Grand Canyon Times

Matt Beienburg, the director of education policy at the Goldwater Institute said the U.S. Department of Education is pursuing their allegations against Grand Canyon University (GCU) in a very aggressive and abnormal manner. The Department of Education has accused GCU of misleading some of their students.

“This is having to do with the U.S. Department of Education under the Biden administration, coming out against GCU, Grand Canyon University, which is here in Arizona,” Beienburg told host Leyla Gulen on the Grand Canyon Times Podcast. “The Department of Education came out with an inflammatory and very extreme aggressive letter coming out and saying that GCU had lied to its students and slapping them with a $37.7 million fine, alleging that they were trying to essentially defraud or misrepresent their programs, and their tuition rates to students.”

“And so the department came out with this fine that's unprecedented, absolutely dramatically higher than what we've seen the department go after, even for substantial crimes of sexual assault and other campuses just really going after this school in what really appears to be kind of a political hit job in a sense,” Beienburg said.

This full episode is available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Matt Beienburg, the director of education policy at the Phoenix-based Goldwater Institute, appeared on the Grand Canyon Times Podcast to discuss the Biden Administration’s $37.7 million fine on Grand Canyon University (GCU), the largest Christian university in the U.S.

The Goldwater Institute is known for its involvement in policy formulation and litigation, particularly in the areas of school choice, healthcare, and government transparency. It has played a significant role in promoting and drafting model legislation in various states, aiming to influence public policy at both the state and national levels.

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Full, unedited transcript of this podcast:

Leyla Gulen [00:00:02] Welcome to the Grand Canyon Times podcast. I'm your host, Leila Gool. And in this episode, we welcome our guest, Matt Fineberg. That is the director of education policy at the Goldwater Institute, an organization that promotes liberty by working in state courts, legislatures and communities throughout the country. He also serves as director of the Institute's Van Standard Center for Constitutional Advocacy, focusing on educational freedom and parental rights. Matt, welcome. 

Matt Beienburg [00:00:29] Thanks for having me on. 

Leyla Gulen [00:00:31] So you just published an opinion piece for Fox News taking on the Biden administration and its eye watering fine imposed on one of the largest private Christian schools in the country. First of all, who is involved? How much was the fine and why was it imposed? 

Matt Beienburg [00:00:47] So this is having to do with the U.S. Department of Education under the Biden administration, coming out against GCU, Grand Canyon University, which is here in Arizona. It is a large private Christian university. And the Department of Education came out with a inflammatory and very extreme aggressive letter coming out and saying that GCU had lied to its students. And slapping them with a $37.7 million fine, alleging that they were trying to essentially defraud or misrepresent their programs, that their tuition rates to students. And so the department came out with this fine. That's unprecedented. Absolutely. Dramatically higher than what we've seen the department go after, even for substantial crimes. We can get into this set of issues of sexual assault and other campuses just really going after this school or what what really appears to be kind of a political head job in a sense. 

Leyla Gulen [00:01:37] Yeah. So this is their largest fine ever. It's almost $40 million. 

Matt Beienburg [00:01:43] Yeah, $37.7 million. And we kind of mentioned this in the piece I co-wrote with our colleague John Riches here at the Goldwater Institute. By comparison, the department assessed fines of about 2.4 million and $4.5 million to universities like Michigan State and Penn State for failing to report crimes around essentially sexual assault and harassment, stuff like that. That was this one here. They're doing 10 to 20 times the size of the fine because they're disputing the way that GQ disclosed this information. And again, we can get into the details here. They're not even saying that they didn't disclose it. They're basically saying they didn't disclose it quite rightly and they didn't paint it in is large enough text that as the department wanted, even though GQ walks through it and again, we can get into diesel at your watch through the cost of their program, the cost per credit. But the department came out and said, we don't like the way you did it and we're going to find you this exorbitant amount. 

Leyla Gulen [00:02:30] Yeah, I want to definitely dig in to that and just so that we can lay the groundwork here so that people really understand that it has some perspective, some context as to how high of a fine this is. Like you had made that comparison, the four and a half million dollar fine against Michigan State University. Penn State University. These universities are huge. They have enormous endowments. They're worth billions of dollars. I did a little comparison as far as GCU is concerned, I want to hear more about its history. But as the largest Christian university in the world, with nearly about 100,000 students, is what I discovered, that it is listed as having assets just under $500 million. You take another private university such as University of Southern California, that has just under 50,000 students, and their total net assets are just over $9 billion. So so a fine such as $37.7 million on GCU, what kind of an impact would that make? 

