamond mine loan comment Katie made earlier.

Katie:…started up on a big $100 million diamond mine loan or something.

Colby McCaskill: It’s called the Ekati Mine and according to the Financial Post, Stewart Blusson and his co-discoverer Chuck Fipke found it in 1991. None of this is that important.

Julia Jensen: What is important is another big funder of Quest, — a founder of the university — is a guy named Blake Bromley. Bromley through his foundation Vanchorverve called in some of Quest University’s debt in late 2020, meaning that Quest had to, as the Squamish Chief, a local newspaper put it, quote, restructure “itself to pay off Vanchorverve and several other creditors.” The reason Quest was able to make that payment was because they partnered with, surprise, surprise. Primacorp Ventures. So, in late 2020, to stave off impending collapse, Primacorp and Quest struck a deal. Primacorp would use its capital to pay off Quest’s outstanding debts, essentially, quote, “buying the school’s land and campus.” And taking over some of its operations. 

Colby McCaskill: But, as Katie told me, Primacorp supposedly didn’t do that well of a job running their…can you guess? Marketing, admissions, and development. In the official press release for the agreement, Primacorp was expected to, quote “provide comprehensive services for student recruitment, marketing, fundraising and other support.”” Unquote.  Here’s Katie again. 

Katie: I don't know all the details. I know that the recruitment numbers when Primacorp was involved were mind-blowingly low. Usually Quest University has about 150 to 200 students in the incoming class each fall. I know that for the two years of COVID and Primacorp, I think the incoming numbers were like 37 and 16 new students. Not even enough to break even kind of situation. Well into the red and possibly black.

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But again, there's also confounding factors of like it was also when we were post COVID, enough that people could go back into schools and they could do active recruitment. So it's kinda hard to disentangle the two. But me personally, I feel like there could have been more work done on Primacorp’s part. But again, that's entirely subjective from my point of view. From what little I've observed it seems like there was some ‘lack of initiative’ maybe would be the right term…

Colby McCaskill: I asked her what else she would want to know about the situation. 

Katie: What else do I want to know? I would just love to know who decided that having…I just…I don't know. I'm someone who has always been taught, as I'm sure you know based on my family, if you have money you spend it. If you don't have the money, you don't spend it. I'm still kind of flabbergasted to see how an institution, a university that was also backed by a corporation is supposed to be good at doing this, was still able to, for lack of more elegant words, shit the bed so hard on finances. They literally are going from: ‘We're operating’ to ‘Full stop.’ There was no other measures taken to try and mediate it. And maybe there were and they just haven't told us. But it still seems pretty unfathomable that could happen. So that's what my frustration is, is that someone whose job it was to be in charge of finances clearly did not do said job. Because there's no finances. 

Colby McCaskill: But the most heartbreaking thing, at least in my opinion, is that this inadequate work of getting applications; on marketing; on bringing in new students; of and getting good recruitment numbers, of continuing to sustain the college, wasn’t fated.

Katie: And then the saddest part is that when I heard that once Quest University got their admissions department back in the game, they have like 5000 applications or something for this coming fall which now they can't—you know—they have to resend all those offers.

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At the end of the day it not only screwed Quest it also screwed Primacorp out of this agreement and this partnership. So it doesn't do anybody any good. Unfortunately. 

Julia Jensen: On February 22nd, 2023, the executive body for Quest University, called the Board of Governors, decided that they had, quote, “no alternative but to make the responsible decision.” They opted to suspend academic operations at the end of the semester. And hey, we’re going to talk about what a responsible decision means. We’re going to talk about whether we think King’s has done that or not. But that talk is for later in episode six. Right now, we're gonna stick with this storyline. Primacorp came across an educational institution in need of funding, and partnered. Quest publicly stated the expectation that they would take over the job of some of the college’s systems. But, instead, what Quest got was work that wasn’t done well. Leading, not to a , quote “stable path forward,” endquote, but closure. What a turn!  When we first heard this story, the part that was most confusing was how exactly these systems underperformed. And from Sophia, Sarah, and Callie last episode, we heard a little bit about it. But for our next stop, I want to introduce you to someone who you’ve heard from before, but not in full.

Eric: Okay, so yeah, I have three boys, the youngest was born in 2016. We're living in New York City. And in April of 2018, I became a single, a full time single father. So King’s was immensely supportive during that time. 

