Former JCSU president: I left school in ‘stellar’ financial shape

The previous president of Johnson C. Smith University says she left the school in “stellar financial condition,” contrary to what she believes was implied in a recent Observer story about the school’s current financial challenges.

Dorothy Yancy, who led JCSU from 1994 to mid 2008, took issue with comments made in a Nov. 20 Observer story by former university trustee Jim Woodward, who talked with the paper about the school’s current finances.

In that story, Woodward praised Ron Carter, the university’s current president, for steering the school through financial hardships over the past seven years.

In a Facebook post on Sunday, Yancy responded: “To suggest that Dr. Carter has faced financial hardships since his appointment as President is not simply misleading, it is patently false. Perhaps Dr. Woodward was unaware of the solid financial footing I left the institution in.”

Yancy referred to an audited financial statement, which shows that the school had $9.4 million in unrestricted cash at the time she left.

“I want everyone to know I left the institution in good shape,” she said Monday.

Woodward, a retired chancellor at UNC Charlotte, agreed that Yancy was a good financial steward.

“It is absolutely true that one of the great things that Dorothy did during her time is ensure the budget stayed in balance,” said Woodward, who served on the search committee that recommended Carter for the president’s job in 2008.

Lending squeeze

The Observer’s Nov. 20 story focused on the questions now facing Carter as a former university trustee petitions to have him removed as president.

Observer Editor Rick Thames said he saw nothing in the story to suggest that the university was not on sound financial footing when Yancy left.

“In fact,” Thames said, “the story points out that JCSU had a $29 million surplus as recently as 2012.”

By June 2014, the university had a $7.5 million deficit.

Woodward said that when he spoke of financial challenges, he was referring primarily to a 2011 decision by the federal government that abruptly changed the criteria for direct loans to families, called Parent PLUS loans. More than 100 admitted students weren’t able to attend as a result, he said. The school now has about 1,450 students.

When the federal government made that change, the university had already drawn up its budget and done its hiring for the year ahead. As a result, Woodward said, the school was left with a budget shortfall.

“That’s when the financial problems at JCSU started,” Woodward said.

The federal lending squeeze also hurt many other historically black colleges around the nation. At those schools, the dollar volume of loans approved for parents dropped 36 percent from 2011-12 to the following year, according to a Washington Post analysis of federal data.

Rift among trustees

In order to better understand JCSU’s financial condition, an Observer reporter asked the university on Monday to provide its latest audited financial statement. The university did not provide it.

Instead, it sent a statement from Monroe Miller, the chair of the university’s board of trustees. Much of the statement focused on Talmadge Fair, the former trustee petitioning for Carter’s removal. Fair’s fellow trustees voted him off the board in September.

“Unfortunately, (Fair) has decided to react to his removal by advancing a personal agenda and leading a campaign that attempts to smear the reputation of his alma mater and the current leadership,” Miller’s statement reads.

Fair said that’s not true. He said many of his disagreements with his fellow trustees began with what he considered a reasonable request: to use a portion of board retreats to question Carter about the university’s financial condition.

“I don’t understand why anyone who cares about the university would not want to have an open conversation about where we are,” said Fair, a JCSU graduate who serves as president of the Urban League of Greater Miami.

This story was originally published November 23, 2015 at 6:33 PM with the headline "Former JCSU president: I left school in ‘stellar’ financial shape."