Atlanta campus to cost NCCU

University to pay U.S. $1.1 million

DURHAM -- An unauthorized satellite campus that N.C. Central University ran for four years at a suburban Atlanta megachurch will cost the university more than $1.1 million.

The university has reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Education to pay back $1,138,228, just a chunk of the more than $3 million in federal financial aid the university doled out to students in the program.

The series of criminal justice, hospitality and tourism and business courses offered at the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Ga., from 2004 to 2008 were never approved by any university sanctioning body, and NCCU's accrediting agency didn't know about them either. Programs not acknowledged by an accrediting agency are not eligible for financial aid, which is why the university is now repaying part of the money.

It could be worse. The $1.1 million number came from a U.S. Department of Education formula that considers grants and direct loans dispensed to students as well as an institution's loan default rate, Chancellor Charlie Nelms said Tuesday in announcing the settlement.

The money will be paid back over five years, and the university will only use private dollars from its endowment.

Students not penalized

None of the students who received the funds will be asked to give any of it back, Nelms added.

"This is North Carolina Central University's approach to writing the last chapter of this situation," Nelms said at a meeting of the executive committee of the university's board of trustees.

The pastor at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church is Eddie Long, a university trustee and wealthy donor. He did not attend Monday's trustee meeting, which was held by teleconference.

Twenty-nine students who were enrolled in courses when NCCU officials discovered the program's improper origins and abruptly shut it down last year are now in approved online courses through NCCU and East Carolina University, Nelms said. The students are expected to graduate in either May or December, he said.

The New Birth saga has embarrassed and frustrated source NCCU and UNC system officials, many of whom were not on the job when the satellite campus was created in 2004.

The origins are still largely unknown. The chancellor at the time, James Ammons, has said he shoulders the blame for the misstep but has not publicly offered a thorough explanation for what happened.

In October, the UNC system released a critical report on the matter, finding that through the New Birth program, NCCU gave students an improper tuition break, ignored several policies and kept poor and incomplete records.

In all, 126 students took courses at the New Birth campus in the four years that it existed, and 25 earned bachelor's degrees.

The university's accrediting agency, the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, subsequently declared those degrees to be of the same academic quality as those earned by traditional students at NCCU's main campus in Durham.