Wright Career College

Wright Career College (Overland Park, Kansas) was a career-oriented school that operated from 1921 until 2016. It was originally named Dickinson's Business School. The school offered two-year associate degree programs and certificates in healthcare, veterinary, fitness, business, accounting, and other related fields.

The school was founded in 1921 to train typists for Kansas City businesses and a secretarial program was added in 1953. A shorthand system was developed that became widely accepted in the Kansas City area. Joseph Bryan Dickinson published a book under the title of Dickinson Shorthand in 1928.

James Miller, Jr. gained a controlling interest in the school in 1989 and he re-named it first as "Wright Business College." He later changed it to "Wright Career College." The college was reported to have contracted with for-profit corporations owned by the college’s trustees. Wright paid $14 million between 2007 and 2013 to the Miller-owned corporation Media Resources Inc. for advertising expenses. An additional $2.6 million was paid directly to the couple as salaries during the same period. In 2013, hundreds of students filed a lawsuit with accusations of "a systematic, deceptive marketing scheme" and sought a refund of the students' tuition plus unspecified damages.

In April of 2016, over a thousand students and 200 staff members at five campus locations were affected when the school closed its doors. All students were notified by email on a Thursday evening that the school would not be open the next day. Many students of the school have worked to file a class-action lawsuits to seek refunds for tuition.

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