Concorde Career Institute Orlando Student Defense Lawyer

Students call about Concorde Career Institute’s Orlando campus at three points: when an instructor or a site reports a conduct problem, when the Academic Dean sends notice of pending dismissal for missing satisfactory academic progress, and, usually too late, after the appeal window has closed. That window is 72 hours, which is the shortest deadline on any Florida campus page on this site.

How do student discipline and dismissal cases work at Concorde Career Institute Orlando?

Concorde is a private, for-profit institution, and that fact sets the frame. A private school is not a state actor: the Fourteenth Amendment does not reach it, there is no constitutional due process claim, and no petition for certiorari to the circuit court. Florida settled the theory in John B. Stetson University v. Hunt, 88 Fla. 510, 102 So. 637 (1924): the relation between a student and an institution privately conducted is “solely contractual in character,” with “an implied condition that the student knows and will conform to the rules and regulations of the institution.” Your case is a contract case, and the contract is the Orlando campus catalog.

It is worth being precise about what you are not getting. Fla. Stat. § 1006.60(3) gives students at every Florida College System institution and state university 7 business days’ written notice, disclosure of all known information including exculpatory material 5 business days out, preponderance with the burden on the institution, an impartial hearing officer, an appeal of right a senior administrator must hear, and at § 1006.60(3)(g) a “legal representative” at “any proceeding, whether formal or informal,” who “may directly participate in all aspects of the proceeding, including … questioning of witnesses.” None of that reaches Concorde.

The contract claim is real, though. In Sharick v. Southeastern University of the Health Sciences, 780 So. 2d 136 (Fla. 3d DCA 2000), a health-professions student dismissed about two months before graduation over one failing grade proved to a jury that the dismissal was “arbitrary, capricious, and/or lacking any discernable rational basis,” and the Third District held his damages were not capped at tuition: lost future earning capacity is recoverable. On retrial a jury awarded $813,000 past and $3.5 million future lost earnings, affirmed in Nova Southeastern University of the Health Sciences, Inc. v. Sharick, 21 So. 3d 41 (Fla. 3d DCA 2009). The limits matter: Tercier v. University of Miami, No. 3D22-1334 (Fla. 3d DCA Aug. 2, 2023), holds that “only specific promises … in a school’s bulletins, circulars[,] and handbooks, which are material to the student’s relationship with the school, are enforceable,” and Jallali v. Nova Southeastern University, Inc., 992 So. 2d 338 (Fla. 4th DCA 2008), reviews academic judgment only for arbitrariness, irrationality, bad faith or violation of law. A breach of contract claim is built on the specific steps the catalog sets out and the campus skipped. And exhaust first: Gamma Phi Chapter of Sigma Chi Fraternity v. University of Miami, 703 So. 2d 497 (Fla. 3d DCA 1997), reversed sanctions resting on “an ex parte fact-finding process which was neither adequate nor fair,” while Gamma Phi Chapter v. University of Miami, 718 So. 2d 910 (Fla. 3d DCA 1998), would not act before internal remedies were exhausted.

Where do Concorde Career Institute Orlando cases come from?

The Orlando campus runs short allied-health programs on tight schedules. The satisfactory academic progress policy divides them into non-term programs, which it names as Dental Assistant, Medical Assistant and Pharmacy Technician, and term-based programs, which is everything else. Progress is measured at the end of every grading and payment period against a 2.0 cumulative grade point average, a 66.67 percent rate of progress and a 150 percent maximum time frame.

Two things make this campus different from a large college. First, the same three officials appear everywhere. The catalog says “[i]nfringements of the Student Code of Conduct are handled by the Concorde Academic Dean, Director of Student Affairs, and Campus President,” and the Academic Dean is also the person to whom a pending academic dismissal is appealed. There is no separate appeal officer, no committee and no hearing body in either policy. At a public Florida college § 1006.60(3)(c) would require an impartial hearing officer and § 1006.60(3)(h) would require that whoever hears the appeal “may not have directly participated in any other proceeding related to the charged violation.” Neither provision binds Concorde. But where the catalog assigns roles and the same person fills two of them, that is the specific, material departure Tercier leaves enforceable and Gamma Phi called neither adequate nor fair. Write down who you dealt with, in what role, on what date.

