Donald Trump and Jerry Falwell, Jr. have loads in frequent. You would possibly even say Falwell is the Trump of … [+] larger schooling. (Picture by Alex Wong/Getty Photographs)
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Jerry Falwell, Jr.’s 13-year tenure as president of Liberty College has come to an finish this week after one scandal positioned him on indefinite depart and one other lastly pressured him out.
Falwell has been within the information loads over the previous a number of years. Except for these scandals, he’s additionally been very outspoken on political points. In 2016, he endorsed Donald Trump in his marketing campaign for president and was an outspoken champion for Trump. He even spoke on the Republican Nationwide Conference that 12 months. After Trump was elected, Falwell was mentioned to be main a process power to overtake larger schooling for the president, although that by no means really occurred.
Politics isn’t all Falwell shares with the president although. He and Donald Trump are literally loads alike. They share an affinity for extravagant existence and each have had their very own intercourse scandals. However that’s not all. They’ve additionally constructed their fortunes in some nefarious methods.
Like Trump, Falwell’s profession was given a jumpstart by his father. Falwell inherited his place as president of the college from his father, who based Liberty College. And he’s used the college and his place as president to make a fortune for himself. You would possibly even say he’s the Donald Trump of upper schooling.
Liberty is by definition a non-profit faculty—in contrast to the now-defunct Trump College—however Falwell ran it as a for-profit enterprise. However in contrast to Trump and his college, he was profitable and profited from Liberty drastically.
Throughout his tenure as president, Falwell drastically expanded the college’s choices—particularly on-line—and introduced in hundreds of scholars and billions of {dollars} with them. At present, the college has greater than 45,000 undergraduate college students and greater than 33,000 graduate college students. All of these college students pay a hefty price tag to enroll at Liberty and depart with a good quantity of debt.
And the way do they pay for that? With federal grants and loans. Final 12 months, $222.7 million in federal pupil loans went to undergraduate college students at Liberty and fogeys borrowed $35.eight million in Mum or dad PLUS loans to ship their youngsters there. That doesn’t depend any personal pupil loans that may have been used. On high of that, Liberty obtained $29.eight million in Pell Grants—federal grants for low-income college students.
And what did that pay for? Liberty College has a commencement price of simply 40% for undergraduates, even after eight years. Federal knowledge additionally reveals that lots of Liberty’s graduates don’t find yourself making a superb wage. For instance, the median graduate with a bachelor’s diploma within the attire and textile discipline earned simply $18,900 a 12 months after commencement. There are 16 completely different bachelor diploma packages the place the median graduate earns lower than $30,000 a 12 months later.
However the pupil loans don’t cease with undergraduates. Like the scholar loan portfolio nationally, a big share of pupil loans went to graduate college students. Besides whereas 40% of all federal pupil loans dispersed final 12 months went to graduate college students nationally, 62% of loans at Liberty went to graduate college students — a complete of $416.9 million in federally again pupil loans for graduate college students alone.
Liberty loaded graduate college students up with some critical debt. For instance, the median graduate of considered one of their theological doctoral packages left with greater than $96,000 in debt, not counting any debt they’d from their undergraduate diploma.
Sadly, these graduates are sometimes saddled with debt with little to point out for it. Liberty has a grasp’s diploma in legislation the place the typical debt of graduates exceeds $77,000 — once more, not counting undergraduate loans. And that’s a grasp’s diploma, not a JD, so these college students don’t have large legislation agency jobs lined up as a result of they will’t observe legislation. The common wage for these graduates is a mere $36,200.
Falwell wouldn’t be the place he was with out rising Liberty College in the way in which he did. However he had numerous assist, counting on the federal authorities to supply the loans to the hundreds of scholars that Falwell was wanting to load up with debt.
In one other similarity to President Trump, he additionally used the cash college students paid to make a variety of actual property purchases and different offers that he profited from personally. Like Trump, Falwell even employed his personal son—who was additionally the topic of a few of the scandals—to be a vice chairman of the college.
It took loads to lastly push Falwell out of the college. It’s unclear how else he or his companies may keep linked to the college. However he’ll nonetheless be rewarded financially, because it seems like he would possibly get a golden parachute on his method out. It’s reported that he’s anticipating to get his wage of $1.25 million for the subsequent two years in addition to one other $eight million.
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