Colby McCaskill: This is Eric. You heard a little bit from him in episode one. He worked at King’s from 2015 to 2022. Meaning, his time at King’s overlapped with the Thornbury Administration. We’ll talk more about them in episode five. Eric’s time at King’s also intersected with the Presidency of Tim Gibson, and Interim President Stockwell Day. How I got in contact with Eric though, was through Sophia. The two had significant overlap during their time at the college.

Eric: Sophia is a good friend. 

Colby McCaskill: But let’s go back to Eric’s story that I interrupted. He had just experienced a family tragedy. And what did King’s do?

Eric: I remember, the day after, like that happened. You know, I was at work that day. And of course, just all this stuff, my life is falling apart inside of me. But the first person that I told outside of my really, really, really close friends. The first person that I told was Kimberly Thornbury. I'll always remember standing in her office and just telling her about what happened and how she just said: Whatever it takes, and we will support you. And King’s definitely did.

Colby McCaskill: I think this moment was one of the major parts of Eric’s story at King’s. It goes to show how this place, for many, hasn’t been just a job. It’s also been a place of support and genuine community. Eric’s job at King’s was in their digital media department. In 2015, it felt like an upstart. 

Eric: Admissions had been a department I think, for as long as King’s had, obviously, existed. But marketing and communications did not really exist as a department until my colleague Natalie Nakamura, who was hired two weeks before me, and I were hired in August of 2015. So we moved into this really, really small office in the President's suite. I can't remember the number. But everyone who's had that office since then, has had it to themselves, but we shared it. And we also shared it with a student worker as well. So there are three of us crammed in that office. But yeah, my job was to do digital marketing type stuff. I ended up just being the master of the website, developing it and maintaining it.

Colby McCaskill: Eric and his team are the masterminds behind the website. Behind a bunch of the videos you see on the college’s youtube page. They are the ones that  shaped much of the public brand of King’s. Over his time at the school, Eric fell in love with the work. The creative freedom. The caliber of colleagues. The purpose that pervaded every aspect of work there. 

Eric: When I moved to New York from Florida, I was thinking like: Oh, we're gonna be some of the few Christians up here, and we're moving to a dark place. And, like, he totally proved us wrong. Just every step along the way. You know, we just saw that God is doing so much cool stuff that he doesn't necessarily stamp his name on. And, you know, King’s, I felt like, embodied that. Yes, it's a Christian college, but the college is training young people to operate in the real world. Not to just operate in Christian circles. Obviously not to be educated or not to live in a bubble, not to work in a bubble. But you can be raised up and taught. With the, again—I'm trying not to quote the mission here—but you know, just to be raised up and taught through a faith perspective. But also just to understand the real world, and to be confident to work in any setting. And I love that, you know, I still do. So I just really fell, I fell hard for the King's mission.

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Like I felt like we were all on board, in line, to support this mission. And it was a really cool time at the college.

Colby McCaskill: But where Eric’s time at King’s collided with Primacorp, that’s the part that we need to talk about the most.

Eric: Let's see. So that I think was April or May of 2021. And we got called into a Zoom call. And yeah, we were just kind of told that this was happening. Yeah, like no warning or hint of this partnership coming. And, I had known, like, we all had known that King’s is not swimming in cash. Like there's no huge endowment ready to save us or to draw forever or whatever. And we also knew what was happening on the admission side, because of all the stuff that I just talked about, all the challenges that they faced in the face of COVID and stuff. There was definitely no advance warning or indicators that all of a sudden we would be—not only would the college be partnering with this corporation from Canada we had never heard of, we are now their employees. So, yeah, I think up until now you can kind of tell how much the King's College means to me in that community. And to no longer be employees of there? That was kind of a gut punch. I mean, nothing that I blamed anyone for. I don't think I took it personally or anything like that, but it's still jarring. 

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Yeah, going into the partnership, we were of course told how amazing of a deal this was going to be, not just for King’s, but also for us personally. Or for our department, and that no longer were we going to be operating with the limited budget that we had operated with the whole time. Now we have all these resources to really market the college, to really reach out to students across the country, and stuff. We were going to have access to the marketing expertise at Primacorp. And, you know, there was talk about flying us out to Vancouver, or wherever they are in Canada, flying out to the home office, in British Columbia. It's beautiful there, and we were going to have meetings and stuff. You know, there was talk about having really really nice swag. Like, making that. And then of course, that was going to have some wow factor for potential students. Yeah, of course, none of that came to fruition. And, for me personally, we were definitely suspect from day one. Which is completely natural. I kept on drawing comparisons to The Office and Dunder Mifflin and Sabre. Because that company had bought them out and stuff. 

