A representative of Career Education Corporation declined to comment.

For-profit schools have become big business in the United States, especially as the unemployed seek a way back into the work force. Some of those schools, however, have been accused of creating as much economic harm as help: students have reported falling deep into debt to pay for classes that they said had failed to deliver what they had promised.

Mr. Trump’s institution is unique among for-profit schools: it is built almost entirely around the prestige and prominence of a single individual. Mr. Trump said he created the university in 2005 to impart decades’ worth of his business acumen to the general public. He aggressively marketed the school, telling students that his handpicked instructors would “teach you better than the best business school,” according to a transcript of a Web video.

The school has charged premium prices because of the Trump name, with the cost of the courses ranging from $1,500 to $35,000 each.

But, as The New York Times reported last week, dozens of students have complained about the quality of the program to the attorneys general of New York, Texas, Florida and Illinois. The Better Business Bureau gave the school a D-minus for 2010, its second-lowest grade, after receiving 23 complaints. Over the last three years, New York and Maryland have told the company to drop the word “university” from its title, saying that using it violated state education laws. (The school was renamed the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative in 2010.)

Four former students filed a suit against Trump University last year in a federal court in California, seeking class-action status. They contended that the school used high-pressure sales tactics to enroll students in the costly classes, promised extensive one-on-one instruction that did not materialize and employed “mentors” who at times recommended investments from which they stood to profit.

Mr. Sorial of the Trump Organization, which oversees Mr. Trump’s businesses, forcefully disputed those claims. He said on Thursday that 95 percent of the school’s students in New York had rated their courses as “excellent” on evaluation forms. The school’s national average is even higher, he said.