Rule tied to financial aid would force churches to act like ‘shareholders,’ university president says
Hannibal-LaGrange University, a Christian institution in Missouri, is calling on the Trump administration to take action against a Biden-era regulation that it says threatens religious freedom.
The regulation, adopted in the spring of 2024 under President Joe Biden’s administration, has to do with higher education institutions’ governance and federal student financial aid programs.
Robert Matz, president of the private university, said the “Co-Signature Mandate” is a “direct threat” to the institution’s Christian mission.
“At the close of the Biden administration, federal regulators attacked both our institution’s autonomy and our churches’ religious liberty,” Matz wrote Friday at the Baptist Press.
He called on Education Secretary Linda McMahon and the U.S. Department of Education “to recognize the severity of this situation and act decisively to protect not only HLGU but religious institutions nationwide.”
The Biden-era regulation changed the way higher education institutions must sign the Program Participation Agreement in order to receive student financial aid under Title IV, the Courier-Post News reports:
A PPA allows colleges to “participate in the student financial assistance programs under Title IV of the Higher Education Act (Title IV programs),” as explained on studentaid.gov. Schools enter a PPA by having their president, CEO or chancellor and an authorized representative of the Secretary of Education sign an agreement.
However, the new regulation added a co-signature mandate for proprietary or private nonprofit institutions.
Matz told the newspaper that the churches in the Missouri Baptist Convention choose the trustees of his university. However, he said the regulation would force these churches “to run like an investment corporation.”
“If a for profit institution has shareholders and there is default on student debt, those shareholders will be liable for that default,” he said. “But they’ve gone from applying it to for-profits, and now they’re saying the churches are like shareholders.”
The report continues:
The university appealed the mandate, though the Department of Education said it would only accept the appeal if the [Missouri Baptist Convention] stopped appointing trustees.
“This is one of the things we’ve said to the Department of Education, the convention is a business meeting that occurs for two days in the month of October,” Matz explained. “They want signatures from the CEO, the COO, the CFO of the convention but they doesn’t exist, and we’ve said that to them. Their language back was, ‘just pick the person who’s most like that’. We’re like, that’s not how this is structured, because every church is autonomous, every entity is autonomous. What the process does is ensures that Hannibal-LaGrange will remain a Christian university, faithful to the mission that Missouri Baptist have always had for this university.”
“Already, our institution has felt tangible harm due to this mandate,” Matz wrote at Baptist Press.
The university could have received more than $500,000 in funding for its new prison education program if not for the dispute, and it stands to lose more unless the matter is resolved, he wrote.
“If fully implemented, the co-signature mandate would prohibit students from choosing HLGU while using Title IV funds, solely because of HLGU’s relationship with Missouri Baptists,” he wrote.
Matz said university leaders were working with a Kansas City branch of the education department on the matter, but the Trump administration recently closed it.
He expressed hope the federal government will review the situation and take action, citing two of President Donald Trump’s recent executive orders protecting religious freedom.
Matz said the university also is considering a lawsuit.
“This religious liberty issue goes beyond Baptists. Catholic, Lutheran, Presbyterian and other faith-based universities rely on their ability to freely organize and appoint trustees according to their religious beliefs,” he wrote, later adding, “It sets a dangerous precedent – empowering federal agencies to interfere with the internal governance of religious institutions nationwide.”
The U.S. Department of Education’s media relations office did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment from The College Fix.
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