At Barber-Scotia College’s opening convocation last month, the entire freshman class fit on one wooden pew at the front of the college’s chapel, while speakers implored them to keep faith in their institution.
Barber-Scotia, a four-year college here, is on the edge of extinction. The college lost its accreditation in 2004, and total enrollment is down to a dozen, 10 of whom are first-year students. The historically black college, which is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), is saddled with nearly $11-million in debt and can afford neither to maintain many of the buildings on its historic campus nor to tear them down.
Its supporters, however, are trying to resuscitate the college. The president has added courses in renewable energy and business entrepreneurship, as well as job-training programs, to try to attract new students and regain accreditation. The Board of Trustees is recruiting new members with philanthropic connections, and the alumni association is reaching out to members with a goal of bringing in millions of dollars in donations. Even the students speak of choosing to attend Barber-Scotia in order to help the college survive.
But Barber-Scotia’s problems illustrate just how hard it is to recover from the loss of accreditation, which is required for students to receive federal financial aid. About 90 percent of the college’s students received such assistance before the college lost its standing.
And the college’s situation raises the difficult question of when a struggling college should fight to preserve its mission and when it should close its doors for good. Despite the efforts at Barber-Scotia and at institutions in similar straits, some higher-education experts question whether any college in such deep trouble should continue to offer course credits that cannot be transferred to other institutions and a diploma that will be of questionable value.
Accrediting associations have terminated the accreditation of more than a dozen colleges since 2005, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education. (That count does not include Barber-Scotia, since it lost its accreditation the year before.) Five of those colleges continue to operate in some fashion, but none has regained full standing with its previous accreditor: Two are now accredited through new affiliations with other colleges, two are seeking accreditation with other associations, and one is in legal limbo, with a court order preserving its accreditation for now.
There is no formula to calculate whether a college that has lost accreditation should shut down or merge with another organization instead of trying to rebuild on its own, said Terrence J. MacTaggart, a former chancellor of the University of Maine and editor of a book about how struggling colleges have turned themselves around. But trustees have to be realistic in assessing an institution’s financial footing, the future of its academic programs, and its value and reputation in the community, he said.
In the case of Barber-Scotia, its trustees may want to “fight the good fight,” Mr. MacTaggart said. “But maybe the most responsible thing for them to do is find a partner” in another institution.
Troubled History
Barber-Scotia, founded by the Presbyterian Church in 1867 to educate black women, was facing serious problems long before it lost accreditation. In the fall of 1994 the college was on its sixth president in six years and was placed on probation by its accreditor, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, because of its troubled financial situation, especially the college’s mounting debts. In 1995 the accreditor gave Barber-Scotia two years to shape up or lose its status.
Between 1997 and 2003, the college seemed to be back on stable ground: Enrollment had grown to a record level of nearly 750, and the institution had acquired a $7-million loan from the U.S. Department of Education to renovate one of its 19th-century buildings for student housing. The college was even planning to start a football team, said the Rev. Edward J. Best Jr., an alumnus and current chairman of Barber-Scotia’s board.
But then the college’s good fortunes began to decline rapidly. In December 2003, the Southern Association put it on warning status for problems with its finances and institutional effectiveness. In February 2004, a month after receiving the results of an investigation by the accrediting group into academic problems at the college, the Board of Trustees gave the president, Sammie Potts, the option of resigning or being fired. He chose to step down. The accreditor reported that May that the college had given diplomas to nearly 30 students who had not completed the requirements for graduation. In June, the college lost its accreditation for violating academic integrity, and most students and staff members fled.
By January 2005, the college had temporarily shut its doors, with no students enrolled, a handful of employees, and a crushing debt.
The Aftermath
Barber-Scotia was able to recruit enough students to offer classes again in the fall of 2006, but David Olah, the college’s president since July 2008, said some offices on the campus still look like employees left without bothering to clear their workspaces. The messy offices point to the crux of the problem for Barber-Scotia: Without federal financial aid and much more student tuition, on which the college had relied heavily before losing accreditation, the college cannot afford to even clean up those spaces, let alone do all the things it needs to do to thrive again.
Mr. Olah, a former school superintendent at the North Hills Christian School, in Salisbury, N.C., is the college’s fifth leader since it lost accreditation and the first white president of the institution since 1932. He is declining his annual $40,000 salary. The college has just three other full-time staff members and three full-time faculty members to complete the lengthy evaluations required by accreditors and to do other key tasks, such as manage a fund-raising campaign.
As of June 30, 2008, Barber-Scotia had less than $200,000 in cash available, according to its audited financial statement from that fiscal year, the first independent audit of the college’s finances since 2003. The college’s total expenses in the 2008 fiscal year amounted to $1.7-million; depreciation was counted as more than 40 percent of that total, and nearly a quarter was for interest on debts.
Although it needs more than 12 students to survive, the college cannot afford to have them on the campus. Because students cannot receive federal aid, Barber-Scotia is covering all but $4,000 of the annual $14,400 in tuition and fees it costs each student to attend the college, using funds from its relatively small endowment of nearly $2.5-million and other investments. Students are also credited $2,000 a year for working on the campus.
The college also cannot earn revenue by renting out many of the two dozen campus buildings, such as the full-size gymnasium and indoor, Olympic-size swimming pool, because there is too little money to pay for the maintenance required to make many of the facilities safe, functional, or attractive.
