At an April 10th meeting of the House Appropriations Committee, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona (pictured above) was asked by Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-Connecticut) how the Biden administration is working to shut down GCU, a school that DeLauro called "a predatory for-profit school."
Cardona assured her that the administration is "cracking down not only to shut them down, but to send a message to not prey on students."
As AFN has reported, the Department of Education hit GCU last year with a near $38 million fine for supposedly "deceiving thousands of students" about costs and programs. University President Brian Mueller denied those allegations at that time and still does so now.
"The allegations about the doctrinal program, the misrepresentation, none of that has been proven," Mueller says. "They openly admit that none of that is the result of student complaints. Obviously, we have vehemently denied it. We are appealing it."
He also calls the appeal process "a sham" because the person hearing it reports to the secretary of Education, and any appeal beyond that goes directly to Secretary Cardona.
Meanwhile, he praises his institution for unprecedently not raising tuition on its ground campus in 16 years and for pouring millions of dollars into an inner-city neighborhood to support disadvantaged populations.
He also argues that it makes no practical or legal sense to accuse GCU of misleading doctrinal students to make a little more money, when if they wanted more money, all they would have to do is announce a 3% raise in tuition, and "nobody would even bat an eye."
Mueller further points out that despite what DeLauro claims, GCU is not a for-profit school. It began as a nonprofit, changed to a for-profit for a time, and has since returned to nonprofit.
"We've been operating that way for six years," the president relays.
In his opinion, everything the Education Department is doing reveals its ulterior motive.
"We're the largest private university in the country now. In a few years, we'll probably be the largest university in the country. We teach from a Christian worldview perspective, and so ideologically, we're going to have more reach into the culture than arguably any other institution," Mueller poses. "They're very upset that it would be an institution that would teach from the Christian worldview perspective."
In addition to the $37.7 million fine against GCU, the Department of Education has also fined Liberty, the second largest Christian university in the country, $14 million for allegedly failing to properly handle reports of sexual assault and other campus safety issues.
In 2016, Penn State was fined $2.4 million, a record amount at the time, for failing to address the Jerry Sandusky scandal in which the university covered up the on-campus rapes of young boys for a decade to protect their very profitable nonprofit football program.
Similarly, Michigan State was fined $4.5 million in 2019, another record amount, for the Larry Nassar scandal that involved the sexual assaults of gymnasts for a decade or better.
In short, the largest fines in the history of the Department of Education have been levied by Joe Biden's administration against the two largest Christian universities in the country.
"I'll let Liberty speak for themselves on their side, but in our case, it's completely unwarranted," Mueller reiterates. "It's not been proven, it's in the appeal process, and we intend to take it all the way to the Supreme Court if need be."
"We'll just keep doing what we're doing and fight this thing," he tells AFN.