Colby McCaskill: The corporate people that don't really understand, the on-the-ground.

Eric: Yeah. So it could be—they could be—a very principled, successful company, and we would still be suspect, because it happens so suddenly. I don't think that something like that could happen and it would just be like, all positive and sunshine, like, great! I now have a new employer that I know nothing about. But they say everything's going to be even better than it was. 

Julia Jensen: What Eric is describing here is an abrupt end to his employment with TKC. An immediate switch to working for a company called Campus Support. It’s actually one of Primacorp’s educational consulting arms. This sudden change had pretty far reaching implications. 

Eric: It happened pretty quickly. Our whole HR setup changed. And we were officially Primacorp employees. The name of the company was Campus Support, but they were the company, I guess the branch of Primacorp, that we worked for. So we were campus support employees.

Colby McCaskill: As Eric explained it to me, before the Primacorp days, the creative license was essentially infinite.

Eric: Over the years we got to try out with—we got to make some, some 360 virtual reality video, because we just wanted to try it out. And we had the headsets at admissions fairs. And, you know, we got to do stuff like that. And, you know, we made a new website, because we felt like the college needed it, but also because we wanted to, and we could achieve it. 

Julia Jensen: But when Primacorp came in, that dynamic between what was desired and what was pursued, shifted.

Eric: So Campus Support would create the creative for ads, banners and things like that. And then send it to our team for review, and approval, and then it would also get sent to King’s, you know, folks on The King's College side, since we're no longer on the King's College side, for that review and approval. 

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And that advertising definitely took off. You know, money was poured into advertising. But it was not something that was on our plates to work on.

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No, we, yeah, I wouldn't say that we were creating anything. 

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Which, obviously, is a big shift. You know, a lot more money was definitely — more money that we had ever handled for advertising — was getting put into the ad campaigns and stuff. And they had a full on advertising agency, managing everything. So that's expertise and bandwidth that our small team never had. 

Colby McCaskill: Eric’s role changed. He was the approver rather than creator. And, admittedly, it was still a role where—in small ways—Eric’s love of the college could help shape the branding. But he still felt as though his vision was not one Primacorp shared.

Eric: Again, from my experience, Primacorp did not step in and say: You can't work on this. So there wasn't really that much oversight there. And because we owned—King’s owned—the website. Primacorp did not, they didn't step in and try to control branding, or language or messaging, at least within the realm in which I operated.

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But in terms of growth, even creative and professional growth, I didn't see the opportunities for that anymore with The King's College/Primacorp. I talked about the creative freedom that we had under Kimberly Thornbury. I still felt like we had creative freedom, but it just seemed like there was a lot less possible.

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We also felt like we knew King’s the best. And this is a place that, of course, we knew the best and we had personal investment in and we felt like we knew the language, like we knew how to speak to the types of students who would come to King’s. And to have folks who, no matter their expertise or their position, I mean, you got to know the place. And having folks who don't know the place running that. Yeah — that's like…I like finding the right adjectives that cover all the bases. I'm trying to find what that adjective is. It was…disconcerting. Because we knew what the hierarchy was. This was the deal that the college signed. And this is the deal that we signed as employees because no one was forcing us to stay. So, we knew, once we were told, we knew the situation. But I think if anything, even then we can kind of look back—thinking back to it. And I'm sure that my thinking was that: What a shame.

Julia Jensen: Eric decided to move back to Florida a few months after the Primacorp merger. He officially left Campus Support — King’s — about a year later in October 2022.

Eric: Yeah, it's just really sad to see. And you know, I was just thinking a lot about the students, and about my friends who still work there. And you know, just this place that I invested seven years into, that I feel like invested in me, that had this community. And just seeing it go from limping along to crawling to now, I picture someone crawling through the desert and just just kind of like giving up there. Yeah, it is, it is really sad.

