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Coordinates: 41°51′04″N 90°11′53″W / 41.851°N 90.198°W / 41.851; -90.198
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Not to be confused with the unaccredited entity with the same name doing business from the United Kingdom.

41°51′04″N 90°11′53″W / 41.851°N 90.198°W / 41.851; -90.198

Ashford University
AU logo
TypePrivate, For-profit (NYSE: BPI)
Established1918
PresidentRichard Pattenaude[1]
Academic staff
389
Students968 (Clinton campus) [2]
Location
United States Clinton
,
Iowa
,
US
Athletics17 Teams
ColorsPurple and Gold   
NicknameThe Saints
Websitewww.ashford.edu

Ashford University is a private, for-profit university located in Clinton, Iowa.[3] It is the largest educational holding of Bridgepoint Education (NYSE: BPI).[4] Although the university is regionally accredited by The Higher Learning Commission (HLC) of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools,[5] their accreditation status has come under scrutiny after a rejected attempt to become accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges and demands from HLC for additional information.[6]

The university offers Associate's, Bachelor's, and Master's degrees in more than 50 degree programs on campus and online. The majority of the student population is enrolled in online courses but[4] the campus has experienced growth in recent years.[7]

As for-profit colleges have come under increasing scrutiny, a U.S. Senate report in 2011 listed Ashford's parent company, Bridgepoint, as having one of the highest withdrawal rates of any publicly traded school in the industry.[8] Ashford has also been faulted for its recruiting and finance practices in a U.S. Department of Education audit. Bridgepoint Education responded in March 2011 with a report asserting that the information used in the Senate hearing was either inaccurate or incomplete.[9]

History

Mount St. Clare history (1893 - 2003)

Mount Saint Clare, circa 1920.

Ashford University's campus was established in 1893 as the Mount St. Clare Academy, a boarding and day school for girls. The idea for this school formed when Father James A. Murray invited the Sisters of St. Francis to help teach in Clinton, Iowa. The new Mount St. Clare building was erected for this school in 1910 and remains in use today.

Seeing a need for higher education in Clinton County and the surrounding area, the Sisters founded Mount St. Clare College in 1918.[10] This liberal arts institution was also an approved teacher education college from 1932 to 1954. In 1942, 60% of the rural teachers in Clinton County and 62% of the teachers in the city of Clinton school system had received all of their training from Mount St. Clare College.

In 1950, the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools first accredited Mount St. Clare College. Following the accreditation, the school quickly began to expand. A convent building, new library, new gymnasium, the Science Building, and Durham Residence Hall were acquired by the college during this period of growth. The college eventually became coeducational in 1967.

For the 1979-1980 school year, the college received approval for its first four-year degree, a bachelor's program in business administration. During the same year, Mount St. Clare Academy merged with St. Mary's High School in Clinton, forming Mater Dei High School (now known as Prince of Peace Preparatory). With the space freed by the academy's merger, the school began to offer additional four-year programs. In 1997, the sisters moved off campus into their new mother house, The Canticle. In 1998, the Durgin Educational Center was opened, which included new athletic facilities, including Kehl arena.

University history (2003 - present)

In 2003, Mount St. Clare College changed its name to The Franciscan University. At the same time, the university received approval to offer its first master’s degree online. In September 2004, the school modified its name to The Franciscan University of the Prairies in order to avoid confusion with similarly named schools.

After a period of financial difficulty, the University was purchased by Bridgepoint Education in March 2005.[11] After the completion of the sale, the institution's name was changed to Ashford University.[11] Sponsorship by the Sisters of St. Francis ended.

Although the university is regionally accredited by The Higher Learning Commission (HLC) of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools,[5] it sought regional accreditation from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC).[12] In June 2012, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) acted to deny initial accreditation to Ashford University.[13] Following WASC's denial of accreditation for being "lacking in several areas, including low numbers of full-time faculty, high student dropout rates and questions about academic rigor," HLC has demanded additional information from Ashford prior to an October site visit.[6]

In response to accreditation concerns, the school's trustees appointed Richard Pattenaude as president in October 2012. Pattenaude is a former chancellor of the University of Maine System who also served as chairman of the Commission on Institutions of Higher Education for the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, a regional accrediting body.[1]

