A Christian Bible school in Riverside County has been ordered to cease operations following a recent state hearing into multiple allegations of failing to provide proper education and maintain records.
As students face accusations of forced and unpaid labor at Olivet College, headquartered in the high desert town of Anza, California, school leaders seek to protect the university’s fate from attempts by state regulators to revoke its accreditation. did.
Presiding Judge Debra Nye Perkins, who presided over the Administrative Review Division, ordered the school to stop admitting new students and to help current students make plans to earn their degrees elsewhere. The decision will be finalized on December 10th and will take effect on January 10th.
“The only discipline to protect the public is to revoke the defendant’s operating license,” she wrote in her decision, which ordered the school to pay more than $64,000 for the violations. After a three-day trial in early November, Nye-Perkins had 30 days to issue a verdict.
Olivet said in a statement that it has appealed the judge’s order and filed an application to continue operating in California based on a “religious exemption.”
A state investigation into the private university was launched in 2022 by the Office of Private Postsecondary Education, a division of the California Department of Consumer Affairs, citing concerns about student safety and quality of education, officials said in November. testified to.
Olivet President Jonathan Park and Vice President Walker Tseng said the investigation was inspired by a Newsweek report that university leaders said was racially and religiously biased and inaccurate. said. This media is owned by a former Olivet member.
During two unannounced visits to Olivet’s campuses in Riverside and the San Francisco suburbs, officials from the Office of Private and Postsecondary Education testified that they saw few students or faculty in living quarters or classrooms. Officers said most of the observed classes involved small numbers of students, sometimes five or seven, and were conducted via livestream.
Officials said administrators at the university’s main campus in Anza and a branch campus in Mill Valley, Calif., did not immediately have access to documents related to student and faculty rosters or class syllabi. Some documents lacked details, such as quantified hours of “full-time” work for students and some faculty contracts that were missing or expired.
Joanna Murray, a senior specialist at the department, said one graduate course she observed was not rigorous enough for that level of teaching and lacked teacher-student engagement.
“It wasn’t what I expected from a master class,” she said.
Tseng and Park accused the department of playing “mischief” with unannounced visits, and a real review of the university would examine alumni’s influence on missionary work, the focus of the school’s training and mission. He said he would do so. School leaders continued to argue that the department’s evaluations were biased.
In one tense exchange, Tseng said that BPPE employee Ashley Cornejo “spoke good English” during the visit, which he said was an insult to Olivet College, which has a majority of students from East Asia. He said it reflected species bias. The officer said the note was consistent with other documented observations she made when she struggled to understand the people she interviewed.
“When you see people with different skin colors, do you think they can’t speak English well?” Tseng asked.
“No, because I know what it feels like,” Cornejo, who is a person of color, responded.
Through their testimony, Park and Tseng said the university was in good standing with the accrediting body Assn. For Biblical Higher Education. Nye Perkins and Deputy Atty. General Dionne Mochon, who headed the department, said the findings were unrelated to the case at hand. BPPE is responsible for authorizing Olivet to award degrees in California.
“Defendants continue to be cavalier in their compliance with BPPE laws and regulations,” Kniperkins said in his ruling.
The Olivet University System, which has multiple campuses across the country, faces continued scrutiny over its teaching capabilities. The accrediting agency previously placed Olivet College on probation in 2020 and placed it on warning in 2022 until earlier this year. The university previously had its license to operate its New York campus revoked for failing to meet state requirements regarding curriculum, administrative policies and working conditions.
Bible College System is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization affiliated with World Olivet Assembly Inc., a missionary nonprofit organization. Both men report tens of millions of dollars in income and assets on their tax returns.
The university is also under federal investigation.
Several former Olivet College students and employees have alleged that administrators prevented adults from leaving campus without permission and sometimes forced them to work for free. These allegations were made this year in interviews with the Times and against university and school leaders, including Korean American pastor and founder David Chang and former president Matthias Gebhert. made in a lawsuit.
These allegations were not the central focus of the state hearing.
Some people who spoke to the Times on condition of anonymity said they feared retaliation. Two former students who spoke on the record, Cao Tingbo (41) and Chou Qilian (35), attended the hearing. They previously told the Times they had been promised scholarships but their time was taken up by jobs that paid for their education. They said they lent money to the school, but when they asked for repayment, they faced resistance.
The university denies all charges.
Cao and Zhou left the university earlier this year, taking their young daughters with them.
“As a former student who experienced firsthand the lies, manipulation, and abuse at Olivet College, I am relieved by California’s decision to revoke the college’s accreditation,” Cao said in a statement. “This action validates the concerns that I and many others have raised over the years and helps ensure that future students do not suffer the same injustices that I did.”
