Almost 30,000 students will graduate from Grand Canyon University later this month, marking the third time the school has produced this many alumni in a year.
“We are blessed to be able to celebrate the accomplishments of another record class of graduates who are meeting the needs of today’s workforce and fulfilling their purpose as servant leaders throughout the world,” GCU President Brian Mueller said in a statement.
On April 25-26, GCU will hold commencement ceremonies for 5,388 traditional students on the Phoenix campus, while the 23,597 graduating online students will have commencement May 1-3. The total number of students in the graduating class is 28,985, including those who completed their degrees in Summer 2023, Fall 2023, and projected graduates from Spring 2024.
In the 2022-23 year, 29,116 students graduated, while 30,000 graduated in the 2021-22 year.
“While enrollment numbers and graduation numbers are declining nationwide, we have continued to produce a significant number of graduates who are impacting industries throughout the country,” Mueller said.
Of all graduates, 15,580 completed their undergraduate degree, and 13,405 were graduate students earning master’s or doctoral degrees.
The Honors College had 682 graduates, raising the total to more than 2,500 since the college started in 2013.
In the 2023-24 academic year, enrollment at GCU surpassed 25,000 on the Phoenix campus, with another more than 92,000 studying online. Additionally, GCU grew from nine to 10 colleges when the College of Science, Engineering and Technology split into two, forming the College of Engineering and Technology and the College of Natural Sciences.
GCU also opened a physical location for its Grand Canyon Theological Seminary in the fall. The 17,000-square-foot Seminary offers GCU’s Master of Divinity program and provides a meeting space for local pastors.
The Phoenix-based university also created the Center for Workforce Development and added two more Accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing program sites, bringing the total number of sites to six. GCU is on track to open three more sites in the 2024-25 academic year.
Mueller attributed the growth to students, faculty, and above all, God.
“That is a testament to the extraordinary power of education when delivered creatively across multiple platforms and taught from a Christian worldview perspective,” Mueller said. “It is also a reflection of both our outstanding students and the support they receive from our faculty and staff.”
Elizabeth Troutman is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send her news tips using this link.
The largest Christian university in the U.S., Grand Canyon University (GCU), defended itself against “disturbing and defamatory” public comments made by the U.S. Department of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.
“Mr. Cardona’s inflammatory comments, which are legally and factually incorrect, are so reckless that GCU has no choice but to demand an immediate retraction,” the statement says. “He is either confused, misinformed or does not understand the actions taken by his own agency.”
At the House Appropriations Committee hearing last week, Cardona said “we are cracking down not only to shut them down, but to send a message to not prey on students.”
The Goldwater Institute filed a lawsuit on behalf of GCU in February due to the Biden administration imposing a $37 million fine on the school. The conservative think tank claims the administration has refused to provide documents that explain why it fined GCU.
“GCU has been asked repeatedly why it believes it is being targeted by federal agencies of the Biden Administration,” the school’s statement reads. “Here’s what we can tell you: Mr. Cardona’s inflammatory comments make very clear the Department of Education’s intentions and their disdain for institutions that do not fit their ideological agenda. What’s also clear is that ED has no lawful grounds to carry out those intentions based on their disingenuous and factually unsupportable allegations.”
The Education Department’s conduct extends normal regulatory activity, the statement says.
“It epitomizes the weaponization of federal agencies’ power against a private Christian university,” according to the statement.
GCU is confident an impartial court of law would exonerate it from the allegations.
“GCU’s intent is to fight these accusations all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary,” the statement says. “The Department of Education’s intent, based on the frivolous nature of its accusations and defamatory statements from ED officials, seems to be to damage the university’s reputation, use its ‘findings’ as a rationale to seek loan forgiveness for students under the borrower’s defense to repayment program and impose unprecedented fines and legal fees. In other words, regardless of the inevitable legal outcomes in GCU’s favor, the process becomes the punishment.”
GCU has more than 118,000 students. The Phoenix university says it will continue to thrive.
“With 118,000 students and growing, GCU is thriving and will continue to thrive. In an industry that is struggling and slow to change, GCU has created a model that has allowed it to freeze tuition on its ground campus for 16 straight years, increase diversity and social mobility by ensuring that higher education is affordable to all socioeconomic classes (over 40% of GCU’s ground campus student body are students of color), maintain lower student loan default rates than the national average and lower student debt levels than other private universities, and produce nearly 30,000 graduates in each of the past three years.”