Matt Beienburg [00:03:34] Yeah, I think that's a great point, right? This is a huge blow. They're trying to to score against this university. And as you said, when you look at higher education in general, you mentioned the endowments that some of their peers have. Obviously, we've seen some of the supposedly prestigious institutions with endowments. The Harvards of the world that have are sitting on so much funding and are if the Department of Education is actually concerned about the cost of college for students and the representation of this, just unconscionable that they would go after GCU this way while essentially turning a blind eye to the broader issues of higher education, which, again, we can talk about all of the student debt that that kids have taken on the entire higher ed industrial complex that has obviously failed so many students with these institutions that are sitting on huge stockpiles of cash, as you mentioned. And so for them to turn around and try to nitpicked GQ even as they're disclosing their information and hit them, slap them with a fine like this, is clearly intended to almost make an example of them because of various reasons that we can kind of talk about. 

Leyla Gulen [00:04:32] Sure. Absolutely. Can we just cut to the quick, though, as a preface why GCU is being targeted? Is it because it's a conservative Christian university? 

Matt Beienburg [00:04:41] So it is that's certainly a distinguishing feature that it's kind of hard to overlook on this. The Department of Education has kind of gone back and forth with C or B or so Grand Canyon University over the last 15, 20 years really was a transformational story. And it was a tiny school with just a couple thousand students teetering on financial distress, came out with the new administration, and they have obviously grown, as you said, now about 100,000 students with a huge online population. And so it's been an incredibly successful model. And the university had sought to transition from a for profit to a nonprofit status a few years ago and has basically been kind of struggling and dealing with the Department of Education on a lot of this kind of going back and forth and having to jump through all sorts of hoops to get into compliance with all these things. And essentially over the years, what we've seen is this has been a school that has tried to assert itself and stand up. When getting hassled by the Department of Education. And now, obviously, yes, as a successful private Christian school that doesn't fit the mold, doesn't line up necessarily with the kind of political leanings of the Department of Education or the Biden administration. And so you see what appears to be very unique treatment of this school that that, again, just is not comparable to who has actually gone in and looked at their disclosures compared to other public and private universities around. And GQ is going out of its way to disclose the amounts. It's actually a school that has not increased its tuition for the last 15 years. And the Department of Education is alleging that the only students they're actually even complaining about here is the tuition rates for their doctoral students. So the Department of Education is actually saying, we think you're defrauding your students who are incapable. I've reading the details about how much this program can cost depending on the number of credits that are there. So yeah, absolutely extraordinary that they've taken this path. 

Leyla Gulen [00:06:32] Yeah. So the GC is motto is private, Christian and affordable, but the Department of Education is coming down on them because they're saying that PhD students need to take other prerequisite courses while they are getting their dissertations. Is that what it is? Do they find some little tiny factoid that would indicate a much broader problem? How did they find this information that they're using to bring about this? Fine. 

Matt Beienburg [00:07:02] Yeah. So they're arguing that in all essentially of the tuition brochures and promotional materials that GQ and they advertise the typical cost of the program. And GC says, here's the program cost, here's the required 60 credits, here's the cost per credit. Here's what it comes down to. All of that is is published very prominently. And then if students are going to take additional essentially continuing courses for their dissertation, those have additional credit costs to them. And so the director of education is saying, well, you have students who typically tend to take these extra credits and you didn't disclose that in big enough print. And so we're saying that you have substantially misled these students. Again, they're not saying you didn't disclose it, but they're basically saying we don't like the way that you disclosed it. And so they're arguing that there were 7500 students over the last seven several years that this applies to and suggesting that every one of these 7500 students had been harmed and misled and now had to have an enormous fine attached to it to remedy this. And what's really extraordinary is that the of education isn't responding to actual student complaints. This isn't something that a whole cohort of kids came forward and said, yeah, I was misled about this. This was actually the Department of Education going through and looking at it, saying, we don't like the way that you disclose this. We're not actually bringing evidence that says that the students themselves regret this program or felt that they were misled. And it's really the Department of Education, again, stepping in, taking the initiative aggressively to go after GCU because they just don't like the way the GC, or at least they're using that as a pretext to go after them. 

Leyla Gulen [00:08:34] Yeah, I'm so glad that you mentioned that because I was wondering, of those 7500 students, had one of them made a single complaint and do do we know that at all or. 

