GREENSBORO, N.C.
About one in four undergraduate students who enrolled at North Carolina A&T in the fall is now on academic probation or suspension for either failing or not making adequate progress toward graduation.
That total — 2,562 students out of an undergraduate enrollment of 9,687 — was significantly higher than other similar public universities in the region.
Of the 10,902 undergraduate students enrolled at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro last spring, only 5.5 percent were put on academic probation and 2.7 percent on academic suspension, a total of 894 students.
Winston-Salem State University, a historically Black university like N.C. A&T, had 144 students on academic probation and 371 on suspension in the fall. That’s about 8 percent of a student population of nearly 6,000.
Administrators at N.C. A&T attribute the roughly 400 percent increase from fall 2005 to fall 2006 to a renewed and strict compliance of university policies, though it’s unclear why they weren’t followed more closely in the past.
“We were making sure we’re adhering to our policies,” said Janice Brewington, A&T’s interim provost who assumed the job in May. “That number caught some students who may not have been in the mix before … that we had not picked up or had overlooked or had not been consistent in relationship to applying the policies.”
