Financially troubled Fisk University was dealt another setback Thursday in its efforts to remain a significant player in higher education when the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools rejected the Nashville university’s financial update and added more items to the important agency’s list of concerns about the historic school’s viability.
At its summer meeting in Charlotte, N.C., which ended Thursday, SACS continued its “warning” status for Fisk until December, giving it six more months to address a variety of issues or face being placed on probation or dropped from membership in the widely respected regional accrediting body.
Fisk has been on warning status from SACS since December 2010, with the Atlanta-based agency citing the school’s weak financial condition as the key reason for refusing to grant Fisk a clean bill of health. In its final statement Thursday, SACS expanded the scope of its concerns to include questions about whether Fisk’s administrators were qualified to lead, the qualifications of its academic officials and the school’s compliance with Title IV education programs.
“They need to find some money,” said a higher education official intimately familiar with Fisk’s condition and its accreditation problems. The official, who would not speak for attribution, said the school has relied too heavily and too long on its failed efforts to monetize its priceless Alfred Stieglitz Collection of art and photographs and said the school needs to look at other possibilities, even in a down economy.
Fisk officials, who have been locked in expensive litigation over the past five and a half years about its various plans to sell parts of or interest in the collection, have insisted the proposed sale has nothing to do with the accreditation efforts. The Tennessee Court of Appeals was set to hear arguments this month from Fisk and the State of Tennessee on the latest round of efforts by Fisk to sell half interest in the collection for $30 million cash and arguments from the state and a small group of Fisk legacy alumni against any sale.
SACS did not elaborate on its decision. Fisk, which was hopeful its stepped up fundraising of recent months would turn SACS around, had no immediate comment on the SACS action.
Fisk was not the only HBCU to get bad news from SACS, as the lingering bad economy and its impact on the ability of schools to raise money appeared to play a role in the inability of various institutions to hold their ground.