Matt Beienburg [00:08:45] They. 

Leyla Gulen [00:08:45] Know for a fact that they haven't. 

Matt Beienburg [00:08:47] The documentation that the department went off of was based essentially on the department saying, we review this and we don't like the way that it's being done. And so, you know, again, it's not that they've got a list of plaintiffs that have come forward to say this is something where I was clearly taken advantage of, which, again, the contrast is striking when you look at higher education in general. Ziprecruiter, which is a big recruiting firm, did a survey this last year and they found that over 40% of college graduates nationally regret their majors, and that's that it was strongly correlated to the job prospects of these degrees. Right. So you have kids nationally going to college, taking out huge loans, giant tuition bills, getting the program degrees, and then regretting that and recognizing this was not the best use of, I would say, my funds. But in a lot of these cases, it typically tends to be federal taxpayer funded student loans. Right. And so what we're seeing is the federal government has no problem propping up a system that encourages students to take out exorbitant loans for degree programs that don't prepare them or equip them for the workforce and then turn around and attack something like GCU because one of their parts of their in their academic offerings are doctoral programs. They don't like the way that they're handling that. 

Leyla Gulen [00:09:56] So do you know what the discrepancy is? What is the discrepancy between the Ph.D. students curriculum and the extra courses and their cost versus what is, quote unquote advertised or, I don't know, like, yeah, would that be there? 

Matt Beienburg [00:10:15] So GCU had had advertised to say that the the typical requirements are going to add up to about 40 to $49000 per student. And the Department of Education is saying, actually, if you factor in these others, that could be 25% more than that. So up to another $10,000 over the course of that program. 

Leyla Gulen [00:10:31] So that thousand dollars, which actually sounds like pretty small beans. I mean, I'm not making an excuse for GCU or for anybody, but that seems like a rather small number compared to personally what I know as far as all of the student loan debt amassed that students across the country are suffering from each and every day. 

Matt Beienburg [00:10:52] Yeah, I think that's a fair observation that, you know, that number, especially when people and a lot of these instances are shelling out ten, 20, $50,000 in intuition a year. And again, that heavily backed by federal student loans, the fact that they're going to come out and say, well, this small subgroup of kids again, about a thousand a year, this is not a sweeping epidemic. And again, this is a college that has not been increasing their tuition rate. So if they actually were out there trying to be predatory and going after students and just extracting as much funding as they could. It's not going to be a business model that is trying to keep tuition low. Right. If you look at this is another extraordinary thing, the increase in tuition rates across the country over the past 20 years. You can look at U.S. News and World Report on this. They found that tuition and fees at private universities across the country for the last 20 years have gone up 130%. Tuition at public universities has gone up 150%. Right. So the average private school went from $20,000 roughly in tuition costs to well over 45,000. And so for GQ to have kept that this whole time under 20,000. Again, it just flies in the face of this is truly something that's out there trying to take advantage of students. Why is it that they are actually resisting the pressure and the trends of higher education to continue jacking up inflation backed by these federal student loans? And then they're still going to be sued by the Department of Education as the target that needs to be hammered with the force of law. 

Leyla Gulen [00:12:17] Now, then I don't hear any of the universities, the top universities, the most expensive universities, saying, hey, you know what? We're going to actually decrease our tuition next year. Yeah, but. Or any of them doing that. 

Matt Beienburg [00:12:29] Yeah. That's not something that the era that we see too much of, it's very much in the opposite direction. But again, only GQ now seems to be being hit for this, which again, as you point out, the magnitude and to the extent a student might say, yes, this was an additional credit or credit cost, as you said, in comparison to what is out there. And given that GQ is actually disclosing this, they're just, again, not doing it in the format demanded by the department to be hit with nearly a $40 million punitive fine really just sparks a lot of questions. 

Leyla Gulen [00:12:59] Let's talk about the fact that they haven't raised tuition in 15 years for factoring in inflation and other reasons. How is it that they are able to operate? 15 years ago today, both in quality of education, number of students accommodating new technologies, things like that. How are they able to do that? 

