LCMS university Concordia Portland shuts down, denomination faces suits

 Yes, this is a year old, but shades of my own old St. John's College 35 years ago, still interesting.

The reasons are partly similar. Massive debt, and declining enrollment even before the denouement, in what was in part at SJC, and probably at Portland, a vicious circle.

But not all the same. SJC, in Winfield, Kansas, 35 years ago, didn't have a Queer Straight Alliance student group and a Gender and Sexuality Resource Center. Nor "frank talk" about abortion or LGBQT etc. issues. Nor people including the campus pastor downplaying the religious background of a college owned by the main denomination of the conservative wing of American Lutheranism.

Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod President Matthew Harrison pushed to cut all this out in exchange for directors new loans for  campus construction work and other debt. And, the November 2019 Synod board of regents meeting said a permanent university president wouldn't be appointed until the sex stuff was eighty-sixed. At the same time, the board of directors, talking through Henson's ass, later claimed (as the scheiss was starting to hit the fan) that Oregon Public Broadcasting was wrong to make any assumptions like this.

A year later, last month? The LCMS Church Extension Fund, as primary lender, bought the campus for $3 million on foreclosure sale. (Indebtedness? Allegedly, $37 million.)

So, how did I come to this piece? A Slate piece, which mentioned ripoffs in master's degree programs, referenced Concordia by name and led to this piece from 2019. Scroll near the bottom for the Portland info. Portland had partnered with a privately owned online program management company, which, per Slate, usually takes a MASSIVE amount of the tuition payments. (Think of something like the old University of Phoenix in new drag.) 

Here's your nutgraf:

For a preview, take a look at Concordia University in Portland, Oregon, once a small, respected Lutheran teachers college. After creating an online master’s program with a Silicon Valley-based OPM called HotChalk, by 2015 Concordia had become the single biggest provider of education master’s degrees in the nation. (It’s currently the third-biggest provider.) An Oregonian investigation found that in five years, the number of graduate students went from 800 to 6,200, with HotChalk getting as much as 80 percent of tuition revenue.

But wait, that's not all. 

Then, the program was hit with very some familiar-sounding accusations. In 2013, a whistleblower lawsuit alleged that HotChalk ran a “classic boiler room” in which recruiters employed misleading practices to sign up students, including offering them “phony ‘scholarships.’” [7] The suit also alleges that recruiters’ caller IDs were masked with a Portland area code rather than that of the Arizona call center where they worked; that they were told never to mention HotChalk; and that they were paid bonuses based on enrollment and could be terminated for failing to meet quotas.Federal prosecutors also investigated whether Concordia had violated the rule prohibiting schools from outsourcing more than 50 percent of academic operations—the same rule Diane Auer Jones is bent on eliminating. According to the government, HotChalk “recruited, hired, employed, supervised and managed all or substantially all” of the online instructors who were ostensibly working for Concordia. Without admitting wrongdoing, the college settled with the government for $1 million—but, as the Oregonian reported, it was HotChalk that paid the bill.

But wait, THAT's not all!

At the second link, about the foreclosure sale? HotChalk claims it's owed THREE HUNDRED MILLION. I'm sure that's fake, but is still an issue; per that 2019 link and the second pull quote, there's probably some shadiness behind this. (OTOH, Harrison openly admitted the possibility of a "$400 million crater" early this year.

Per the last link, there's more items of interest as well. Portland had looked at leaving the LCMS. This idea was years too late. And, after whoring itself out to HotChalk, probably not realistic.

But, as the nation's top offerer of master's in education, and surely a major BA in Education school, being anti-gay, or perceived as such, would have meant no student teaching internships in Portland. And probably not in Eugene either.

Now, here's yet more questions. questions of ethics.

Matt Harrison can hate teh gay, but where were he and Synod's board of directors over this lawsuit? Where was the Concordia University System board of regents over this lawsuit? Portland's regents, if it has a separate board from the CU system?

