VA orders another risk-based audit eight
months after previous audit was refuted, marking
5th investigation vs. Christian university since it sued
Department of Education
PHOENIX, Jan. 5, 2024
/PRNewswire/ -- Grand Canyon University
received notice this week that the U.S. Department of Veterans
Affairs (VA) has initiated yet another risk-based audit against the
school, just eight months after GCU successfully refuted the
agency's last audit.
The action, which was ordered as a follow-up to the Federal
Trade Commission's (FTC) allegations last week, is the fifth
inquiry launched by the VA, FTC and U.S. Department of Education
(DOE) after GCU filed a lawsuit against the DOE over its lawful
nonprofit status in February 2021 and
is further evidence of the coordinated and unwarranted actions
these agencies are taking against the largest Christian university
in the country.
"This is unfortunately yet one more example of unelected
bureaucrats weaponizing federal government agencies in a
coordinated effort to target institutions to which they are
ideologically opposed," said GCU President Brian Mueller. "The level of unwarranted
scrutiny being imposed on GCU is nothing short of harassment."
The FTC stated publicly in October
2021, not long after GCU filed its lawsuit against the
Department of Education, that the three agencies would be
coordinating efforts to target for-profit institutions, primarily
due to high loan default rates at such institutions. That has taken
place even though 1) GCU is lawfully recognized as a nonprofit by
the IRS, State of Arizona and
Higher Learning Commission, 2) GCU has had significantly lower loan
default rates than the national average, and 3) the agency
investigations have not been precipitated by poor underlying
metrics such as high student debt levels, poor gainful employment
numbers or 90/10 calculations, high loan default rates, etc. that
typically trigger such actions.
"Our metrics in all of those areas are stellar, yet they still
launched broad-based investigations that are essentially fishing
expeditions intended to needlessly damage the University's
reputation," Mueller said. "Their accusations are duplicative, lack
merit and will be proven false – the DOE and FTC's accusations
related to our doctoral disclosures have already been refuted twice
in federal court – but the agencies will still have achieved their
goal of creating negative publicity and imposing voluminous amounts
of paperwork and legal costs for an institution to which they are
opposed."
FTC spokesperson Douglas Farrar,
echoing similar comments by the DOE, has stated their lawsuit was
filed to "protect students harmed by the alleged
deceptive and illegal practices," yet neither agency has provided
GCU any evidence that students were harmed nor have they identified
any student complaints supporting their allegations. Rather, their
claims are based on their same subjective impressions about the
same doctoral disclosure documents. In other words, two federal
agencies have focused their resources to bring identical claims
against GCU without any corroborating evidence — resources that
could be used to investigate schools with legitimate concerns. This
is not about protecting students, it is about targeting GCU.
Similarly, the previous VA risk-based audit, which was completed
on April 27, resulted in a "finding"
that claimed two innocuous statements in GCU's advertising –
"Cybersecurity experts are in high demand" and "Every company needs
cybersecurity" – were somehow "erroneous, deceptive or misleading"
even though such comments are 1) common sense, 2) prevalent in
marketing efforts among institutions in higher education (17 of the
23 universities listed among U.S. News and World Report's Best
Undergraduate Cybersecurity programs made similar claims), and 3)
supported by the Government's own data via the Bureau of Labor
Statistics. No reasonable person would come to the same conclusions
when looking at the above statements.
The VA claim was both legally and factually inaccurate, and GCU
refused to sign a statement acknowledging these statements were
improper. After GCU detailed the extensive approval process it
already has in place to ensure factual statements in its marketing
and advertising communications are supported by a reasonable basis,
the VA's Arizona State Approving Agency (SAA) – with whom GCU has
had a long-standing positive regulatory relationship -- was
satisfied with GCU's response and the safeguards that are in
place.
"In our past VA audits, we have had no significant findings and
members of our State Approving Agency have verbally praised our
operations for military veterans, even holding us up as an example
that should be training other universities," Mueller said. "The
only thing that has changed since then is the three federal
agencies coordinating actions to impose their authority and
ideology on state agencies in order to target specific
institutions."
Taking those enforcement powers a step further, the federal
government announced this week another effort to expand the powers
of the Department of Education to give it even more authority over
independent accrediting bodies such as the Higher Learning
Commission and state entities that oversee education at the local
level. That is a frightening concentration of power and potential
abuse by the federal government and a powerful argument for
returning regulatory authority in education to the state level.
The new federally-mandated VA audit, which must be carried out
by the Arizona SAA, was implemented because the FTC filed a lawsuit
against GCU with claims of deceptive advertising regarding GCU's
lawful nonprofit status. These federal agencies are coordinating
their actions and then citing one another to justify taking further
actions. In this self-perpetuating cycle, the FTC cites Department
of Education claims in its lawsuit, and the federal VA now cites
the FTC as the impetus for its latest audit.
"American people are losing confidence in the federal government
to be fair and objective and there are clearly no checks and
balances to prevent this type of selective enforcement," Mueller
said. "On behalf of our 118,000 students and families, 10,000
faculty and staff, 255,000 alumni, 500 companies represented on our
advisory boards, thousands of Christian high school partners and
countless community stakeholders, we are going to continue to stand
up for ourselves and fight this ideological government overreach
until common sense prevails – either through an objective entity
such as the federal court system or a systemic change that
restricts the arbitrary and selective enforcement activities of
these federal agencies."
About Grand Canyon University:
Grand Canyon
University was founded in 1949 and is Arizona's premier private Christian
university. GCU is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission and
offers 312 academic programs, emphases and certificates for both
traditional undergraduate students and working professionals. The
University's curriculum emphasizes interaction with classmates,
both in-person and online, and individual attention from
instructors while fusing academic rigor with Christian values to
help students find their purpose and become skilled, caring
professionals. For more information, visit gcu.edu.
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SOURCE Grand Canyon University