Our Lady of the Lake students say OLLU gave them no viable options to complete their degree

A screenshot of an email Ahniyah Perry sent to the OLLU teach-out coordinator in July seeking information about classes for the fall semester. Provided / Ahniyah Perry

Our Lady of the Lake University declined TPR’s multiple requests for interviews with a member of its leadership to respond to the students’ concerns.

TPR was able to speak to Teresa Niño, the university’s new vice president of marketing and communications. TPR asked her to respond to the students’ allegations that their teach-out plan was unfair and insufficient.

A screenshot of the OLLU teach-out coordinator replying to Ahniyah’s July email about registering for fall. Provided / Ahniyah Perry

Specifically, TPR asked why OLLU didn’t keep any professors on to teach its remaining students, why OLLU was substituting MSOL courses with MBA courses, and why MSOL students were charged a higher rate than nonprofit management students for nonprofit management courses.

But Niño has only been on the job a month and didn’t have any answers. Instead, she wrote down TPR’s questions and said she’d relay them to the provost.

The following business day, she sent this statement from OLLU’s leadership:

“As the nation faces challenges with higher education, Our Lady of the Lake University (OLLU) earlier this year took steps towards a strategic realignment that helped the institution with its fiscal responsibility while still offering students a bright and productive future.

Approximately fifteen programs declining in enrollment were discontinued, but with the 100% commitment that students enrolled in those programs/courses would be able to complete their coursework and graduate.  

In accordance with our accreditation agency, Teach Out plans were developed, and every Student Advisor was tasked with communicating the options with the impacted students and develop a plan going forward. The specialized and individualized attention paid to our students makes it unnecessary to involve other colleges and/or universities to take our students, however, students always have the option of transferring to another college and/or university while in good standing.”

When TPR followed up to try to get a response to the specific concerns raised by Perry and Antes, Niño confirmed that OLLU’s leadership was declining the interview request. “We continue to be available and accessible to the students you reference but we will not engage in resolving their issues through the media,” Niño said in the email.

But the students said they only contacted TPR because they felt they had exhausted all options with the university.

“I think that the university is taking advantage of students and is hoping nobody stands up, and is hoping nobody says something,” Perry said. “I’m going to find a resolution, and if the university doesn’t want to cooperate, then I’ll have to use external resources in order to find a solution. But the university will be held accountable, at least in my case, specifically, and I know that there are other students out there who felt quiet or like they couldn’t speak up or there was nothing they can do.”

Perry and Antes said they can’t transfer to another university without losing a year of their time and thousands of dollars. They haven’t been able to find a similar program at another school that would accept all of their classes.

Part of their frustration with OLLU is what they see as a lack of transparency and communication. Antes said if he could just see a complete, written out teach-out plan, he could at least make an informed decision.

“I am just stonewalled,” Antes said. “I’ve asked directly: ‘What classes will I be taking? What kind of plan do you have in store for me for me to finish my degree?’ And I do not get a response.”

Perry took things a step further. She pushed for a meeting with the provost as a last attempt to work things out.

In a recording she provided to TPR, Alan Silva once again tried to suggest she transfer into OLLU’s MBA program. When Perry rejected that option, the only option she had left was to withdraw. “I always hate to lose a student. Really hate that, but I understand that if this is not working for you. …What I think I’m hearing is that you would like reimbursement for the courses that you’ve taken,” Silva said in the recording.

“Yes, at this point,” Perry replied.

Ahniyah Perry and her father Nathaniel Perry left the meeting thinking they’d get a refund. But then Silva emailed them saying they couldn’t provide a refund because Perry took the classes she paid for.

“When we left, it was like, ‘Yes.’ You know? ‘Your demands: I’m going to speak with finance. It’s going to happen.’ We get home that day, we get an email. ‘It can’t happen.’ Little weird,” Nathaniel Perry said.

TPR asked Silva and the university to respond to the recording, but OLLU declined.

Ahniyah Perry said she did not sign up for four classes — she signed up for a degree that no longer exists. “That’s a breach of contract,” Perry added. “I signed up for a program and you’re not delivering on it, and you’re saying, ‘Oh, well, you know, you bought the car, but you got the tires. So, you know, you’re good.’”

Nathaniel Perry said, to him, there’s a clear irony here: his daughter is trying to study how to be a good leader, and the university is modeling the opposite. “This is terrible that somebody trying to teach organizational structure could operate like this,” he added.

Ahniyah Perry filed a complaint with OLLU’s accreditor and is looking into her legal options. Antes filed a complaint with the university. They said they may be one of only a few speaking up, but they’re not the only ones being hurt.

According to a former professor in OLLU’s business school, the Leadership Studies program alone had more than 150 students enrolled, with 130 students in the doctoral program and about 30 in the master’s program.

Other than Perry and Antes, students and faculty would only speak to TPR on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.

The former professor said 80 of the 130 PhD students were in the dissertation phase, meaning they’d already completed 69 hours of course work and spent more than $70,000 in tuition. All they have left of the 73 hour degree program is to write their dissertation and defend it, a process that takes a lot of one-on-one interaction with your dissertation chair.

“We were just left in limbo [after our professors were laid off],” one Leadership Studies student in the dissertation phase told TPR. “They just contracted people to take their places, but I’m not sure they did a great job at vetting these people.”

The woman OLLU hired to conduct the Leadership Studies teach-out is a former Leadership Studies professor who has a consulting business in the Rio Grande Valley.

The student said the consultant assigned doctoral students to her employees to work as their new dissertation chairs. But because most of the students are in San Antonio and the consultant company is in the Valley, the students haven’t been able to meet in person with their new chairs, and all of the classes have been asynchronous.

“They all have jobs, so this was a kind of a part-time gig for them,” the doctoral student said.

The student also said their new chair does not have the expertise in statistics needed to help them show that their research is statistically significant.

According to the university, degree programs were discontinued because enrollment in those programs were declining, but the former professor questioned whether that was true for Leadership Studies. They said it seemed like Leadership Studies was chosen because most of its professors were senior, tenured faculty with higher salaries, not because the program wasn’t profitable.

Even though the professors were tenured, the former professor said OLLU leaders laid them off anyway by pointing to a phrase in the faculty handbook that said tenure could be disregarded if the university was at risk of financial exigency.

For the Perry family, speaking up is about making sure university leaders know the personal cost of their decisions.

Ahniyah’s mother underwent a kidney transplant during Ahniyah’s first year at OLLU, and they chose to pay tuition out-of-pocket with money that could have gone to medical expenses instead.

“I was even willing to not take classes, to not go to school, to be there and to help her,” Ahniyah Perry said. “And she said, ‘No, this is where the priority is. This is where you need to be.’ And so, it’s been a sacrifice, and not just money, but time and effort and attention.”

For Nathaniel Perry, it’s also about making sure the university does right by its students. To him, it seems like the university is protecting itself at students’ expense.

“If it’s my entity and my company, I always take the first hit, meaning that my people are going to get paid before me,” Nathaniel Perry said. “If you make an error, you stand up … and say, ‘You know what? We’ve got to correct this thing.’”

Disclosure: Our Lady of the Lake University is a TPR sponsor. We cover them like we would any other institution.