Med College Hialeah Student Defense Lawyer

Med College is a for-profit institution in Hialeah, in Miami-Dade County, licensed by Florida’s Commission for Independent Education and participating in federal student aid. Federal disputes go to the Southern District of Florida, Miami Division.

The 2025 cohort was nine candidates, and that is the whole point

In the Board of Nursing’s 2025 reporting year, Med College’s registered nursing programme had nine first-time candidates, of whom seven passed — 77.78%, which sits above the 76.05% associate-degree benchmark. I would not build anything on that figure and neither should anyone advising you. With nine candidates, one more failure puts the programme at 66.67% and one more pass puts it at 88.89%. The number describes nine people, not a programme.

What the cohort size actually tells you is more useful than the rate. A nursing programme graduating around nine candidates a year is very small, and small programmes behave in identifiable ways. The same one or two faculty members teach, evaluate and often decide your appeal. There is rarely a committee in any meaningful sense. Progression decisions are made informally and documented afterwards, sometimes thinly. Every one of those features is a weakness in the school’s position if you know to look for it, because Florida law asks whether the institution followed its own published procedure — and a school that decides things informally frequently cannot show that it did.

At a school this size, the record is the case

The single most productive step is a written request for the complete record relied on in your dismissal: the evaluations, the grade calculations, the attendance data, the written warnings, the minutes or notes of whatever meeting decided it, and the specific policy provision applied. Ask for it in writing and keep the request. At a small institution one of three things follows. You get the record and it does not support the decision, which is your case. You get a record that contradicts what you were told verbally, which is a better case. Or you are told no record exists beyond the letter — which, where the handbook promised a documented process, is the strongest position of the three.

How Florida measures a nursing programme, and why the number matters to your case

Section 464.019(5), Florida Statutes, ties a nursing programme’s standing to the passing rate of its first-time NCLEX candidates. When a programme’s annual rate falls below the national average passing rate for that credential, the Board of Nursing places it on probationary status, and the programme has to submit a remediation plan and hold that plan open until its rate recovers. For the 2025 reporting year the national benchmarks were 76.05% for associate-degree registered nursing, 77.59% for baccalaureate registered nursing, 77.17% for practical nursing, and 73.37% for diploma registered nursing programmes.

Be clear about what that figure does and does not do for a dismissed student. A low pass rate is not a defence. It does not make your dismissal unlawful and no hearing panel will treat it that way. What it does is three narrower things, and each of them is worth something. First, a programme carrying a remediation plan has documented obligations to its students — tutoring, repeat testing, faculty ratios, progression review — and if the programme dismissed you for a benchmark it was itself failing to support, that gap is discoverable and it is the kind of fact that changes how a complaint reads. Second, it makes consistency testable: if a cohort saw thirty per cent of its members fail the same exit exam, a dismissal justified as an individual academic failure invites the question of who else failed it and what happened to them. Third, it is leverage. A programme already under Board attention has a real institutional reason to resolve a student’s complaint quietly rather than let it become another entry in a file the Board is reading.

What a Florida court will and will not review

Your relationship with a private licensed school is contractual, not constitutional. Fourteenth Amendment due process constrains state actors, and a private institution is not one, so the argument is built on the enrolment agreement, the catalogue and the handbook rather than on due process. Sharick v. Southeastern University of the Health Sciences, 780 So. 2d 136 (Fla. 3d DCA 2000), established both that the relationship is contractual and that damages can reach the lost value of the credential itself, not just tuition paid.

The limit on that is the part students are rarely told. In Tercier v. University of Miami, 383 So. 3d 847 (Fla. 3d DCA 2023) — a nursing dismissal — the Third District confirmed that judicial review of a private institution’s academic determination is confined to whether it was arbitrary and capricious, irrational, made in bad faith, or in violation of the constitution or a statute. Jallali v. Nova Southeastern University, 992 So. 2d 338 (Fla. 4th DCA 2008) says the same thing from the other direction: schools get wide latitude to set and apply academic requirements, and the student’s implied duty is to comply with rules the school may lawfully change.

The practical translation is short. “The faculty graded me unfairly” loses. “The school did not do what its own published policy said it would do” is the claim that survives, and it is why the first thing worth doing is reading the catalogue edition that was in force when you enrolled against what actually happened to you. Tercier carries a second lesson too: the court noted that claims not briefed on appeal were treated as abandoned. Arguments have to be raised, and preserved, at each level — including inside the school’s own process.

