South Florida’s HBCU rallies from drop in enrollment, financial difficulties
After 10 years of watching its enrollment plummet and two years of being under close watch by its accreditation body, Florida Memorial University, South Florida’s only HBCU, finally experienced breakthroughs on both fronts this year.
In August, for the first time in a decade, the Miami Gardens-based historically Black university increased its year-to-year number of admitted students. Since 2012 enrollment had fallen each year with a net reduction of 51%, 1,878 to 915.
FMU accepted 963 applicants this fall for its 2022 academic year, according to Sharee Gilbert, FMU’s director of communications and marketing.
In June, FMU got put on “probation for good cause” by its accreditation agency, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, or SACSCOC. The decision came after two years of being under “monitoring” for failing to comply with all of the necessary standards, a problem rooted in financial difficulties.
Although probation is the most serious sanction short of losing its accreditation, SACSCOC chose to put it on “probation for good cause” instead of just “probation,” which means it believes FMU is working toward fixing four key issues and will do so by 2022, according to this summer’s SACSCOC public disclosure statement.
The university couldn’t stay under “monitoring” for another year because SACSCOC only allows an institution to remain under that status for two years. Likewise, FMU can only stay under “probation” or “probation for good cause” for up to two years in a row.
In June 2022, the SACSCOC Board of Trustees, made up of 77 administrators and academics from other colleges and universities in southern states, will meet again to discuss FMU’s future. The overseeing board will decide whether FMU will remain on “probation for good cause” for a second year, go into just “probation” for a year, get its accreditation fully revoked, or be cleared and go back to operating normally under full compliance.
A university’s accreditation serves as national recognition that it’s a reputable institution and is a requisite to qualifying for government funds.
Why did SACSCOC sanction FMU?
In the June public disclosure, SACSCOC listed the principles FMU was violating: core requirement 4.1b (governing board characteristics), standard 13.3 (financial responsibility), standard 13.4 (control of finances), and standard 13.6 (federal and state responsibilities).
More specifically, according to Gilbert, the enrollment drop at FMU forced the institution to borrow funds from its endowment. After it took a while to replenish it, SACSCOC identified that as the Board of Trustees not exercising fiduciary oversight of the institution.
FMU also used money gained from selling land in St. Augustine to offset revenue shortfalls, which SACSCOC viewed as the school not managing its financial resources responsibly.
Additionally, the U.S. Department of Education identified the university as having broken some federal guidelines with its financial aid procedures. Those have since been addressed, Gilbert said.
The chairman of the Board of Trustees, William C. McCormick Jr., who has been on the board since 2016 and became its leader in 2019, said he believes the members of the board tried to help FMU when they took the actions that eventually landed them on dangerous ground with SACSCOC.
“I wouldn’t see it as mistakes, I would see it as tough decisions,” he said. “I think the board made the best decisions with the cards they were dealt.”
Ever since he took the helm, though, he said the mentality of the board has changed, because he has prioritized the enactment of policies that will ensure FMU’s success in the long run.
“I can assure you the current nature and the current culture of the board is we understand our fiduciary responsibility,” he said.
Although he acknowledged the recent rise in enrollment as a positive sign, Michael Hoefer, the vice president at SACSCOC who has been in charge of FMU’s case since at least 2018, said reversing the trends and fixing the issues will take time.
“Unfortunately, when a ship is this big and in the wrong direction, and it’s been in the wrong direction for a long period of time, it’s not easy to turn this ship around and turn it around in a year,” he said. “When you start that downward spiral with finances it’s very hard to turn around and go in the opposite direction.”
Why did enrollment fall dramatically?
“Why the enrollment decline started way back in 2012 or 2013 is hard to say,” Hoefer said. “I think there can be a lot of different components to it.”
But some of the solutions FMU implemented recently that proved to be successful this fall may shed light on the matter.
Heather Munns, assistant vice president of enrollment management at FMU, said the university built an online applicant portal to follow up with students after they apply. In the past, students had no easy way to check their status or whether they still needed to submit additional paperwork.
“A lot of the processing of students was done by paper, but we recognized efficiency when working with students is important,” Munns said. “So that was a big part of our strategy, to improve communication.”
FMU also ramped up its newsletters and social media presence, posting more often and paying for advertisement there. The school offers 27 undergraduate degree programs and three master’s degrees, according to its website. So far, the SACSCOC disclosure does not indicate the academic side of FMU has been affected at all.