Presidents

Leaders of Ashford and its predecessor institutions have included:

  • Mother Mary Paul Carrico, O.S.F., 1918–1921
  • Mother Kristen Dunno, O.S.F., 1921–1924
  • Mother Mary Paul Carrico, O.S.F., 1924-1936[14]
  • Mother Mary John McKeever, O.S.F., 1936–1948
  • Mother Mary Regis Cleary, O.S.F., 1948–1958
  • Sister Mary Cortona Phelan, O.S.F., 1958–1968
  • Sister Mary Cecile Devereux, O.S.F., 1968–1971
  • Sister Eileen Smith, O.S.F., 1972–1976
  • Dan C. Johnson, 1976–1985
  • The Rev. Charles E. Lang, 1986–1991
  • James J. Ross, 1991–2000
  • Brian McNicholas, 2001–2002
  • Michael E. Kaelke, 2002–2005
  • James Chitwood, 2005–2007
  • Jane McAuliffe, 2007–2011
  • Elizabeth Tice, 2011-2012
  • Richard Pattenaude, 2012–present

Campus

The Ashford ground campus is located in Clinton, Iowa.[15] The 24-acre (0.097 km2) campus is about a half-mile from the Mississippi River and about a mile north of Highway 30. The most notable building on campus is St. Clare Hall, which has served as the Mount St. Clare Convent, Novitiate, Academy, and College. Today, the lower floors in St. Clare Hall house administrative and support staff, while the upper floors contain classrooms.

The newest building on campus is the Durgin Educational Center, which houses Kehl Arena, the athletics department, and the animation lab. The university has recently purchased the Best Western hotel for use as a dormitory. An article in the Huffiington Post criticized the purchase of land from a local country club and described how “a new, 500-seat football stadium adorns the campus,” even though no football team exists on campus.[16]

Sports and student activities

Athletics

Ashford University teams are known as the Saints. The university competes in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) as an Independent member, part of the Association of Independent Institutions (AII). The Saints formerly competed in the Midwest Collegiate Conference (MCC). Men's sports include baseball, basketball, bowling, cross country, golf, soccer, tennis and track & field; while women's sports include basketball, bowling, cross country, golf, soccer, softball, tennis, track & field and volleyball.

The official team colors are purple and gold, and the mascot for the Saints is a Saint Bernard dog named Champ. The University constructed a $4.6 million dollar athletic facility in 2010. A new state-of-the-art artificial turf soccer field and an outdoor all-weather track has been completed on the lower portion of the campus and hosts the AU men's and women's soccer programs as well as the men's and women's outdoor track and field teams.[17] After belonging to the MCC for many years, Ashford has become a member of Association of Independent Institutions (A.I.I.) of the NAIA on July 1, 2012[18]

Ashford has also received the MCC President’s Cup for the years 2009-10 and 2010-11 for high academic excellence among their student athletes with 96 individual students chosen for the Academic All-MCC Team.[19] Additionally, 21 students were named Daktronics-NAIA Scholar-Athlete s which requires a GPA of 3.5 to 4.0 at the time of certification.[20] Eight of Ashford’s athletic programs have been named as NAIA Scholar Teams, which requires individuals on the team to maintain a minimum GPA of 3.0 on a 4.0 scale. The programs named were men’s tennis, women’s soccer, women’s basketball, men’s soccer, volleyball, baseball and men’s basketball.[21]

U.S. Department of Education audit

In May 2008, the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Inspector General (OIG) audit services division commenced a compliance audit of Ashford University covering the period March 10, 2005, through June 30, 2009. The OIG audit reached the following conclusions:

Audit focus[22] Audit result[23]
Compensation policies and practices relating to enrollment advisers Rewarded recruiters based on their success in securing enrollments
Calculation, timeliness, and disbursement accuracy of Title IV program funds Improperly retained at least $1.1 million during the 2006-7 period
Student authorizations to retain credit balances Kept credit balances without the proper authorization
Maintenance of supporting documentation for a student's leave of absence Took too long to return money awarded to students who withdrew

The stock of Ashford's parent company, Bridgepoint Education, fell the most in almost five months when the misuse of federal student aid was first publicly disclosed in 2009.[22] When the official results were released in 2011, Senator Tom Harkin said this audit "reveals the same troubling pattern of for-profit colleges' taking advantage of students and taxpayers." The Department of Education has not yet responded to the findings.[23]