Second, a dismissal here ends the credential rather than postponing it. Credits from a proprietary career institute frequently do not transfer, and no receiving institution must take them. The catalog adds a bar of its own: “Students who are dismissed for a conduct related violation are not eligible for readmission into any Concorde College/Institute campus.” A conduct dismissal closes the whole chain of campuses, not just this one, which is why the sanction is more negotiable, and more important, than the finding — and why a professionalism finding deserves the care of a formal charge.

Which process are you in, and why does that matter?

The label on the letter picks the decision-maker and the clock, and at Concorde the two tracks overlap in an unusual way. Failing satisfactory academic progress is academic dismissal, resolved through the SAP appeal on the 72-hour clock. But the Student Code of Conduct also lists “failure to maintain satisfactory academic progress” and “failure to pay college fees and/or tuition” among the grounds on which Concorde “reserves the right to discipline and/or dismiss a student,” so the same facts can be charged as a conduct code charge, which carries no published deadline and no published appeal.

Ask in writing which policy you are being processed under, because the answer changes the timing entirely. If it is the conduct code, ask what review is available and by when. Answering in the wrong track spends the only response you get.

What should you do first?

Calendar 72 hours from the moment you are notified. A student notified of pending dismissal “may appeal … in writing to the Academic Dean within 72 hours of notification,” and if no appeal is filed in that window, or the appeal is denied, “the student will be academically dismissed.” Nothing in the policy tolls that. Start writing the same day.

The appeal has four required parts, and all four must be in the document: a statement of the mitigating circumstances with supporting documentation, an explanation of how they contributed to your academic situation, an explanation of what has changed so you can meet the standard next period, and an acknowledged, signed Academic Success Plan prepared with campus academic staff. Missing the signed plan is a common way to lose an otherwise good appeal, so ask for it on day one. Gather medical records, employer letters or other documentation immediately. Preserve email, learning-management timestamps and any written warning you received, and be careful about recording: the campus policy bars recording “any conversation, meeting, or interaction involving employees, other students, or visitors without prior approval from the Campus President.” If the allegation involves generative AI or a similarity score, read the page on AI accusations before you answer.

What does Concorde Career Institute Orlando’s own policy actually say?

Concorde publishes campus-specific catalogs, so the Orlando policies are the ones that apply to an Orlando student. Save a dated copy of each and note the effective dates printed on them.

• Conduct office: no single office. The Student Code of Conduct states that infringements “are handled by the Concorde Academic Dean, Director of Student Affairs, and Campus President.”
• Governing policy: the Student Code of Conduct in the Orlando catalog, with offense categories for persons, property, the operation of Concorde, and welfare, health or safety. No Florida College System rule and no Board of Governors regulation reaches a private institute.
• Academic integrity: the conduct code publishes no separate plagiarism or cheating procedure. It reaches forged records and furnishing false information, but sets out no integrity ladder. No campus-specific route located; ask in writing whether an academic misconduct allegation goes to your instructor, to the Academic Dean, or is charged as conduct.
• Appeal window: 72 hours for a pending academic dismissal, in writing, to the Academic Dean. For a conduct decision, no day-count is published at all: the code says only that students “have the right to request further review in accordance with the school’s ‘Student Complaint & Grievance Policy.’” No campus-specific day-count located for a conduct appeal; ask for yours in writing and keep the answer.
• Standard of proof: the code publishes none. No burden and no evidentiary standard appears in either policy.
• Advisor: not addressed. Neither policy says whether you may bring an advisor, whether that advisor may be an attorney, or whether the advisor may speak, because neither sets out a proceeding at which one would appear. Ask before any meeting, not at the door. At a public Florida college § 1006.60(3)(g) would answer yes to all three.
• Academic standing: the satisfactory academic progress policy sets a 2.0 cumulative grade point average, a 66.67 percent rate of progress and a 150 percent maximum time frame, with Academic Warning, an Academic Success Plan, notice of pending dismissal, the 72-hour appeal, and Academic Probation if the appeal succeeds. Financial aid runs a parallel FA Warning and FA Probation track on the payment period.

One structural point is worth naming. In a term-based program “[o]nly one Academic Warning grading period is permitted,” so the second miss produces notice of pending dismissal, not another warning. And a student on Academic Probation who fails to meet the Academic Success Plan is dismissed without a further appeal step. The plan you sign in week one of a warning period is therefore the document that decides the case, and it should be negotiated as carefully as any sanction.

What can a student defense lawyer do here?