For that matter, did neither Synod's board nor CU's board raise any eyebrows over the MASSIVE jump in graduate school enrollments? And, has either board taken any steps to keep the remaining universities from doing something similar?

We've got some HUGE LCMS mismanagement issues here, and Matt Harrison should be looking in the mirror. Per the foreclosure story, why the hell did Portland have a separate law school campus in Boise, Idaho?

The closure was announced one day after the cutoff date to seek tuition refunds. Had the closure been planned before that? (Per this piece, HotChalk claims that before the closure was announced, Portland transferred "valuable assets" to the Synod.)

And, Matt, through all of this, you've got more problems.

Per this piece about the CEF purchase, HotChalk has sued and a jury trial is set for November.

Per the presumable deception of students, there's a class-action lawsuit, also noted there.

And, per this, the Oregon Department of Justice is investigating, including the university-HotChalk issue.

"Discovery is a bitch," goes the old legal saying, and Harrison and the LCMS will soon find that out, especially on the ex-students' class-action lawsuit. (That's with the assist, and any others, from HotChalk listed above, if they pan out.) 

As far as the divisions within the LCMS between the firm conservatives and the true wingnuts? It's interesting that, per Harrison's Wiki page, he never has broken the 60 percent mark on a presidential election. It's also interesting, but not surprising, that he graduated Concordia The Logical Seminary in Fort Wayne.

He's up for re-election next year. Having served since 2010, will he be dethroned? He's still under 60; can't picture him stepping down on his own. But, if he is dethroned, will it be by the non-wingnuts, or by the wingnuts who think he's sacrificed ethical standards?

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Sidebar: Bronxville, also reported to be on thin ice by the first OPB piece, has also closed. 

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Various updates, March 2022: First, a judge has struck down a lis pendens that HotChalk had against the campus. Well, he HAD. In a later ruling, the same judge reinstituted it, claiming HotChalk's lawsuit gave it a legit claim to the property itself. Bigger point? The judge looked at HotChalk's discovery request for LCMS documents. He neither approved it nor denied it, but told the synod to give him some random documents related to the issue to inform a pending decision. And, proof that the lis pendens wouldn't hurt its sale? The University of Oregon has announced plans to buy the site. I see no updates on the student lawsuit. And, for April, the U has closed, for $60 million. Gee, that leaves Matty just $240 million short of what Hot Chalk wants, and I still don't know what students want.

August 2022: The U has finalized purchase of the site. Side note: The law school had received full ABA accreditation just a year before the closure. Re the HotChalk lawsuit, the only new thing is to see it will likely not start until next year. Nothing new on the students' suit. Wonder if HotChalk will approach Judge Eric Dahlin about any "freeze" on the UofO purchase money?

Side note two: Will Concordia Wisconsin (Mequon), per a prof locked out of his classes and reported on by wingnuts at the Federalist, be the next Concordia system university to face the ire of Harrison or people even further to his right? (It, like Portland, has a majority non-Lutheran, and likely large majority non-LCMS, student body.) That plot gets thicker, too! The locked-out prof was on the shortlist of "suggested" candidates Matt and the boys gave the university from which to select its president. The board of regents (which means, presumably, that Portland had its own board, and there wasn't a system-wide board) chucked that list. And, shock me that much of this has played out in the unofficial house organ of LCMS wingnuts, Christian News. Still nothing new on either the HtoChalk suit or the one by former students.

April 2023: According to this site, both university and Synod insiders sandbagged against the process of Portland going independent by blocking the process for a permanent new president in 2018. And, per this LCMS insiderish website, there are other hypocrisy angles. (The site seems to be tilted toward what passes for "moderate conservatives" in today's LCMS.) I don't have much else right now. Neither the Oregonian nor Oregon Public Broadcasting has anything new on the suits.)

June 2023: Of course, Matty has his hands full elsewhere, too, namely, fighting — or pretending to fight — fascism in the LCMS.

June 2023, part two: Of COURSE wingnut groups like Becket Law are grifting on this case.