St. Leo

The Southern Association regional accreditor has put seven schools on probation, and issued official warnings to a bunch of others. The only one relevant to this forum is St. Leo (warning status), which offers an array of distance degree programs. Reasons not given in the Chronicle article.

Incidentally, of the seven on probation, three are religious (Methodist or Presbyterian), and three are "Historically Black," which is, I believe, the politically correct term for "Black."

 

For the non-US amongst us, what does "historically black" or for that matter "black" mean in describing a university? I have never heard a university so portrayed before. Is this some kind of official term? Does it mean the people who attend are black? If so, is that by design or circumstance?

And a related question: why is "historically black" more politically correct than plain old "black"?

Just interested in the good ol' American ways.


------------------
Peter Tucker
Australia

 

In 1837, a white Quaker named Richard Humphreys established the first school (the Institute for Colored Youth) to train blacks to become teachers. For the next century and more, blacks were generally not welcome in mainstream US schools, so there arose nearly 100 colleges and universities to serve the black community. In 1954, the US Supreme Court decided that "separate but equal" education was unconstitutional. Along with that went the notion that the phrase "black college" was as inappropriate as "white college" or "Jewish college," etc. And yet it seemed important to many people, including foundations who make specialized grants, to know which were the -- well we can't call them 'black colleges,' but we can say, 'the ones that were black colleges before 1954' -- knowing full well that they pretty much [/]still[/i] were, and, today, still are. So "HBC" and "HBCU" have become quite respectable terms in higher education -- and we still have the situation where HBCs are about 3% of all accredited US schools, but account for more than 25% of all black graduates.

 

Thank you, John, for the background. Very interesting.



------------------
Peter Tucker
Australia

 

Dr. Bear, is there a link to the article? And of which "Chronicle" do you speak?

David

 

He means the Chronicle of Higher Education.

 

In the for-what-it-is-worth department, the white, Boston Irish-Italian brother of one of my students is now in his first year at Washington, DC's Howard University -- one of the most distinguished of the "historically black" schools, and still overwhelmingly black in its student body.
But that's not the punchline: the punchline is that he's there on a basketball scholarship!
Somehow I find this a very amusing and yet nice vignette of current Americana.

Peter up in Canada

 

The Chronicle of Higher Education is America's weekly higher education newspaper. www.chronicle.com

For reasons I've never understood, some of their articles are accessible to all, and others, like this one, only to subscribers. It begins:

Accreditor Imposes Range of Sanctions on 21
Southern Colleges

The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools sanctioned 21 institutions last week. One college may soon be stripped of its accreditation, and seven were placed on probation, the most serious sanction short of losing accreditation. Thirteen colleges were
placed on the milder warning status.

The association's Commission on Colleges voted to remove the accreditation of Wood College, a small, private two-year college in
Mississippi, because of problems with its finances. If the college appeals, however, it will be placed on warning status until the appeal is resolved..

 

Dr Bear,

I thinking about enrolling with St. Leo starting in March. However, I just contacted St. Leo directly and they told me that the information that has been posted about their school being on probation or given a warning is not true. I was wondering if you could find out more information. I don't want to spend a lot of time or money on a school that is about to lose it's accreditation. Thanks.

 

I don't think the people at the Southern Association would take too kindly to St. Leo's deceiving students about its status. Let's hope the person you spoke to was ignorant, not being deceptive.

To quote from the Southern Association:

"The Commission denied reaffirmation of the following institutions, continued their accreditation, and place them on warning...

St. Leo University, for twelve months, for failure to comply with Section 1.4, (Condition of Eligibility 13)"

Note that the school has not lost accreditation, nor has it been placed on "probation"; it has been "warned", as were a number of other schools. However, some schools received only 6 months of warning while St. Leo and many others received 12 months.

I don't know what Section 1.4, Condition of Eligibility 13 means, but I would hazard a wild guess that it has to do with financial reserves or endowment or something, since many of the schools warned seem to be in violation of Section 1.4.
http://www.sacscoc.org/pdf/01cractdec.PDF

 

Section 1.4, Condition of Eligibility 13 is indeed the demonstration of financial soundness. See http://www.sacscoc.org/criteria.asp

 

Thanks Chip! I spoke with St. Leo again and sent him the link that's posted on this site. After reviewing the link he admited that he had no knowledge of this information and pointed out that it just happened on Dec. 10th. He is also quite confident that St. Leo will resolve it's financial problems. I guess we will just sit back and wait to see. Thanks again.

 

In this time of intense competition among schools and (as far as I know) no sudden upswing in enrollments on the horizon, it would be interesting to know how many schools successfully turn around a financial problem. I know that an awful lot of the schools that have closed in the past 10 years have done so for financial reasons, usually after having lost regional accreditation because of financial weakness.

The fact that it's simply a "warning" and not a probation would indicate to me that the problem isn't at this point really severe, but it's probably advisable to look into what the school's financial situation is. Guidestar.org has some reasonably complete listings of all 501(c)(3) public charities available without cost on their site, and depending on how much detail they have, you might get an idea of how much of an endowment they have, what their cash reserves and investments are, etc.

With so much competition, it's wise to be really diligent when there's any indication of instability in a school... but at the same time, we don't want to *push* a school out of business by abandoning it, simply because they have a few bumps in the road financially.

 

My name is Mike Rogich. I am the Director of the Center for Online Learning at Saint Leo University.

On December 12, 2001, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) continued Saint Leo's accreditation. The accreditation process involves some 450 "must statements" or criteria for accreditation. After the SACS meeting, Saint Leo was notified that improvement was needed on one of these 450 criteria. While the university is disappointed to be cited for any reason, we regard the SACS action as a normal part of an accreditation process that attempts to achieve excellent within an institution and the Southern region. The accreditation process is a rigorous process and many large, well-known universities including the University of Texas and Georgia Tech, have received warnings recently. Saint Leo is working with SACS to improve in the area cited.

We are still waiting for the official word from SACS. I agree with the postings that the issue appears to be related to finances and the endowment. More specifically, it may deal with how fast the endowment is growing. We have 20 regional center, a main campus and the Online Program. I know we spent alot of money on capital expenditures for the campus last year and have added operational expenses to deal with our rapid growth. Last year was a good year financially and this year is far better. It's my opinion that "financial stability" is a technical term regarding ratios and not an issue of having no money. If you have additional questions, please feel free to email me. I don't think we will know a whole lot more for another month.

 

Hey, Mike.

Thanks very much for your candid assessment of the situation. It doesn't sound like there's much of an issue at St. Leo's... as was mentioned above, a "warning" seems to be a pretty mild commentary from SACS.

It would be great if you could keep us up-to-date on what you hear from SACS when they get around to sending the details.

Take care,

Chip

 

Although it's just a warning, we take it seriously and are disappointed. I will keep the board informed.

 

Hi Michael,

There are two officers on my department who are currently attending St. Leo. They both speak highly of it (in fact, they swear by it). One is a homicide investigator and the other is a supervisor in our PAL unit (police athletic league). Additionally, we must have around 15+ gratuates from St. Leo!

Just thought I'd give you a thumbs up.

FYI

 

It is quite enlightening to see the different responses from institutions when a query is raised on this board: contrast St Leo's response to that of Ratchford "University" on another thread.

Pick the bogus operation...



------------------
Peter Tucker
Australia

 

Hi Pete,

While I'm not a Catholic, I do know about St. Leo because it is within close proximity. It is a standard campus and only recently have they attempted to enter the DL field. It is not a bogus school.

On a more interesting note, they changed their name from ”St. Leo College” to ”St. Leo University.” What’s the difference? Why the change?