A federal claim arising at Concorde Career Institute Orlando — Title IX, Title VI, or Section 504 and the ADA — is filed in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida, where I am admitted to the bar, so no pro hac vice motion and no sponsoring local attorney is needed. There is no Fourteenth Amendment claim against a private institute, and the contract claim under Stetson and Sharick is a state-law claim. Almost none of these matters reach a courtroom. The campus record decides them:

• Reading the governing policy against the charge or decision letter
• Preparing your account, your documents and your questions
• Testing whether the school followed its own published procedure
• Scrutinising software-based evidence, including AI-detection and similarity reports
• Helping with the written response and the appeal, where policy allows
• Serving as your advisor where the process permits one
• Negotiating sanction terms, notations and disclosure language

What a lawyer can do in the room turns on the policy, and here the policy is silent about advisors, which makes the question one to settle in writing before the meeting. Most of the value sits elsewhere in any event. On a 72-hour clock the work is drafting: assembling the documentation, writing the mitigating-circumstances statement, negotiating a realistic Academic Success Plan, and putting the appeal in front of the Academic Dean complete on the first attempt, because there is no second one.

The enrolment agreement contains a binding arbitration clause

Concorde’s enrolment agreement compels arbitration, and it applies at all four of its Florida campuses. That has to be read before any decision is made about how far to take a dispute, because it governs where a contract claim can be heard and on what terms.

It does not close everything. An arbitration clause does not bar a complaint to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights on Section 504, ADA, Title IX, Title VI or retaliation; it does not bar a complaint to the institution’s accreditor, which is concerned with whether a school follows its own published policy; and it does not bar a complaint to the Florida Commission for Independent Education. Where a nursing programme is involved, the Florida Board of Nursing is a fourth route.

Two further provisions on the record here and worth knowing in advance: Concorde gives 72 hours to appeal or the student “will be academically dismissed,” and a conduct dismissal bars readmission at every Concorde campus nationally, not only the one attended.

Concorde’s other Florida campuses

Concorde operates four campuses in Florida, and which one you attended decides the federal court:

• Orlando — Orange County, Middle District of Florida, Orlando Division
• Tampa — Hillsborough County, Middle District of Florida, Tampa Division
• Jacksonville — Duval County, Middle District of Florida, Jacksonville Division
• Miramar — Broward County, Southern District of Florida, Fort Lauderdale Division

County assignments are under 28 U.S.C. section 89, and I am admitted to the bar of all three Florida districts. The arbitration clause and the 72-hour appeal rule apply across all four.

Common questions about Concorde Career Institute Orlando student cases

How long do I have to appeal a Concorde Career Institute Orlando dismissal?

Seventy-two hours. A student notified of pending dismissal for failing satisfactory academic progress may appeal in writing to the Academic Dean within 72 hours of notification. If no appeal is filed in that window, or if the appeal is denied, the student is academically dismissed. The written appeal must include a statement of mitigating circumstances with documentation, an explanation of how they affected your work, an explanation of what has changed, and a signed Academic Success Plan. Nothing in the policy extends that deadline.

Does the Florida student due process statute protect me at Concorde?

No. Fla. Stat. section 1006.60(3) requires 7 business days of written notice, disclosure of the evidence including exculpatory material 5 business days out, preponderance with the burden on the institution, an impartial hearing officer, an appeal of right, and a legal representative who may question witnesses. It reaches only Florida College System institutions and state universities. Concorde is a private, for-profit institute, so neither that statute nor the Fourteenth Amendment applies. Your protections come from the Orlando campus catalog.

Does Concorde give me a hearing before a conduct dismissal?

The catalog does not promise one. The Student Code of Conduct lists the offenses, says a violation is grounds for suspension of privileges up to dismissal, and states that infringements are handled by the Academic Dean, the Director of Student Affairs and the Campus President. It sets out no notice period, no hearing, no committee, no standard of proof and no deadline, and points only to the Student Complaint and Grievance Policy for further review. Ask in writing for the charge, the evidence and a chance to respond before a decision issues.

This is general information about the matters I handle and the law that applies to them. It is not legal advice about your situation, and the law in this area can change. For advice on your matter, start with the Full Read + Game Plan — your entire file read, straight answers, and exactly what to do next, in what order. Other campuses are covered on the Florida schools page.

This page is informational and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the institution named on it.