Matt Beienburg [00:13:23] Yeah, they've been one of the more successful operators, it seems, and as you kind of mentioned, technology. So, you know, as you said, they've got a large online presence, so they've got about 20,000 students on their campus in a large number online and able to really whereas we're seeing a lot of universities bloating their staff. And this is something that we at the Goldwater Institute work on a lot is looking at these D-I offices, for instance, diversity equity inclusion offices, or we're seeing public universities, for instance, spending tens of millions of dollars in many cases just on these offices that do little besides promote racial resentment and hostility on campus. That's the kind of thing that the federal government has no problem with these universities directing tuition dollars toward. Right. So if you have an institution like GC that's saying we're actually going to focus on providing degree programs in fields that are going to be useful for these students nursing education, right? Things that are going to have demand after graduation. Rather than promoting a bunch of gender studies type of content that is not actually leading to employability, but it is reinforcing the cycle of students going to a high tuition cost institution and getting that all paid for by federal loans. And then obviously with the Biden administration then pushing to forgive those loans. All of this is going on while institutions like GQ are saying, well, what are ways that we can deliver a cost effective education to students, whether it's through online delivery in many of these cases, or by not diverting funds to all this bloated bureaucracy and administrative growth that we're seeing elsewhere. 

Leyla Gulen [00:14:51] Right. Right. And obviously, they found a way to do it. The school has found innovative solutions for the nationwide nursing shortage and pulling quotes from your story to graduating students in high demand and hyping trade jobs. They also have a Division one athletics department and other ways that students can thrive. Are they considered a soft target? I mean, how hard are they fighting back? Because I know you and your institute, you've threatened to sue the Department of Education if they don't provide information that you're looking for. 

Matt Beienburg [00:15:24] Yeah, the university is trying to protect and defend itself on this. Yes. As we wrote about the institute, cold blooded, you know, submitting requests to to basically get these are public entities, the U.S. Department of Education. And so requiring them to make sure that they hand over some of the background about what led to this. Because, again, it it seems very hard to justify this this tremendous, exorbitant punitive approach to GCU. And so the Goldwater Institute is standing up to make sure that we are not seeing political retaliation or political targeting. Obviously, there have been a lot of concerns in the past, things like the IRS targeting nonprofits around the tax status, etc.. And so making sure that this is not another example of a government coming after with a political agenda. Institutions that don't fit the mold that it supports. 

Leyla Gulen [00:16:14] Mm hmm. How serious is a fine being imposed on them? Obviously, this is not a court case yet, so they issue a fine. And then what happens? How long do they have to respond? How do they appeal it? What's the process? 

Matt Beienburg [00:16:30] Yeah, that's now going through a series of appeals. Essentially, the bar of education has a basically an internal office of hearings and appeals. And it goes through that. And there's a couple of different routes that they go through that that essentially you're going to have back and forth and communications there. And again, this is something that. It seems very difficult to get justification to see what's going on here on the part of education when they put out their letter announcing this and they came out and explicitly said G.Q. Lied to students. Right. It wasn't even in we have concerns that they may have misrepresented it. I mean, they really came out swinging with very inflammatory language about this and declaring you have a certain number of days to respond to our office. And the university is having that correspondence with them. And so that's where also, as I said, the Goldwater and Suits stepping in to make sure that some of the background that went into this doesn't indicate that something was done improperly, which, again, the facts on the ground appear very difficult to justify. 

Leyla Gulen [00:17:24] Did you know of GCU being contacted by the Department of Education as to their inquiry and their curiosity as to how they felt that they were defrauding students, or did they just come out out of the blue and say, Hey, this is what we found, and bam. We think, yeah, it. 

Matt Beienburg [00:17:44] It seems like a little bit of both. There had basically been over the last few years as the Department of Education said, you have to make sure that you're disclosing these and you would again have this language attached to it. So there was kind of back and forth about this. The GC was putting this information out there and the department eventually coming out and saying, We're not satisfied with this and here is your fine. 

Leyla Gulen [00:18:04] How did Botas then proceed? Because we're not hearing UPenn, Harvard, M.I.T. being told, Hey, you lied about protecting students from anti-Semitic remarks on campus, therefore we're going to find you. We're not hearing any of that. I mean, yes, we're seeing hearings. In the capital as far as calling for resignations of the university's presidents. But how is it that we have such a a dichotomy of action taken? On these different universities based off of their assault on students. 

