Ohio Auditor Keith Faber and a top federal education official on Oct. 8 will discuss an ongoing investigation and newly filed criminal charges connected to the now-closed Eastern Gateway Community College.
In January 2024, Secret Service agents and the state auditor's office searched the campus, months after the U.S. Department of Education ordered the college to halt enrollment over a possible violation of federal law over how it pays for students to attend classes.
The college had been on the financial ropes. In December 2023, Eastern Gateway asked state lawmakers for a $12 million advance on state funds to help it meet payroll. In the spring of 2024, the college's board of trustees voted to close. Michael J. Geoghegan served as president from
July 2020 until his resignation in June 2023.
Faber released an audit in November 2025 raising the alarm about $17 million in expenditures. At the time, the state auditor warned of "pervasive deficiencies in recordkeeping and derelict accounting and controls led to rampant financial mismanagement of public resources."
In 2015, Eastern Gateway launched the Union Free College Benefit Program, which allowed American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union members and their families to earn a college degree “with no out-of-pocket cost for tuition, fees, or books after any federal or employer grants are applied,” according to the college. Eastern Gateway partnered with the for-profit Student Resource Center on the program.
But by 2023, the college ended that program, which had ballooned to 20,000 students, many of them out-of-state.
Eastern Gateway, established in 1968, served students from Columbiana, Jefferson, Mahoning and Trumbull counties and had campuses in Steubenville and Youngstown.
Faber is now running for Ohio attorney generalagainst Democrat John Kulewicz.
State government reporter Laura Bischoff can be reached at lbischoff@usatodayco.com and @lbischoff on X.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Criminal charges filed in investigation of Ohio community college