Which regulator actually holds the leverage here

Two different agencies matter, and students routinely write to the wrong one. Florida’s Commission for Independent Education licenses the institution under chapter 1005, Florida Statutes, and the Commission is where you complain about the school — misrepresentation in recruiting, refusal to release a transcript, a refund the school will not pay, a programme that stopped being delivered as advertised. Rule 6E-1.0032, Florida Administrative Code, requires a licensed institution to maintain and follow a published grievance procedure, and the Commission expects to see that you used it before it will act, so the internal appeal is not a formality you can skip on your way to the regulator.

A professional licensing board — Nursing, Massage Therapy, Psychology, Radiologic Technology, Respiratory Care, whichever governs the credential — is a different body with different powers. It regulates the programme and the licence, not the school’s business conduct, and it will not order a school to readmit you. Sorting out which of the two can give you the thing you actually want is the first useful hour of work in most of these cases, because the wrong filing costs weeks and tells the school you are not being advised.

If the school closes while you are enrolled, section 1005.36 governs the notice it owes and the custody of student records, and section 1005.37 establishes the Student Protection Fund that can reimburse unearned tuition. Those are separate remedies from anything in your student contract and they run on their own deadlines.

A private school, so the statute students rely on does not apply

Most writing about Florida student dismissal assumes a public college, where Fla. Stat. section 1006.60(3) supplies notice, a hearing, the right to be accompanied by counsel and a burden that rests on the institution. This is a private institution. None of that section reaches it.

What governs instead is the enrolment agreement, the catalogue and the student and programme handbooks, read as a contract. Sharick v. Southeastern University of the Health Sciences establishes that a Florida student dismissed in breach of the school’s own contractual undertakings has a claim, and that damages can extend to lost future earning capacity rather than a refund of tuition.

Two further things matter at schools of this kind. Many enrolment agreements contain an arbitration clause, and whether it binds a student depends on the version signed, how broadly it is drafted, whether its cost terms are unconscionable and whether the school has waived it — that comes first, because it decides whether there is a courtroom at all. And where a school is licensed by the Florida Commission for Independent Education, the CIE complaint route exists alongside any civil claim and is often the faster pressure point.

What can a student defense lawyer do here?

Resolve the arbitration question first, from the agreement the student actually signed.
Assemble the enrolment agreement, catalogue and programme handbook for the correct edition, and pin down the promises about process.
Test the progression arithmetic — withdrawals, repeats and clinical failures are often counted in ways the handbook does not authorise.
Use the Commission for Independent Education complaint route where the school is CIE-licensed, in parallel with the civil claim.
Press on the wording of the decision letter, which follows the student into every future licensure and transfer application.

Florida nursing programme NCLEX pass rates, school by school · Florida student defence

Other Florida colleges

Every school writes its own dismissal, appeal and conduct rules, and the filing deadlines are rarely the same from one campus to the next. These pages set out the procedure at other Florida colleges:

Common questions about Med College cases

What was Med College’s NCLEX pass rate in 2025?

Nine first-time candidates sat, and seven passed — 77.78%, just above the 76.05% associate-degree benchmark. Nine candidates is too few to treat as a meaningful measure of a programme, and I would not rely on the figure in either direction.

Is a small programme better or worse to fight?

Different rather than worse, and in some respects better. Small programmes make decisions informally and document them thinly, and Florida law asks whether the school followed its own published procedure. A school that never wrote down what it did often cannot show that it followed anything, and that gap is the case.

What should I ask the school for?

The complete record relied on: evaluations, grade calculations, attendance data, written warnings, notes or minutes of the deciding meeting, and the specific policy provision applied. Ask in writing and keep a copy of the request. Being told no such record exists is itself useful if your handbook promised a documented process.

The same instructor taught me, failed me and heard my appeal. Is that allowed?

It depends entirely on what your handbook says. Many handbooks promise review by someone not involved in the original decision, and if yours does and that is not what happened, the deviation is a contract point. If the handbook promises nothing of the kind, the argument is weaker — which is why the handbook is the first document to read.

Which federal court covers Med College?

Miami-Dade County is in the Southern District of Florida, Miami Division. Read your enrolment agreement first, because an arbitration clause may mean no court hears the dispute.

Is it worth hiring a lawyer for a dispute with a school this small?

Often the most cost-effective step is the narrowest one: a properly framed written appeal and records request, filed inside the deadline, with the relevant catalogue provisions quoted. That is a short piece of work and it is where most of the value is. Whether anything beyond it makes sense depends on what the record turns out to show.