The 25 students who earned baccalaureates from a North Carolina Central University satellite campus in Lithonia, Ga. hold fully accredited degrees, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools announced yesterday.According to SACS Commission on Colleges President Belle Wheelan, the Lithonia students received a "comparable education" to those at the main campus in Durham, N.C.
SACS’ ruling guarantees that all the students will be eligible for graduate school and any job that requires a degree recognized by a U.S. Department of Education-certified accrediting body.
The NCCU satellite campus opened in fall 2004 at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in suburban Atlanta. NCCU administrators shut down the program this year after discovering that it had not received approval from the university’s Board of Trustees, the University of North Carolina system or SACS.
39 students were still enrolled at the time NCCU’s new leadership closed the campus. Administrators are exploring a teach-out option to help them finish their degrees.
FAMU President James Ammons was NCCU’s chancellor when the campus was established. In an official statement, he accepted responsibility for the problem while explaining that he “cannot recall all of the details regarding that particular program because I don’t get involved in the day-to-day operations of academic programs.”
It is unclear whether NCCU will still have to return the federal financial aid money it awarded to the students. Unaccredited programs are ineligible for such funds. However, now that the satellite campus’ degrees and credit hours have SACS’ backing, this might not be an issue. As Wheelan noted, SACS "accredits institutions and not sites," meaning that degrees awarded through an off-campus site are automatically included under NCCU's existing SACS certification unless the accrediting body specifically decides otherwise.
North Carolina state auditors are currently investigating the now-defunct New Birth program.
Despite the recent negative publicity, Ammons has enjoyed steady support from FAMU students, faculty, alumni, and trustees. University supporters are still celebrating his leadership in guiding FAMU from probation to good standing with SACS earlier this year.
Read more at the N.C. News & Observer, Atlanta Journal Constitution, and NCCU web site.
Ammons' FAMU support remains strong amid NCCU-New Birth flap
Twenty-five imminent lawsuits is what prompted SACS to validate the students' degrees. The awarding of degrees wasn't due to the goodness of anyone's heart. The twenty-five?degrees were less expensive than the total costs of impending lawsuits. Can you say "hello"? This isn't rocket science.
ReplyDeletethe lawsuits would have been on NCCU, not SACS. Sacs is not in the business of doing favors. NCCU will probablyt have to give back the money, but the degrees are safe.
ReplyDeleteYou can't stop the FAMU magic. You try to hold us down, but like an FSU football player at an female underage slumber party, we just keep coming.
9:02 WOW LMAO!!!
ReplyDeleteDaggummit!!!! I thought the NCCUgate would be the thing to stop Ammons in his tracks. Now I have to find some other small niggling detail to blow all out of proportion.
ReplyDeleteVJ
I know the lawsuits would have been filed against NCCU and not against SACS. SACS does the sanctioning and accrediting. The schools do the teaching and instituting.
ReplyDeleteThis, 9:02, is 12:19.
As I said in that first post: This isn't rocket science. Dang.
Yeah, there may be or may have been lawsuits filed against NCCU. Nonetheless, who do you think the State would come after to get the money back? Why else would the state auditors be investigating!
ReplyDelete12:19. Your logic doesn't flow.
ReplyDeleteThere would be lawsuits against NCCU. Therefore SACS validated the degrees. Why would SACS behave unethically to save NCCU from lawsuits? Please lay out your logic so that we can understand. The way you presented it doesn't make any sense.
6:19, are you listening and/or reading me?? I said, for the third time, that the lawsuits would be against NCCU, NOT SACS. SACS is an accreditation body. NCCU is the academic institution. Why would the lawsuits be against SACS?? My first post -- the 12:19 entry -- says that, and I repeat, "Twenty-five imminent lawsuits is what prompted SACS to validate the students' degrees." I said NOTHING about SACS being the recipient of the lawsuits -- or is this how YOU intepreted the post? I also said that "the twenty-five degrees were less expensive than the total costs of impending lawsuits." I did not say that SACS would bear the cost of those lawsuits. I was speaking of the over-all costs involved in the debacle. How much more "logical" or plain can this post be made?? The statement was as elementary-presented as could be. If you chose to read what was not there, then you obviously have a comprehension problem. No one -- certainly not I -- said anything about SACS "behaving unethetically." Perhaps you should take a course -- perhaps mine -- in the business of logic and reasoning. Damn.
ReplyDelete12:19 I hope you teach at FSU, otherwise not only has the quality of students at FAMU gone down but so has the quality teaching. Your logic is flawed and as such makes no sense. Quote "Twenty-five imminent lawsuits is what prompted SACS to validate the students' degrees. The awarding of degrees wasn't due to the goodness of anyone's heart. The twenty-five?degrees were less expensive than the total costs of impending lawsuits". Why? SACS does not grant degrees. SACS is an accrediting body for schools K-12/CC/ Colleges and Universities.
ReplyDeleteTherefore, following your logic SACS would have thousands of “impending” lawsuits every year for doing what it is their mission to do, accredit degree granting programs and ensure that they meet the standards of all K-12/ CC/Colleges and Universities.
12:19. You have yet to draw the relationship between potential lawsuits against NCCU and SACS accreditation decision. Your central argument suggests that SACS accredited the degrees to help NCCU avoid 25 lawsuits.
ReplyDeleteTo do so would be unethical behavior by SACS.
Now try this again. What is the relationship you are trying to draw between potential lawsuits against NCCU and the SACS decision?
I would love to sit in on your course. Please advise as to time and place!
9:48 & 10:26, as Nikki Giovanni used to declare: you've got to answer your own question(s). Apparently you people have absolutely no earthly idea how political SACS is and how the business of SACS is embraced. And I suspect that you don't really wish to know, either. As a REAL and TRUE SACS insider -- can you say 14 years of pure "inside-ness" -- trust me, if you will, when I say I know how the business of SACS works. I think you might be surprised. Judging from your posts, however, I don't think you're reachable. Therefore, I'm going to leave this alone and let you good people think/believe/contemplate whatever you so desire. I'm out.
ReplyDeleteif i can join the fray here, i think poster 12:19 throughout the blogging has valid points in terms of sacs being not only an academic "agency" but a very subtle, not-out-loud political "agency" too. we don't walwys look at academic agencies as being political institutions, but they are, and sacs is really no different.
ReplyDeleteSounds like John McCain.
ReplyDeleteprolly is john mcCain.
ReplyDelete