Grand Canyon College made good on its promise Thursday to combat the Training Division’s determination to levy a report $37.7 million towards the large non-public Christian establishment based mostly in Phoenix.
The college instructed the division it was interesting the choice and requested an in-person listening to with the company’s Workplace of Hearings and Appeals. If that attraction doesn’t work within the college’s favor, Grand Canyon president Brian Mueller mentioned he’s ready to file a federal lawsuit and to take its combat all the way in which to the U.S. Supreme Court docket.
“We’ve no need to do any of this,” Mueller mentioned at a press convention Thursday. “… However there’s a group of individuals in Washington, D.C. who’ve their intentions to hurt us.”
The Training Division mentioned that Grand Canyon—one of many largest non-public Christian establishments within the nation, with almost 120,000 in-person and on-line college students—misled greater than 7,500 college students about the price of doctoral diploma applications and violated federal regulation. The college instructed potential and present doctoral college students for years that their diploma program would value between $40,000 and $49,000, however that estimate didn’t account for further programs that might be wanted to finish this system, in keeping with the division’s findings.
Mueller disputed the division’s findings, saying the college supplied the mandatory disclosures to college students about the fee. “For the division to take a look at GCU’s quite a few disclosures, together with the [Degree Program Calculator], and decide that deserves any high quality in any respect—not to mention the very best high quality it has ever levied—speaks volumes about their motivations and the coordinated efforts being taken towards GCU,” Mueller mentioned.
Grand Canyon has been locked in a years-long battle with the Training Division over its bid to develop into a nonprofit, which the division rejected. The division mentioned it had issues that the college hadn’t sufficiently separated from its for-profit proprietor, Grand Canyon Training, which supplies advertising, recruitment and assist providers to the establishment. (Mueller is also the CEO of Grand Canyon Training.)
Paying the high quality can be a “monetary hardship” for Grand Canyon, Mueller mentioned, and will result in tuition will increase. “We’re not going to pay the high quality as a result of the reality is simply the alternative of what they’re saying,” Mueller mentioned. “We’re the only most clear college within the nation when it comes to serving to college students perceive what the time to finish and the fee to finish a level is.”