The audit was the subject of a U.S. Senate committee hearing on March 10, 2011.[24]

2011 Senate Hearings

On March 10, 2011 Senator. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) chaired a hearing of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee that examined a case study of Ashford's parent company, which has experienced near-exponential profit growth in the last few years despite low graduation rates. Bridgepoint owns two universities that it purchased when both were near bankruptcy, Ashford University in Iowa and the University of the Rockies in Colorado. When it purchased Ashford University in 2005, it had less than 300 students but today it claims to have over 78,000 students, 99% of which are online.[2][25][26]

Senator Harkin took issue with success of the company saying that while Bridgepoint may have had record profits the students were not succeeding. According to information provided by Senator Harkin in the committee hearing, 63% of students who enrolled at Ashford University during the 2008-2009 school year withdrew before completion of their perspective program. Senator Harkin pointed out that Bridgepoint recorded more than $216 million in profits in 2010; of which 86.5 percent of its revenues come from federal funds. In reference to the dependence of Bridgepoint on public funds, Senator Harkin was quoted as saying, "I think this is a scam, an absolute scam."[25]

Kathleen Tighe, who is an inspector general with the U.S. Department of Education, testified at the hearing that in an audit of Ashford, she discovered Ashford was improperly distributing student aid to students. "Seventy-five percent of the improper disbursements to students in our sample were made to students who never became eligible," Tighe said. Bridgepoint hadn’t returned the improperly obtained student aid to the federal government, and said on a recent report she’d seen that Bridgepoint was “sitting on $130 million” in these types of funds.[25]

Due to the ongoing Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) proceedings, and in order to preserve due process, Ashford's parent company, Bridgepoint Education, chose not to send executives to the HELP committee hearing while engaged in negotiations with FSA.[27] Rather, Bridgepoint published a summary of responses called Bridgepoint Education Transparency.

Iowa Attorney General Investigation

According to a February 15, 2011 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Ashford University and its parent company Bridgepoint Education received a letter from the Iowa Attorney General's office on Feb. 9 requesting "documents and detailed information" from Jan. 1, 2008, to the present to determine if Ashford's business practices possibly violated the state’s Consumer Fraud Act.[28]

Iowa Department of Education

According to Senate testimony by Arlie Willems (ret.) reviewer for the Iowa Department of Education, in 2006, the Iowa Department of Education denied Ashford University's request to offer an online Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) on the grounds that the program "was more a collection of discrete courses than a cohesive program, was understaffed for appropriate interaction with students and supervision of both courses and clinical experiences, including student teaching. Many faculty members lacked appropriate academic background and/or experiences for their assigned responsibilities. The most serious concern noted by the team was the lack of responsibility on the part of the program in providing quality clinical experiences, the aspect of teacher preparation considered the most important by preparation programs in Iowa." [29]

Willems also testified that Ashford entered into partnership with Rio Salado Community College whereas education courses from the Ashford BA in Social Science with a Concentration in Education could apply to Rio Salado’s post-baccalaureate teacher education program. Once students have completed the online Ashford BA and the online Rio Salado teacher education program, they are eligible for an Arizona teaching license. Willem's noted that this partnership could be seen as a creative way to solve a problem in order to continue drawing students, or it could be seen as a way to circumvent the accountability system for quality in order to continue collecting tuition from students. An individual who has attained an Arizona license in this way does not automatically receive an Iowa license because Iowa and Arizona do not have a reciprocity agreement.

According Willem's, complaints from Ashford students concerning this agreement and licensure include:

1) Individuals from Iowa and many other states who had completed Ashford's online Bachelor of Arts in Social Science with a Concentration in Education. These individuals had been led to believe that, upon completion of this program, they would be eligible for a license in their home state because Ashford has a state-approved teacher education program (the on-ground undergraduate program).

2) Individuals who were students or graduates of the Ashford online baccalaureate program, but were not aware of the need to complete the Rio Salado program as well in order to receive an Arizona license. These individuals were not even aware of the Rio Salado partnership.

3) Ashford students who were intending to complete student teaching through Rio Salado College and believed they would then automatically be eligible for an Iowa teaching license.