“It’s been about becoming more innovative, and reaching our targeting audience where they are,” Gilbert said. “Everything is set digitally now.”
Munns said she also believes the COVID-19 regulations still in place at FMU helped draw in students, as it made them feel safe. Currently, the private school requires weekly testing regardless of vaccination status for faculty, staff and students. To enforce the rule, FMU requires people to wear different colored bands each week to access facilities.
In a written statement released a few days after SACSCOC put the university on “probation for good cause” in June, FMU President Jaffus Hardrick also shared some of the strategies put in place to overcome the crisis: “New enrollment initiatives, new academic programs, a focus on student life, enhanced infrastructure, the addition of new athletic programs, band, and certificate programs are already yielding positive results to stabilize and grow enrollment,” he wrote.
Hardrick joined FMU in 2018, after spending 13 years at Florida International University and 12 years at Baylor University. He replaced an interim president at FMU. The previous president, Roslyn Clark Artis, resigned in 2017.
‘A complicated picture’
SACSCOC first accredited FMU in 1951. Per its policies, SACSCOC checks in with institutions every 10 years for a total reaffirmation review, and every five years for a smaller, interim review.
In 2018, during a five-year review, the officials determined the HBCU was not in compliance with some of the Principles of Accreditation, Hoefer said. SACSCOC requested a “referral report,” asking FMU to address the problems.
In 2019, after seeing it still hadn’t complied, SACSCOC put FMU under “monitoring” and requested a similar “monitoring report.” In 2020, it extended that status for another year and asked for a second monitoring report.
After the time to stay under the “monitoring” designation ran out this summer, SACSCOC moved FMU onto “probation for good cause” and approved a site visit. In April, a special committee of about five people from SACSCOC will come to Miami Gardens to check the finances, Hoefer said.
FMU will submit a third monitoring report to the special committee four weeks before the visit.
Hoefer described it as a “complicated picture.” Although he said boiling it down solely to enrollment dropping would be “simplistic,” he said in this case it was “probably the major factor in their financial difficulties.”
“Once enrollment declines that much, it can start to have significant effects,” he said.
He added that FMU could have lost the right people who knew the appropriate procedures needed for things like financial aid. Also, FMU could have built up its debt because of standing costs, like that of maintaining the physical facilities constructed for 1,800 students even after that population got halved.
Gilbert said FMU no longer has leftover debt, thanks to the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021, which allowed the Secretary of Education to forgive $42 million. She said FMU did not “make any workforce reductions due to financial difficulties.”
FMU also got $21.5 million in CARES and Higher Education Emergency Relief funds. The university used the money to enable remote learning and to purchase tablets, personal protective equipment, signage and COVID-19 testing kits. Also, FMU directed some of the funds to give incentive to students to get vaccinated on campus.
Community members care about FMU
After FMU was placed on probation for good cause in June, the faculty expressed “no confidence” in Hardrick in a vote that included 34 of 54 faculty members, according to The Miami Times.
In a statement July 7 about the SACSCOC decision, Hardrick released a video in which he said, “We are doing well here at Florida Memorial. The probation is a minor issue that we are well on our way to addressing.
“I assure you that the Board of Trustees and I, as well as the leadership team here at Florida Memorial, we are committed to exceeding the high standards set by SACS.”
McCormick, the Board of Trustees chairman, said he’s focused on putting in place strategic plans and initiatives that will prevent FMU from encountering this difficulty again.
Similarly to a tropical community recovering after a hurricane, he said, FMU is now learning how to deal with future financial storms.
“What you do is you put up your shutters, and you limit your risk, and you get the necessary essentials in the house to make sure that if the lights go out, you’re able to see. That’s what we’re doing,” he said.
Former Miami-Dade County Commissioner Barbara Jordan told the Herald keeping FMU’s doors open is essential for educating the Black community.
Black “students aren’t regularly accepted in most of our institutions,” Jordan explained. “… We need an HBCU that understands the dilemma and the kind of support that they need.”
Jordan is familiar with the struggles that HBCUs face. Her alma mater, Morris Brown College in Atlanta, lost accreditation 20 years ago but is now on track to regain it and access to federal education funding. Citing Florida Memorial’s history overcoming adversity — white Floridians drove the school out of St. Augustine in the 1960s — Jordan said she believed this challenge was no different.
“They have a long history of survival,” Jordan said. “And they’ll survive this, too.”
This story was originally published October 8, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