Colby McCaskill: At this point, I hope you’re wondering who really is behind all this. If Primacorp is simply the cold corporate face behind these present dubious situations, then is there anyone responsible inside Primacorp?

Julia Jensen: That is a great question! Thanks for asking it. 

Colby McCaskill: The answer to your question is what we are going to turn to next, a profile on an executive-level individual that was involved in not only the King’s and Quest catastrophes, but much, much more.

Julia Jensen: So we kind of teased it at the end of the last episode. But you just heard about Primacorp. How they allegedly dropped the ball on helping Quest University survive. And we’ll be returning to the spring semester at King’s next episode. But for act three this week, we need to talk about Peter Chung, CEO of Primacorp, and one of the main common denominators of the two school closures.

Colby McCaskill: So, if you do a Google search on  the name Peter Chung, what comes up is an animator who has done some shows and movies like Æon Flux and the Animatrix. This is not the guy we are talking about. I bet he’s totally fine. The Peter Chung we are speaking of is more of a businessman. He immigrated to the US from South Korea when he was in his early teens. It's actually a little bit of an American Dream story. Here is Peter telling it himself.

Peter Chung: When I immigrated to North America, at the age of 14, my father was a student. And my mother worked in a sweatshop making ties. Even at this early age, I realized that life wasn't easy. You have to do what you have to do to make a living. So throughout my teenage years, I did various odd jobs, to help my family make ends meet. 

Colby McCaskill: Here is what one of Peter’s friends, Jim, said about Peter’s childhood: 

Jim: he came from kind of a rough neighborhood, in fact, and Peter was a person who liked to fight and he got in a lot of trouble.

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Peter Chung: After graduating from UCLA, I worked for various companies for about five years. In 1982, I started computer training schools. In the following years, I started many different businesses, owning part of a local bank, an import export business, real estate, investment, and development. And at the height of my business career, I had 14 companies under me. And it felt like everything I touched became gold. 

Julia Jensen: As Peter recounts, disaster struck in the early 1990s. 

Peter Chung: As time passed by, I ran into financial difficulties. In the middle of the storm, I did my best to hold on to my companies. But I lost 13 out of the 14 companies I owned. 

Julia Jensen: This is a big part of the story of King’s, because this might be the realest form of foreshadowing I’ve ever experienced.

Colby McCaskill: Those financial difficulties he’s mentioning are not the result of some recession or personal life circumstances. Those, dear listeners, were business choices.

Julia Jensen: You just heard him say that in 1982 he started a computer training school.

Peter Chung: In 1982, I started computer training schools. [Play underneath narrator’s voice]

Julia Jensen: That computer school was called Wilshire Computer College.

Peter Chung: I went to my father and I asked him whether he knew anybody who has a school. So he introduced me to his friend who had a music school and so I rented one classroom in a small office from him. And I advertised, and I got 10 students. There was a six month course. And I was teaching two nights a week, Mondays and Wednesdays. And students came four hours a night.

Colby McCaskill: But there was a problem. The quote unquote “school” wasn’t much of a school.

Julia Jensen: The Province, a British-Columbian newspaper, wrote a story in 2012 about the incident. As they put it, quote, “In the final judgment, handed down in 1993, it was alleged Chung and his companies had committed over 10,000 violations of state business code, including encouraging students to falsify documents so they could obtain federal loans; making misleading statements about employment opportunities; and lying about the school's accreditation.” Unquote.

Colby McCaskill: Here, they quote the final judgment. “Instruction was inadequate, in part, because teachers were not available to teach during the full class time the course was represented to require; WCC lacked adequate placement services; insufficient properly operating equipment was available on which students could practise; and with the possibility of a rare exception, WCC students did not obtain such high-paying jobs after graduation.” Unquote. 

Julia Jensen: Peter lost this case, meaning that he was on the hook for millions of dollars in compensation. But, here’s how Peter described the events.

Peter Chung: We were running into some political pressure from public institutions, because our budget was getting very, very big. And a lot of our students were getting financial aid from government also. And so there was a little bit of a friction between public schools and us

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I was fighting against that and I thought I could take them on. Take the governmental and by myself. At the end of the day, I kind of lost the battle. That's what happened. And so my asset base dwindled down to 5% of what I used to have.

Colby McCaskill: In 1991, he moved his family to Seattle, then, after the judge made his decision in 1993, Peter started another education business.