On a tour of the nearly deserted campus, Mr. Olah points out an empty dormitory, defaced by graffiti, where squatters from the surrounding community have begun to move in. Another campus building, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, has a crumbling roof, and its 142-year-old mortar—made of mud and horsehair—is eroding around the bricks. Broken windows and water damage also plague many of the empty buildings.
At the same time, the college must continue to pay for basic utilities for those structures, which would suffer greater damage if they lost water or heat, Mr. Olah said. Board members have been reluctant to sell any of the college’s property or buildings, Mr. Olah said, because they believe the amount of money Barber-Scotia would reap would be too little to help pay down its debt.
The college’s employees, supporters, and students are intent on restoring Barber-Scotia’s reputation and its finances. The college has applied to be accredited by the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools, a federally recognized accreditor that serves Christian institutions. However, Mr. Olah told the trustees in late September that the college was behind schedule in filing its self-evaluation.
Albert Letting III, vice president for institutional compliance at the Transnational Association, said that the timeline is flexible and that his organization works with institutions to make sure they are ready before moving forward in the process. However, he said, delay could mean Barber-Scotia will not be ready to be a formal candidate for accreditation from the Christian-college association in the spring of 2010, as campus leaders had hoped. Candidacy alone would make students eligible for federal financial aid.
Barber-Scotia officials are also overseeing a campaign to collect $10-million in donations to keep the college on its feet until more students can enroll, and alumni are asking donors for money to provide scholarships to students.
In addition to establishing programs this year in renewable energy and business entrepreneurship, Mr. Olah has persuaded a solar-energy company to provide certificate training on the campus in installing and repairing solar panels. The certificate program, which began this fall, is meant both to give Barber-Scotia’s students an opportunity to learn job skills and to attract nearby residents to enroll in the training.
Same Story, Different Colleges
Barber-Scotia fits the profile of a number of colleges that have found themselves struggling to stay afloat after losing accreditation in recent years. Those institutions tend to be relatively small private colleges without high admissions standards, and they are often minority-serving institutions, which typically enroll a large percentage of students from low-income families, who rely on federal student aid.
For example, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools terminated the accreditation of Paul Quinn College, another historically black institution, for financial and academic reasons this year. But a federal judge has temporarily blocked that action while the college pursues a lawsuit against the association. The college’s enrollment has dipped to less than 150, from 440 last year, and supporters are trying to pull in millions of dollars in donations to keep it solvent.
Hiwassee College, a private college associated with the United Methodist Church, lost a court battle to preserve its accreditation last year but continues to operate with less than half of its previous enrollment of more than 400, while it seeks approval from the Transnational Association.
There are ways for colleges to recover from dire straits, said Mr. MacTaggart, who helped chronicle the turnaround trajectories of nearly 40 colleges in the 2007 book Academic Turnarounds: Restoring Vitality to Challenged American Colleges and Universities.
The first step is to balance the institution’s budget and create a business model that can sustain itself, Mr. MacTaggart said. The institution’s leadership has to be creative and collaborative, he said, open to input from faculty members and to reshaping the educational mission of the institution.
One recent example of a college that emerged from near-failure is Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, which was on the verge of closing last year as its debts reached $3.5-million. Instead of shutting down, it sold all of its buildings and land to nearby Northwestern University, allowing the seminary both to pay off its debts and to balance its operating budget.
In order to broaden its appeal and increase enrollment, the institution also changed many of its degree programs to allow working pastors to pursue advanced degrees mostly online, with shorter intensive visits to the campus, where the seminary still uses some facilities. It also created partnerships with other institutions to offer some programs.
Ideally, a board of trustees should consider whether its college is viable long before it loses accreditation, said Thomas C. Longin, a consultant on governance matters to colleges and to the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges. Barber-Scotia’s current financial condition, high debt load, and low enrollment make it a marginal institution, Mr. Longin said, and the board should not save it solely because of its history.
Why Go On?
But leaders and students at Barber-Scotia said their college should survive not only because of its tradition of serving disadvantaged students but also for its continuing role in educating students who might not otherwise attend college.
“There’s a niche here for students who may have had some rough going in high school,” said William McKee, who joined Barber-Scotia’s Board of Trustees this fall and is a fellow with Phelps Stokes, a private foundation that helped begin the United Negro College Fund. “That demographic is dependent on the survival of the Barber-Scotias of the world.”
Desmond Rorie, a freshman from Charlotte, N.C., said he considered applying to the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, but chose the tiny college in Concord as a way to strengthen his Christian beliefs. “It’s just a big old test of my faith and to help me get my education,” he said.
Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., a former executive director of the NAACP and a guest speaker at Barber-Scotia’s opening convocation, said the college could contribute to the region’s economy through its work-force training programs. Mr. Chavis said his company, Education Online Services Corp., will help provide the technical capacity for Barber-Scotia to offer online education, allowing the college to reach out to students around the globe.
Barber-Scotia is on the right track to revival with its new academic programs and efforts to regain accreditation, said Marybeth Gasman, an associate professor of higher education at the University of Pennsylvania who studies minority-serving institutions. But if the new ideas are not successful, the college may eventually need to consider merging with another institution, she said.
For now, the students and employees of Barber-Scotia believe their college will be resurrected.
After Barber-Scotia’s opening convocation there was a small reception with white sheet cake and red fruit punch. Kim Rieves McTillmon, the college’s chaplain, sat with freshmen in a corner of the library and told them they had not made a mistake in choosing Barber-Scotia.
“You’re part of a story being written right now,” said the chaplain. “Your names will be associated with greatness.”
