25 students got no-good degrees from New Birth campus

 By CHRISTOPHER QUINN
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Twenty-five students who attended a satellite program of North Carolina Central University at Bishop Eddie Long's Lithonia megachurch earned bachelor's degrees that are not recognized by the school's accrediting agency.

A school spokeswoman said 39 other students were in the program earlier this year when it was shut down.

Long and the school, in Durham, started the satellite campus four years ago. They closed it in June after the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools learned of it, reviewed the program and refused to sanction it. All extension programs have to be approved by SACS for degrees to be recognized.

Tom Benberg, chief of staff at the Commission on Colleges at SACS, said any degrees earned in the program at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, "would not be a degree from an accredited operation."

Long released a statement saying the church has partnered with various education programs to hold classes at the church.

"Regrettably, the university did not seek appropriate approvals at that time prior to launching the program. Last month [SACS] denied approval for NCCU to continue the program offerings at the New Birth site."

Long said the church and the school are continuing to work toward getting the program recognized by SACS so it can continue.

Long is a graduate of NCCU, a school trustee and announced a $1 million gift to university last week.

The University of North Carolina system, of which NCCU is part, learned of the program last week, according to a spokeswoman. The program should have been vetted by the system's board of governors.

Erskine Bowles, president the University of North Carolina system, said in a written statement, "I can think of no justifiable reason why the former NCCU leadership would have completely ignored and failed to abide by the appropriate approval process in creating this program. Such action is contrary to all university policy."

An old white woman in an old black church

By DAVID MARKIEWICZ

Seat one, pew three at St. Paul Baptist will look a little different Sunday, as it has the past few Sundays. It will be taken, as are the other 65 seats in the tiny Decatur church, but everyone senses a certain someone's missing from there, along with a special something she brought. The regular occupant of that spot, Iris Prince, passed on July 1 and, to hear members of the congregation, she left a lasting mark on the century-old church. That's amazing, they say, considering her age of 72, the fact that she moved from Michigan and joined St. Paul only a year earlier, and that she was one of only a handful of white members in the traditionally African-American congregation.