Narrator: Meet Dr. Peter Chung, President and CEO of the Eminata group, a multimillion dollar education based company…

Colby McCaskill: Eventually moving it to Canada.

Narrator:…headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia. 

Colby McCaskill: From Vancouver, he also started Primacorp Ventures. Together, Primacorp and Eminata begin to build an empire of for-profit colleges. That’s the other thing here. Peter is not running college for the sake of education. To him, this is a business opportunity to make money. He bought University West Canada in 2008, then sold it again in 2015. At the time of that acquisition, another Western-Canadian newspaper, the Times Colonist, reported that, quote, “the Eminata Group. Based in Vancouver…has annual revenues of about $50 million and owns 30 education centres across Canada, including CDI College.”,” unquote. 

Julia Jensen: One quick story that I think really highlights the business practices of Peter and his Eminata group is about one of his many educational institutes, Vancouver Career College. Now, Vancouver Career College was founded in 1996. And, as anyone can see, it can be shortened to the acronym VCC. Simple, right? Well no, it can’t. Because there is another college, started much earlier than Vancouver Career, called 

Vancouver Community College. Vancouver Community also can go by VCC, and is the way more respected school. Vancouver Community sued Vancouver Career over the use of their acronym. Yes, this is really hard to talk about. They’re names are like the absolute vices of radio journalists. An article by the Times Colonist reads that specifically, Vancouver Community argued that quote “in May 2009, Vancouver Career College changed its website to VCCollege.ca, and paid for keywords in Internet searches such as ‘VCC’ and ‘Vancouver Community College,’” endquote. Peter Chung’s college initially won the case, but then the decision was overturned on appeal. In an article on the appeal, The Vancouver Sun wrote that one of the Judges on the board of appeals quote “ordered a permanent injunction against the private college from using ‘VCC’ and ‘VCCollege’ in respect of its Internet presence.”

Colby McCaskill: Imagine opening a for-profit college in the same city, with the same acronym, as a college that has been there at least 30 years longer than you. 

Julia Jensen: Another college that I want to tell you about is CDI College, one of Peter’s more publicly distrusted colleges. Strap in. CDI college is really big. That’s the first thing you need to know. Big, as in widespread. According to their website, CDI has over 20 locations, spanning five of Canada’s provinces. The other thing you need to know is that it is absolutely infamous for scamming students out of money with little to no return.

Colby McCaskill: Much of the media attention for this was stirred by an investigative journalism watchdog tv show aired by CBC, one of Canada’s leading news organizations.

Julia Jensen: Marketplace, the name of the investigation team, produced a 20 minute piece in which they fact-checked the claims of CDI with student testimonials and third-party accreditation opinions. The consensus was damning.

Travis Dhanraj: But we find hundreds of poor reviews across multiple sites. And many online students tell us they're higher Ed was a huge letdown.

Unnamed interview: Wasn't organized. It just seemed very chaotic. 

Unnamed interview: The subjects are outdated stuff taken out of high schools. 

Unnamed interview: The students, we were basically teaching ourselves.

Julia Jensen: Undercover Marketplace investigators were given the runaround with accreditation compliance. The admissions counselors were said to be more like scam-call centers. And the bad reviews are truly everywhere online. And this wasn’t just one newsoutlet’s findings. A few years before this investigation, one of CDI’s nursing programs was sued over what the plaintiffs described as actions that, quote, “have been persistently motivated by economic profit considerations at the expense of the interests of the members of the Class,” endquote. Essentially, inadequate education was not reflected in the tuition price.

Colby McCaskill: This place has made National headlines about corruption and bad business practices for the past decade.

Julia Jensen: But, as we have yet to discuss, as we have been avoiding mentioning for the past two acts, Peter Chung’s reactions and explanations in response to these claims have been far from apologetic. And to dive into that, we have arrived at our fourth and final stop.

Colby McCaskill: Now, one of the bigger questions that arises when we start talking about Peter Chung, is how much of this is actually his fault? Right? Like, these shady businesses could just be bad employees. Or bad timing. Or hubris. Not malicious sabotage for personal gain. And for this section of the episode, we’re going to try to do our best to keep our opinions to ourselves until the end. Here, for you, are the facts before anything else. 

