YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – After nearly 60 years of providing higher education in eastern Ohio, Eastern Gateway Community College’s dissolution concluded Sept. 30, leaving behind ongoing investigations and empty buildings.
When you type EGCC.edu into a web browser, an Ohio Department of Higher Education page pops up announcing “The College is Closed” and listing transfer options and a list of FAQs.
A governance authority appointed by Gov. Mike DeWine in August 2024 oversaw the college’s wind down. Student records have been transferred to ODHE, the buildings and equipment have been sold and faculty, administrative and staff jobs have been eliminated.
The Steubenville college, which started as Jefferson County Technical Institute in the 1960s, later became Jefferson Technical College and then Jefferson Community College. In 2009, the college expanded to serve Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties and became Eastern Gateway. It opened a campus in downtown Youngstown a few years later.
The two Youngstown buildings have been sold to the Western Reserve Port Authority. One of the buildings in Steubenville was sold to that city’s school district. The other was deeded by Jefferson County to the college in the 1960s but included a reverter clause that it would return to the county if the building ceased being used for educational purposes.
Jefferson County filed court action last August to activate the reverter clause. The matter was settled among the county, the state, the governance authority and Youngstown State University.
YSU in Steubenville
YSU officials have said they want to open a campus in Steubenville, but funding is an issue.
“YSU continues to work closely with the Ohio Department of Higher Education and Jefferson County officials to develop a viable and sustainable pathway to bring high-quality higher education to the former EGCC campus in Steubenville,” a YSU spokeswoman says in an email. “In addition, we are working with state officials to determine a near and long-term funding strategy for the operations in Steubenville.”
The EGCC Governance Authority, chaired by Kimberly Murnieks, director of the Ohio Office of Budget and Management, appointed Fred Ransier, a retired Columbus attorney, as the college’s executive director.
In a Sept. 30 close-out report to the authority from Ransier and Treasurer/CFO Michael Abouserhal, the two outline the process followed since the authority’s appointment.
Among the items listed are federal pending matters including a review by the U.S. Department of Education of the college’s federal financial aid program. Before EGCC closed, the department had placed it on Heightened Cash Monitoring 2, meaning the college had to use its own resources to credit student accounts and wait for federal student aid reimbursements from the federal department.
“The governance authority proposed a zero-dollar settlement of any outstanding claims,” Ransier and Abouserhal’s report says. “There has been no response to the settlement proposal.”
The department did work with EGCC in the close-out of the federal financial aid program, it says.
“The Program Review has been dormant,” the two officers’ report says. “EGCC has not received a response to the zero-dollar preliminary program review offer.”
Auditor’s Investigation
A state auditor’s office investigation is also ongoing.
In January 2024, the state auditor’s office special investigations unit, along with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, the Ohio State Highway Patrol’s Computer Crimes Unit, the U.S. Secret Service, the Columbus Division of Police’s Digital Forensics Unit and the Ohio Narcotics Intelligence Center, searched offices at the Steubenville campus related to then-ongoing investigations concerning Eastern Gateway.
The college was required to maintain all of its records, software and data systems because of a preservation order issued in connection with that search warrant.
“This came at a great expense to the Governance Authority as it was making plans for its dissolution and closure,” Ransier and Abouserhal’s report says. “This also meant having to retain IT staff familiar with the systems and operations to respond to Audit and Special Audit requests for information.”
The authority and college IT staff worked with the auditors and investigative unit “performing record searches, making records available to investigators and arranging interviews with staff and vendors,” the report said.
An auditor’s office spokesman wrote in an email that the matter is still under investigation, adding that no further updates are available.
The two governance authority officers’ report says the college’s IT department “negotiated and paid for the data system extension beyond Sept. 30 to allow continued access to the data through the transition of records duties and responsibilities.”
Earlier charges against Jimmie Bruce, former EGCC president, and James Miller, a former vice president and chief of staff, were dismissed in Jefferson County. The charges included grand theft, theft in office, unlawful interest in a public contract, telecommunications fraud and misuse of a credit card.
The charges were connected to what at the time they were filed was described as credit card transactions that were unrelated to legitimate college operations. Both men were indicted in August 2023.
Lawsuits
The last few years of its operation brought lawsuits against the college. They were settled under the governance authority including one filed by the company with which the college had contracted to operate its Free College Benefit program. EGCC paid Student Resource Center about $2.1 million to settle the case. The free college program allowed union members and their families from across the country to earn EGCC degrees at no cost to them. They attended classes mostly online and the college’s enrollment ballooned from about 5,000 to more than 40,000 at its peak.
But that program also led to Eastern Gateway’s undoing.
In 2021, the Higher Learning Commission, the college’s accrediting body, placed it on probation. The HLC cited concerns about the quality of the education offered because of the rapid enrollment increase.
In 2022, the USDOE ordered the college to stop the free college program. EGCC sued the department but later settled and agreed to end the program in 2023. Enrollment dropped.
The college’s former board of trustees voted in 2024 to withdraw from the accreditation process and to dissolve the college because of financial challenges.
Building Purchase
At the governance authority’s Sept. 30 meeting, members questioned the college’s 2020 purchase of the parking garage and said that information had been forwarded to the state auditor.
Ransier and Aberouserhal’s report says that in 2020 EGCC paid $9.67 million for two downtown buildings the college’s governance authority sold for $800,000 five years later.
The college paid $8.3 million for the East Federal Street parking deck building in July 2020 and $1.37 million for the East Boardman Street building across the street in August 2020 – despite an engineering report from two years earlier that cited $7.9 million in immediate repairs were needed, plus $4 million in repairs over the next 10 years at the deck, the report said.
Leading up to the sale to the port authority earlier this year, the appraisal for the downtown building that housed classrooms was for $800,000. That building has no productive leases.
The appraisal for the parking deck showed a negative value because it requires $18 million in repairs. The structure would need another $18 million in work in five to 10 years, according to estimates. The WRPA plans to demolish the parking garage.
Pictured at top: The building at 101 E. Boardman St., Youngstown, used to house Eastern Gateway Community College classrooms.