WASHINGTON - A Filipino honors student told a government panel yesterday that she came to the United States in hopes of gaining hotel management experience but said she ended up working at a menial job and attending meaningless classes before threats led her to flee.

Michele Patiag, testifying in a State Department hearing, accused the American Hospitality Academy, a Hilton Head, S.C., firm, of making false promises to induce her to come to America.

"I expected to learn management. I expected it to be real classes, real situations and case studies. I expected it to be a continuation of my college education," testified Patiag, 21, a cum laude graduate of the University of the Philippines.

Her testimony, backed by statements from two State Department officials, came as the three-member panel resumed a hearing into whether AHA's right to participate in the J-1 visa program, designed to foster international cultural exchange, should be revoked. The visa program prohibits visitors from being placed in "unskilled positions."

Patiag is among 2,000 foreign students who have paid fees of up to $1,000 to the firm since 1997. She testified that she was put to work answering phones and taking reservations at a South Carolina resort. Other students in the program were placed in similar jobs in Florida and paid stipends of $300 monthly - the equivalent of $1.67 an hour for a 45-hour week, The Sun reported in April.

The classes offered by AHA consisted of lessons and workbooks simple enough for a high school student, she said.

The State Department issued a revocation notice to AHA this year after an on-site investigation found trainees performing an assortment of menial jobs such as checking out bicycles to hotel and resort guests or performing baby-sitting duties for tourists at Sea World near Orlando, said Ida Abell, who conducted the inspection.

AHA appealed the revocation, leading to the hearing that began last month and resumed yesterday.

AHA President Cindi Reiman testified that she considered the charges leveled by the department to be merely a matter of semantics. She said that while the jobs appeared to be menial, they were an integral part of a hotel management training program.

Patiag told the panel that she arrived June 7, 2001, and that three weeks later, she left the training program when disciplinary action was threatened if she didn't hand over her visa documents to AHA.

State Department officials said it was illegal for AHA to require its trainees to give up the visa documents and that the company subsequently ceased the practice. AHA contended it was only holding on to the documents to ensure they wouldn't be lost.

Patiag said that after the visa memo was issued, a group of the interns met and called local police to complain because their monthly stipend checks were being held up. That night she and another intern decided to leave, and she fled to the home of relatives in Jacksonville, Fla. She never got her last paycheck.

"We were scared," Patiag said.

Under cross-examination by AHA attorney Laura F. Reiff, Patiag was asked whether she was in the program long enough to determine whether it was worthwhile.

"I don't have to be there a couple of months to know the program is not a good one," she said.

Abell said the Sea World baby sitters were given that duty because they couldn't speak English and had been fired from an earlier assignment at a timeshare for the same reason. English proficiency is a requirement of the J-1 program.

"I didn't see any management training," Abell said.

The State Department official said she made the 2 1/2 -day site visit in early November after getting complaints from two Thai students who said they were being mistreated and had been terminated from the program.

Saying she considered the complaints quite serious, Abell said she told AHA they should immediately reinstate the two until she had a chance to investigate the charges.

Abell and Sally Lawrence, another State Department official, said the jobs AHA assigned to its trainees were specifically barred from the J-1 program under longstanding rules.

Abell said that while low-level jobs might be justified for a limited time, "when you do the same thing for six months, then something is wrong."

As for the AHA living facilities, where students lived four to a two-bedroom apartment, Abell found mold, leaks and filthy carpets. "On a personal note, I thought it was pretty disgusting," she said.