Julia Jensen: So we just highlighted four of the many education-based ventures that Peter Chung has been involved in. And, for each of those, he has not accepted responsibility. Not for the poor management. Not for lawsuits. Or any of the destruction that followed.

Colby McCaskill: The earliest instance we mentioned, wilshire computer college. That debacle in the early 1990s. Remember he was sued in a class action. That   judge for this case wrote in the final judgment (section 1.1.4), that his practices were found to be, quote, “unfair, unlawful, and fraudulent.” He was ordered to pay. But he denies that he’s actually responsible. As he said in an interview with The Province, that Canadian newspaper we mentioned earlier, quote, “I never admitted to wrongdoing - to this day I don't.”

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Julia Jensen: And then there was Vancouver Career College. The courts eventually decided that Career was culpable for a “passing off” violation. According to the official appeal decision, he had indeed committed “Internet poaching.” Judge Saunders argued that, “the appellant is entitled to a permanent injunction,” Or, in other words, Vancouver Career must stop using the name, as doing so is violating trade-mark law. Peter Chung was quoted in the initial decision writing to Vancouver Career President, Mr. Dorn. He said, that, quote, “I would like to assure you that we, at no time, try to present ourselves as Vancouver Community College.” However, the appeal court later argued that, quote, “As to passing off, the claim is established,” Really, the Canadian legal system fact checked Peter, saying: No, in fact, you are culpable.

…

Colby McCaskill: At essentially the same time, Peter Chung was also head of the Eminata Group which had bought CDI college 7 years earlier. As we explored earlier, CDI, according to many former students, does not deliver on its promises. But what does CDI claim is happening? Well CDI argues that it quote “takes all complaints seriously,” endquote. It also asserts that while it holds itself to a high level of educational excellence, quote, “it is possible there might cases where employees may do something not condoned by the College.” Endquote.

Julia Jensen: Peter Chung, in his statement to the Marketplace team, doesn’t address the specifics of their investigation. Instead, he maintains that, quote, “We always strive to prepare our students with industry relevant training, leading them to excel in the field of their choice after graduation,” endquote. And says that they are “continuously looking for ways to improve.”

…

[music break for that to linger]

…

Colby McCaskill: It’s important to remember how concurrently all these situations are happening at the same time. A little over two weeks before Marketplace published its investigation findings, King’s was having to rightsize and seek alternative funding sources. Two months after the Marketplace investigation into CDI, Quest University was announcing its closure.

Julia Jensen: Oh! And Quest, that other college that closed down after a buyout by Primacorp Ventures, Peter’s company. Has he publicly admitted fault? Well, no. Actually, a few days after the board of Governors released their statement, The Squamish Chief, that local paper, published another article. Reportedly, to alleviate their debt, Quest University allowed Primcorp to purchase their land, and then lease it back to them. As it turns out, that land has been up for sale since late 2022. 

Colby McCaskill: You heard that right. Primacorp, the company that dropped the ball on some of the systems that Quest needed to continue, is the very same company that is selling off its real estate assets. In their press release, Quest maintained that the university is still planning on existing no matter where they reside. In their understandably exasperated statement, Quest said that, quote, “Primacorp is the landowner; Quest University is the tenant. Quest is still a university whether it resides in the Garibaldi Highlands, down by Oceanfront, or smack in the middle of Brackendale,” endquote. Which must be some kind of Canadian dig at Brackendale because I don’t get it.

Julia Jensen: So Quest, a college that is small and unique, finds itself in major debt to one of its founding contributors. Primacorp steps in to save Quest from imminent collapse. But then, when Primacorp doesn’t do a good enough job running the college, they turn around and sell the land.

…

Julia Jensen: And let’s not forget King’s. Colby and I talked with many students, Alum, faculty and staff that had personally experienced the effects of Primacorp Ventures. 

Dru: We thought the Peter Chung thing was gonna make it somewhat—that was the first time that most of us were like: Well, this might be a financial model that works. Not knowing the details behind it.  

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Ben: It's a dream where you're gonna make more money. You don't need more classroom space. You don't need more seats. We'll do everything online. We'll just buy these online chalkboards and this will be great. The pitch sounds really good. 

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And I'm gonna give you guys millions of dollars in scholarship money. It sounds too good to be true. But it's a good pitch. It's a good pitch from the guy. 

