But in his first weeks at the for-profit school, Mr. Urquilla says, he found employees falsifying student attendance records, instructors helping students to cheat and recruiters arranging federal loans for students who could not read.

Mr. Urquilla said he was fired after he complained to superiors. Months later, William F. Weld, then Decker's chief executive officer, who is now seeking the Republican nomination for governor of New York, signed a severance agreement with Mr. Urquilla. Its terms required him to keep quiet about the school, which offered courses in carpentry, electrical work and other trades, but he considers the agreement breached.

Mr. Urquilla, along with several other former Decker officials, have come forward to describe practices during Mr. Weld's 10-month tenure as chief executive that they say they considered improper and possibly illegal. The school closed in October.

A former admissions director has described the routine falsification of federal loan applications. The former head of Decker's online program says he saw systematic recruitment of students with no access to computers for Internet-based courses. A former instructor in Atlanta says administrators routinely shared test answers with students.

And a former instructor in Louisville says that in 2004 - when Mr. Weld was an active board member in Decker's parent company but not yet its chief executive - officials asked him to set up a sham classroom to fool accreditation inspectors.

In two lengthy interviews, Mr. Weld said repeatedly that he never saw evidence of wrongdoing and had not heard the complaints about document falsification or the way the college was handling loan applications. And no one who has stepped forward has said Mr. Weld was told directly of wrongdoing.

The story of Decker College is a cautionary tale about the pitfalls facing commercial colleges as they seek to build profits by recruiting struggling students eligible for financial aid while honoring their obligations as educators and stewards of federal loans.

For Mr. Weld, Decker's lightning growth, and his investment company's minority stake in it, allowed him to keep his hand in the high-profile issue of education after leaving his post as Massachusetts governor. But its overnight collapse is shadowing his run for office, leaving him with the awkward task of explaining what went wrong.

The college spun into crisis after the federal Department of Education restricted its access to student loan funds in June. The department went further and terminated Decker's participation in federal programs on Sept. 30.

In October, the school was raided by 40 federal agents conducting a fraud investigation, and last month it collapsed into bankruptcy, leaving 3,700 students burdened with debts, some as high as $30,000. This week the Education Department said students could apply to have their loans forgiven.

Mr. Weld blames the federal government and a regional accreditation council for Decker's fall, and continues to praise the college's programs. "They had enormous value in empowering a disadvantaged demographic and getting them into the construction industry, where the average wage is 18 bucks an hour," he said.

He said he personally contributed $530,000 to the school to stave off bankruptcy. "I don't think anybody expended more shoe leather in the effort to avoid having the students stranded than I did," he said, "and certainly nobody is more frustrated than I am."

Of Mr. Urquilla, Mr. Weld said, "Actually I liked him; he was kind of ramrod-straight."

He attributed Mr. Urquilla's departure to a "personality conflict" with the provost and a dean. Mr. Weld added, "I would have thought I might have heard" if Mr. Urquilla was saying there were violations of law. He said he did not recall signing the confidentiality agreement with Mr. Urquilla, but added that he did sign a handful in his time there.

Education and Profit

A twisting path took Mr. Weld to Kentucky.