Matt Beienburg [00:18:40] Yeah, well, you use the word dichotomy, which is a lot more generous than I would say a double standard. This is clearly turning a blind eye to, as you mentioned, with the antisemitism on campus. Right. These universities that for so long have tried to police speech, police that say that it's violence if you misgender a student or a professor, but then turn around and say, oh, it's free speech or these protesters to talk about supporting essentially the genocide of the Jewish state. What we're seeing is clearly a double standard at universities that have detached themselves from the principles of freedom of speech and the First Amendment. And so we're seeing that same principle playing out here where there is no problem with these universities doing all sorts of stuff. But once it becomes something like GCU, then they're suddenly in the crosshairs. And so we see this at the K-12 level. We see it in higher education, double standards, inconsistent logic, right? We see all the time things like we hear opposition to school choice in K-12, right? They say we couldn't possibly let this taxpayer funding go to families and let them use it at private schools in K-12. And yet nobody bats an eye from the left in particular about all the funding that goes through things like the federal Pell Grant program to prop up higher education, and that can be used at a private at a public university of any kind, right? It's these things where we see it over and over of the logic just is not applied consistently by those on the left, because ultimately what they're most concerned about is propping up the institutions of giant public education interests, such as the teachers unions or the massive influence that the university systems typically have. And so something like GCU that's, you know, basically an independent actor doesn't have that that same protection and stature in the eyes of these bureaucrats. 

Leyla Gulen [00:20:23] Mm hmm. And so what do taxpayers do? You would have parents do? What do voters do? 

Matt Beienburg [00:20:29] Well, I think we're seeing what they're doing in a lot of these cases by voting with their feet. We're actually seeing enrollment patterns in higher education. This was accelerated during COVID, but a lot of families are waking up and saying, why is it that I am spending 20, 30, 40, $50,000 a year taking out massive dads to pay for that, to send my student to a university that's not actually going to equip them with the academics that they need to succeed later and is going to instill in them a whole hotbed of radical ideologies. And so what we're seeing is GQ, which represents clearly an alternative to that has had enormous success and the growth in their enrollment in their programs. This is an expanding university atmosphere. And so I think we're actually just seeing the market and the public starting to recognize that higher education is really starting to squander the goodwill and the credit that it has built up in a lot of these cases. Right. There are exceptions to it. We're seeing folks actually start to look at what are programs that are cost effective, what are programs that are preparing my students. And so I think as voters recognize and say, well, there's certain institutions that do and don't support support these, and recognizing that obviously the Department of Education is a political entity that is it's run by the secretary of education, appointed by the president, these are ultimately political positions. And obviously the ramifications of elections certainly play into all that. 

Leyla Gulen [00:21:54] Right. Right. And so the silver lining is that people are starting to wake up. They're starting to wake up and see firsthand where their dollars are going, how they're being spent and how they can dictate how they proceed. 

Matt Beienburg [00:22:08] That's right. And hopefully it's not too late for a lot of these families. Again, the total debt that's been racked up for higher education as about $1.7 trillion and that's tripled over the last couple of decades. And so, again, we've seen these families who actually have gone through this process being told, hey, don't worry about this. You can go send your students this grade for your experience, worry about all the costs and finances later, which, again, even the Biden administration themselves has tried to use that to justify wiping out student loans, which again, just means transferring that cost to the taxpayers, those who did pay off their loans or those who didn't take out loans. And they have no problem doing any of that. Instead, they battle against any attempts to bring accountability. So there are a lot of bright spots coming. We at the Goldwater Institute have been working with others to help put model legislation forward that's now been passed in states like Texas to say no more of these bloated, expensive D-I offices. We're seeing a lot of progress towards, again, opportunities like GCU that are there where students can go get a education that's going to be focused on the needs of those kids. 

Leyla Gulen [00:23:09] Now, realize that we're running up at the end of the year here. But what's coming up next? What can people expect next in this case? 

Matt Beienburg [00:23:16] I think that our hope is certainly that we that common sense would prevail here. As I said, the institute has jumped in to, again, requesting some information. And if that's stonewalled and not provided and additional litigation potentially on the horizon, and this is something where we've seen so many aggressive takes from this administration, many of which they've been slapped down on. Again, we mentioned the student loans, their efforts, and they seem bent on continuing to try this. But even the courts having to step in and say you are clearly overreaching beyond your authority. So without making a specific prediction, this is certainly going to be an ongoing issue that really does deserve public attention and public awareness. 

Leyla Gulen [00:23:54] Yeah, absolutely. Well, we hope to stay in touch with you and to keep tabs on what you're going to be doing in 2024. So, Matt Bai Enberg, thank you so much for joining us. Goldwater Institute's director of education policy. We'll look forward to hearing what happens in 2024. 

Matt Beienburg [00:24:09] Thank you very much. Appreciate it for having me on. 

Leyla Gulen [00:24:11] Thank you, Matt.