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Olivia: From my view, Primacorp. I mean, yeah, I think they're the reason. 

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Ben: Honestly, it sounds like a South Park episode. It sounds like this guy from another country comes in from Private Equity and offers you the sun and the moon and then he ends up buying South Park Elementary. It just sounds like something from a South Park episode. When I was reading it, I was like: you gotta be freaking kidding me. 

Colby McCaskill: I mean, this is a little bit of a spoiler of an upcoming development, but just listen to the student reaction to the news that David Leedy announced in late April 2023.

David: Okay, big news. The Primacorp separation is official. It’s done. 

[Cheers]

Julia Jensen: But, as we learned last episode, the dissatisfaction that the King’s community experienced as a result of Primacorp, as a result of Peter Chung, is complicated. It was on account of the Primacorp partnership that Colby and I could even attend King’s at all.

Olivia: But also I don't really blame King’s for partnering with them because if King’s didn’t partner with them, they would have sunk years ago anyway. 

…

Sarah: It's been a repeated pattern of people coming in, giving us money, and us hoping that it'll be enough. I mean, that's exactly what Primacorp did too, they came in and said: We have ways to give you a lot of income. And we said: Yes, okay, we need it.

…

Before Primacorp we wouldn’t have survived. Primacorp is the one that saved us.

Colby McCaskill: So, what’s our personal conclusion? Has Peter Chung himself been personally guilty for malicious mismanagement and profiting off deception? Or does that blame lie more with a multitude of individuals at his many companies, and not with him? 

Julia Jensen: As for me and Colby, we have our own ideas that have been shaped by not only researching this story, but living through it. 

Colby McCaskill: In my opinion, I think that there is great evidence to conclude that Primacorp Ventures did not follow through on its commitment to aid King’s in its educational endeavors. And having lived through this past year, having experienced the hurt that accompanied the ambiguity, I personally cannot hold Primacorp as innocent. At the same time, I can’t know exactly what went on in Peter’s head through these past years. It’s hard to say if the catastrophic collaboration was lined with malice on his end. So, yes, while Primacorp saved King’s from imminent closure in 2021, it ultimately acted as a large contributor to its most recent financial crisis.

…

Julia Jensen: In my opinion, Peter Chung is a mysterious figure. We never really heard directly from him. I hadn’t ever heard his voice. Yet somehow he and Primacorp seemed to be the reason why we were able to have a school at all for the past several years, and also part of why we probably won’t in the years to come. Somewhere behind that corporation, and a 40 million dollar mansion, lies a man whose influence was the most quiet — yet somehow the most powerful. It’s no surprise that several news articles cite him as the potential (or already existing) salvation figure for King’s. But as we explored in the last episode, that salvation was not without destruction.

…

Colby McCaskill: But no matter our opinions on the situation, we hope that you know, now more than ever, that this situation at King’s is not out of nowhere. It comes from desperate decisions with business men who have decades of reporting done on their shady practices. A man that found the college when it was at its most vulnerable. And there's one thing that, in my opinion, the most worrisome part of this story. The King’s College has not apologized. This is actually like a thing. We’ve gone through every community update. Every email we’ve received from the Board of Trustees. Not one mention of repentance. In a way, in a very real way, King’s has acted like Peter Chung. No apologies. No remorse. No repentance. And King’s is a professedly Christian School. What are we to do with that? How are we to move on? With closure, but not emotional closure.

Julia Jensen: We want to continue to tell you this inside story about the past year at The King’s College. Which is why next episode we’re going to return to the past spring semester at King’s. It is during that time that ambiguity, possibilities, and hopelessness collided continually. Perhaps…permanently scarring its reputation. But that’s next week, on Demise of the Crown

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Colby McCaskill: Thank you for listening to our show. Thank you especially Matthew Peterson, Producer of the Broadway And Exchange podcast. And Angelina Ispir, our social media coordinator. 

Julia Jensen: Myrian Orea is our Executive Editor. And big thanks to Rob Bruder of Postmillennial Media. 

Colby McCaskill: This show was produced and edited by me, Colby McCaskill

Julia Jensen: And me, Julia Jensen. 

Colby McCaskill: Thank you to all who lended their voice and time for this project. 

Julia Jensen: Demise Of The Crown is a production of Empire State Tribune and the Broadway & Exchange Podcast.