4) Students who were completing an online degree through Ashford in early childhood and believed that this degree would lead to an Iowa teaching license. It does not.[29]

References

  1. ^ a b "Dr. Richard Pattenaude Appointed President Elect of Ashford University". Ashford.edu. October 11, 2012. Retrieved January 11, 2013.
  2. ^ a b Largest-Number-of-On-Campus-Students-at-Ashford-for-Third-Consecutive-Year "Largest Number of On-Campus Students at Ashford University for Third Consecutive Year; Ashford University". Ashford.edu. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help) Cite error: The named reference "field" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  3. ^ "Clinton - Our Community - History". Clinton Area Chamber of Commerce. 2006. Retrieved 2012-11-29.
  4. ^ a b "Profile: Bridgepoint Education Inc (BPI)". Reuters. Retrieved 2012-11-29.
  5. ^ a b "General | NEWS". Ncahlc.org. 2012-10-03. Retrieved 2012-11-29.
  6. ^ a b "More Accreditation Problems for Ashford U." Inside Higher Ed. July 16, 2012. Retrieved July 16, 2012.
  7. ^ Kay Luna (2011-07-24). "Ashford University: 'This is a very real campus'". Qctimes.com. Retrieved 2012-11-29.
  8. ^ Kirkham, Chris. "Buying Legitimacy: How A Group Of California Executives Built An Online College Empire", Huffington Post, 09 March 2011.
  9. ^ "Point-by-Point-Response-to-HELP-Committee-Hearing" (PDF). Bpitransparency.com. Retrieved 2012-11-29.
  10. ^ "The History of Ashford University". Archived from the original on 19 November 2010. Retrieved November 20, 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  11. ^ a b "A For-Profit Buys a Catholic College". Insidehighered.com. Retrieved November 20, 2010.
  12. ^ "Bridgepoint Education's Ashford University Initiates WASC Accreditation Process". Prnewswire.com. Retrieved November 20, 2010.
  13. ^ "Public Statement Regarding Ashford University". Western Association of Schools and Colleges. Retrieved 2012. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  14. ^ This was Mother Mary Paul Carrico's second period as president of the college.
  15. ^ "Clinton, Iowa - Our Community". Clintonia.com. Retrieved 2012-11-29.
  16. ^ Kirkham, Chris (March 9, 2011). "Buying Legitimacy: How A Group Of California Executives Built An Online College Empire". Huffington Post.
  17. ^ "Ashford University - Facilities". Ashfordathletics.com. 2011-10-01. Retrieved 2012-11-29.
  18. ^ League presidents vote out Ashford, Waldorf, Quad-City Times, May 17, 2011
  19. ^ "Midwest Collegiate Conference News". Midwestcollegiateconference.com. 2011-08-04. Retrieved 2012-11-29.
  20. ^ "Daktronics-NAIA Scholar-Athletes". Dakstats.daktronics.com. 2012-01-18. Retrieved 2012-11-29.
  21. ^ "Ashford University News". Ashfordathletics.com. 2011-07-07. Retrieved 2012-11-29.
  22. ^ a b "Bridgepoint Education Plunges as U.S. Audit Looms", Bloomberg, September 4, 2009
  23. ^ a b Field, Kelly (2011-01-24). "Audit Finds Ashford U. Kept Student-Aid Money It Should Have Returned to Government". The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 2011-01-25.
  24. ^ Tamar Lewin, Hearing Sees Financial Success and Education Failures of For-Profit College, New York Times, March 11, 2011
  25. ^ a b c "Sen. Harkin Says For-Profit Education Company Bridgepoint Is a 'Scam'". Campus Progress. 2011-03-11. Retrieved 2012-11-29.
  26. ^ "US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions: Hearings - Hearing". Help.senate.gov. Retrieved 2012-11-29.
  27. ^ "Home - Harnesses creativity and the latest technology to re-engineer the modern student experience Bridgepoint Education". Bpitransparency.com. Retrieved 2012-11-29.
  28. ^ Blumenstyk, Goldie (2011-02-16). "Iowa Attorney General Investigates Bridgepoint's Ashford U. - The Ticker - The Chronicle of Higher Education". Chronicle.com. Retrieved 2012-11-29.
  29. ^ a b "Testimony to U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions" (PDF). Help.senate.gov. Retrieved 2012-11-29.

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