The statement continued, “If a government-run institution produced those kinds of outcomes, it would be applauded. At the largest private Christian university in the country, it draws unwarranted threats from the Secretary of Education and the ire of the federal government.”
Elizabeth Troutman is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send her news tips using this link.
Arizona’s auditing agency for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) found no wrongdoing in its recent audit of Grand Canyon University (GCU).
The Arizona State Approving Agency (SAA) undertook the audit in response to the ongoing Federal Trade Commission (FTC) lawsuit against GCU for allegedly deceptive advertising and illegal telemarketing. The FTC sued GCU in December, several months after the Department of Education (ED) fined the university over $37 million for allegedly deceiving doctoral students into paying more for their degrees than advertised.
In the SAA letter to GCU reviewed by AZ Free News, SAA said that its audit yielded no evidence supporting the Biden administration’s claims.
“The Arizona SAA did not have any substantiated findings based on our review of Grand Canyon University,” stated SAA’s letter to GCU. “There are no findings impacting the continued approval of Grand Canyon University at this time. There are no follow-up actions required by Grand Canyon University at this time.”
SAA announced its audit in January, the second one to take place in under a year; the last SAA audit occurred last May.
GCU President Brian Mueller told AZ Free News that the SAA’s findings were in agreement with two favorable court rulings in recent years, all of which found GCU to not be guilty of the issues that the Biden administration claims exist. Mueller said that these discrepancies were “troubling,” and further indication of an unjust and purposeful targeting.
“The SAA, our accrediting body and two federal judges all looked at the same set of facts as the bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. and came to the complete opposite conclusion,” said Mueller. “To have zero findings, praise and a court ruling that our disclosures are clear on one end and then have the U.S. Department of Education impose its largest fine ever on the other… that is very troubling. To be targeted in this manner by the federal government is an egregious example of overreach and the weaponization of these federal agencies.”
The Higher Learning Commission, GCU’s accrediting body, assessed the university’s doctoral disclosures to be “robust and thorough,” providing a “clear” academic and financial pathway for prospective students.
The Biden administration appears to be alone in its unfavorable assessment of GCU; further records to provide context as to why have not been made available for public review, either.
The lack of transparency prompted the Goldwater Institute to sue the Biden administration last month. ED denied their public records request seeking the documents that informed ED’s decision to fine GCU. The records request was spurred by the fact that ED didn’t include student complaints or visitations to GCU as part of their investigation into the university.
In our report issued several days before ED announced its record fine into the university, the Biden administration apparently coordinated efforts between ED, FTC, and VA to investigate GCU after the university sued ED for denying its nonprofit status. The IRS granted nonprofit status to GCU in 2018, but it took until late 2019 for ED to deny the status.
SAA recognized GCU as a private nonprofit in its most recent audit report.
Several months after GCU sued ED in early 2021, the agency launched a multi-year, off-site review of GCU. Several months after ED’s announcement, the FTC announced that it found GCU in violation of federal law; each violation incurs civil penalties of up to $50,000. The last time the FTC exercised the authority it leveled against GCU was in 1978.
The FTC, ED, and VA began their investigations into GCU in 2022.
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
The Goldwater Institute is suing the Biden administration for fining Grand Canyon University for $37 million without explanation.
The U.S. Department of Education assessed a record fine of $37 million against the private, Christian university in October 2023. This marks the largest fine of its kind ever assessed by the department.
The Goldwater Institute, a Phoenix-based conservative think tank, is suing the administration to get answers about the fine and hold the government accountable.
Fines on universities who have improperly dealt with sexual assault pale in comparison to those levied against GCU. The Department of Education fined Penn State University only $2.4 million for failing to report the crimes of serial pedophile Jerry Sandusky. Michigan State University was fined a mere $4.5 million fine for refusing to address sexual assaults committed by athletic director Larry Nassar, who abused more than 500 students.
The Education Department claimed to fine GCU for insufficiently informing P.h.D students that they may have to take continuing courses while completing their doctoral dissertations. The federal government report did not cite any student’s complaints, and Education Department personnel did not visit GCU as part of its so-called investigation.
The Goldwater Institute submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the department to gain clarity on the fine against GCU.
“The records may help inform the public about this extraordinary fine, as well as coordination between various federal agencies in what appears to be the intentionally targeting of a successful university—one that’s no stranger to run-ins with the feds—based on extraordinarily thin allegations,” a Goldwater news release says.
