What’s New
Saint Augustine’s College efficiently argued for the restoration of its membership within the Southern Affiliation of Schools and Faculties Fee on Schools, shopping for the small traditionally Black college in Raleigh, N.C., extra time to show its fiscal well being.
The college has a historical past of shoddy record-keeping practices, based on SACSCOC, and was stripped of its membership in December 2023. Shedding its membership is the primary transfer towards dropping its accreditation, which might block the college from entry to federal monetary support for college students.
However after months of appeals, hearings, and a evaluation by the SACSCOC arbitration committee, the accreditation group determined to grant the college extra time to show its fiscal well being.
“This reinstatement acknowledges SAU’s relentless dedication to upholding tutorial requirements and making certain a thriving academic atmosphere for our college students,” mentioned Marcus H. Burgess, Saint Augustine’s interim president, in a press release Monday. “We’re resolute in our mission to beat challenges and emerge stronger than ever.”
Background
The college has been in a fiscal disaster because the first time it was positioned on probation by SACSCOC, in 2016, for “monetary instability.” Its enrollment dropped from 1,500 college students in 2010 to fewer than 1,000 by 2016. Since then, the college has struggled to take care of enrollment above 1,000 college students.
The college had been cited for poor accounting practices by SACSCOC, a discovering confirmed by an audit referred to as for by Saint Augustine’s Board of Trustees in 2020. The audit discovered that the college didn’t maintain correct and up-to-date accounting information, didn’t submit Pell Grant and direct student-loan knowledge on time, and uncared for to correctly account for hours labored and wages earned within the federal work-study program.
These failures have led to a continuing churn of management at Saint Augustine’s. In 2020, the college introduced in Irving Pressley McPhail to shore up its funds and construct again enrollment. However McPhail died all of a sudden in October, attributable to problems of Covid-19. His spouse, Christine Johnson McPhail, was appointed president in February 2021 and was given the duty of guiding the college by monetary turmoil. However her time period was minimize brief in 2023 when Saint Augustine’s discovered itself again on probation and at risk of dropping accreditation altogether.
The monetary disaster grew so dire that this previous spring the college didn’t pay its staff, prompting an investigation by the U.S. Division of Labor.
The college additionally turned a part of one other dispute as a gaggle of alumni, joined by former trustees John Larkins and Henry Debnam, filed a lawsuit in Could to unseat the present board over fiscal mismanagement. Saint Augustine’s College didn’t reply to requests for remark.
What’s Subsequent
Saint Augustine’s College has till December to show itself fiscally sound sufficient to rejoin the SACSCOC, a transfer that may insure its accreditation going ahead. The college has to navigate a meticulous gauntlet of oversight checks by the accrediting company within the coming months. It can first submit a monitoring report back to SACSCOC, exhibiting the company that it has improved its report retaining and has shored up its funds since December 2023.
SACSCOC will conduct a website go to to evaluation the college’s monetary operations. And eventually in December, the SACSCOC board will resolve whether or not to finish the probation interval and restore Saint Augustine’s to full membership within the accrediting company.
