The ruling means thousands of former students of the Gig Harbor-based Business Computer Training Institute potentially could enter the lawsuit.

Already nearly 50 former students have joined, claiming they were misled about the quality of the education BCTI provided and their prospects for a job after graduation. Many were recruited outside welfare or unemployment offices and claim they were promised good-paying technology jobs if they completed BCTI programs.

The programs, which taught basic word processing, spreadsheets and other computer skills, cost about $11,000 for a 30-week program. Many students used taxpayer-backed loans to pay for their education. But some claim their BCTI education didn’t prepare them for even basic office work, leaving them with few employment prospects but thousands of dollars in debt.

In opposing the class-action certification, BCTI argued that students got out of the program what they put into it. About 28,000 students have graduated from BCTI’s Washington campuses since 1985, and many have gone on to successful careers at prominent companies, the school argued in court filings.

The school also claimed students didn’t get jobs for reasons unrelated to BCTI, including not looking for work and quitting jobs the school helped them get.

It claimed the students have presented no evidence they were coerced to enroll. And it argued the students’ claims were varied and conflicting and that a class-action lawsuit would be inappropriate.

Superior Court Judge Thomas Larkin think the same way. In an order issued Friday, he found the students’ claims to be similar enough to certify the lawsuit as a class action. He also found “the plaintiffs have set forth substantial evidence that they will prevail at trial.”

A trial is tentatively scheduled for next August.

Larkin’s ruling opens the lawsuit to students of BCTI’s Washington campuses who attended as far back as 1985.