The Department of Education refused to turn over these public records, the think tank said, so it is suing the agency in federal court to get them anyway.
“With its motto of ‘private, Christian, affordable’ and its track record of graduating students into high-demand and high-paying jobs, GCU is a success story by any metric,” Goldwater Institute staff attorney Stacy Skankey said. “And it stands apart from universities across the country that are facing declining enrollment, that are indoctrinating students with radical politics, and that are under attack for failing to defend the First Amendment.”
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that the Goldwater Institute was founded by Barry Goldwater. The story has been corrected.
Elizabeth Troutman is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send her news tips using this link.
Grand Canyon University (GCU) is appealing the $37.7 million fine issued by the Department of Education (ED) for allegedly advertising false degree costs.
GCU maintains ED targeted their institution over ideological differences, not the public allegations of misrepresented doctoral program costs. GCU is a private Christian university.
In a press release on Thursday, GCU President Brian Mueller said that thousands of students, parents, employees, alumni, and community stakeholders felt ED was behaving tyrannically and had been weaponized against them.
“American people are losing confidence in the federal government to be fair and objective in their operations and there are clearly no checks and balances to prevent this type of behavior from the Department of Education, which is out of control and continues to broaden its authority and selective enforcement powers,” said Mueller.
ED announced its fine against GCU on Halloween. The agency accused the institution of deceiving over 7,500 doctoral students since 2017 — 98 percent of students reviewed — into paying more than advertised. ED said that GCU’s advertised cost of $40,000 to $49,000 amounted to false claims that violated the Higher Education Act, federal regulations on substantial misrepresentations, and Title IV’s fiduciary standard.
ED said that 78 percent of GCU’s doctoral program graduates paid $10,000 to $12,000 more in tuition costs for continuation courses to complete their dissertation requirements. The agency declared that GCU’s various fine print disclosures given to students were “insufficient to cure the substantial misrepresentations regarding cost.”
In addition to the fine, ED issued five conditions for GCU to meet: give prospective or current doctoral students the average total tuition and fees paid by graduates and the maximum number of credits that a student can take that are eligible for Title IV funds, and engage a monitor to oversee compliance; issue quarterly reports to ED about investigations, actions, or other legal proceedings by its accrediting agency or any government agency, as well as pending litigation in which a plaintiff seeks class certification; send a notice to all currently enrolled doctoral students informing them how to use ED’s feedback center to submit a complaint to ED; and send a notice to all current employees who provide recruiting, admissions, and other services to doctoral students about how to use the Federal Student Aid Tips line to submit information about misconduct or violations.
As AZ Free News reported previously, the ED investigation began after GCU challenged ED’s rejection of GCU’s nonprofit status by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in 2019. After several years of attempting to overcome ED’s denial, GCU sued in 2021. Following that, ED announced a coordinated effort with the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Veterans Affairs to investigate GCU for unfair or deceptive practices.
As part of GCU’s appeal, Mueller maintained that GCU doesn’t mislead or deceive its students. Mueller cited his institution’s favorable federal court rulings in Young v. GCU, in which two courts rejected claims of misrepresentation regarding the time or cost for doctoral program completion.
Mueller also cited a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report from last November, which determined that 91 percent of colleges mislead or understate the net price of financial aid to prospective students.
Additionally, GCU noted that it has undertaken its own preliminary internal study of doctoral program costs at 100 other universities. The university claimed that only two percent of those universities disclose full costs, 51 percent failed to clearly or fully disclose anything about the need for additional courses to complete a dissertation, and 45 percent made statements that a doctoral degree could be earned in a set number of years despite the varying length of time needed to complete a dissertation.
Mueller said that there was little incentive for their university to deceive doctoral program students, since it was their smallest degree program containing less than five percent of students. He pointed out that GCU hasn’t raised its tuition in 15 years.
“If our goal was to generate more revenue, rather than allegedly deceive students we could simply increase tuition three to four percent a year for a few years — as most universities have done — and no one would bat an eye,” said Mueller. “We haven’t done that. In fact, we have frozen tuition on our ground campus for 15 straight years because our innovative approach to managing this university, which the Department objects to, has allowed us to do that for the benefit of our students.”
Corinne Murdock is a reporter for AZ Free News. Follow her latest on Twitter, or email tips to corinne@azfreenews.com.
