South Carolina State University, one of several of the nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) beset by enrollment declines and financial troubles, won a significant vote of confidence Thursday when the powerful Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SASCOC) removed the institution from probation, ending nearly a decade of troubles with the college peer accrediting group.
As staff, alumni and other supporters cheered the news late Thursday, the scene was more somber in Georgia, where Paine College lost its bid to remain accredited, despite last-minute efforts by its supporters to demonstrate financial backing for the institution. It was jointly founded more than a century ago by leaders of the Christian Methodist Episcopal (CME) Church and the Methodist Church, South (now United Methodist Church). Attorney Barbara Bouknight, chairman of the Paine board of trustees, said the college would appeal the SACS decision.
Thursday’s SACSCOC decisions on South Carolina State and Paine were among the most noted of nearly 200 declarations made this week by the panel at its summer meeting in Memphis.
In other key decisions, SACSCOC removed Virginia State and Alabama State universities from warning status, continued Tuskegee University (Alabama) on warning and placed Elizabeth City State University (North Carolina) on warning for 12 months.
Meanwhile, the SACSCOC removed the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill from probation, ending a long and embarrassing case that university Chancellor Carol Folt characterized in a Thursday statement as “academics-athletics fraud.” The case stemmed from an investigation into employees of the now defunct department of African and Afro-American Studies who were found by the university to have “worked together to perpetrate academic fraud” for some 18 years, said Folt.
Since the program folded in 2011, UNC has offered free classes to about 80 students and more than 300 alumni, Folt said, noting that the NCAA is still reviewing corrective steps taken by the institution.
