Former State Supreme Court Justice Ruth McGregor will conduct an investigation into allegations of unethical conduct in the Economics Department at Arizona State University, following multiple concerns raised by a professor and students that the university allegedly engaged in a pay-to-play scheme with a private learning company.
McGregor has been retained by ASU to investigate allegations by economics professor Brian Goegan that the university agreed to require the use of online learning program MindTap, an educational product of the Cenage company, in exchange for the company providing a large monetary grant to the university.
In documents and emails provided to AZ Central, Goegan alleges that he began raising concerns in 2017 after ASU began requiring him to use MindTap in his classes for the students to use as an online learning tool, as well as a method of submitting assignments from the class. As a result, students were required to purchase subscriptions to MindTap each semester, despite the availability of similar online learning platforms that students could use free of charge.
Goegan also alleges that the university began requiring him to use an economics textbook in his classes, despite the fact that Goegan has been using his own PowerPoint materials and YouTube videos as teaching materials to save the students the cost of purchasing textbooks on top of their already expensive tuition. The textbook required for the classes by ASU was also a product of Cengage.
Goegan has also alleged that the university set up a grade distribution requirement, which essentially required professors to fail a certain number of students, causing them to have to repeat the course. He believes that ASU essentially wanted to demonstrate Cengage as an effective student remediation tool for students who were unable to pass the course the first time around but were able to pass it after assistance from Cengage products.
ASU has completely denied all of Goegan’s allegations, but has agreed to bring in McGregor and fully cooperate with her investigation into the practices of the Economics Department.
John Patrick (@john_pat_rick) is a graduate of Canisius College and Georgia Southern University. He interned for Red Alert Politics during the summer of 2012 and has continued to contribute regularly.
