GCU TODAY • 7
S THE STUDENTS, faculty
and staff of Grand Canyon University adjourned for Christmas break
near the end of 2003, few of them had much knowledge of the financial
health of the sleepy, west Phoenix campus where they studied, taught
and worked. They were in the dark, and that was not a bad place to be.
Like many private institutions of higher education, Grand Canyon
had endured its share of struggles since its humble beginnings in 1949,
after three Baptist pastors each had plunked down a silver dollar to start
Grand Canyon College in Prescott. Lacking either the taxpayer support
of public universities or the substantial donor base of successful private
colleges, the school depended primarily on tuition-paying students, of
whom there were about 1,500 on campus and a similar number taking
classes online in 2003.
Budgetary surgery was a way of life.
“Every few years, there was a financial crisis,” recalls Dr. Charles
Maxson, then in his 20th year on the faculty at Grand Canyon. “That’s
how it was, and how most small colleges still are.”
In 1997, the University’s lenders had pressured the governing board
for a change in leadership. After a brief restructuring, the banks
backed off, and Grand Canyon wobbled on down the road. Athletes still
competed, future nurses and teachers still graduated, and instructors
and staffers somehow never missed a paycheck.
However, like a gravely ill hospital patient, the University’s internal
organs were starting to shut down. Some of those who were trained in
making health assessments kept a wary eye on the heart monitor —
their pay.
“I was making less than when I started,” says Dr. Cheryl Roat, who
had been with Grand Canyon’s College of Nursing for 17 years, recalling
an increase in her teaching load paired with a 6 percent reduction in
salary. “That was an indication of problems. We knew there were issues.”
Those issues were enormous, and they added up to an inarguable
conclusion by the University’s board and the school’s president at the
time, Dr. Gil Stafford.
Grand Canyon University was in intensive care — on life support,
even — and its prognosis was grim.
“Grand Canyon, from its first day, was on thin ice,” says Stafford,
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photo by darryl webb
