Latest / Black Box Theory Podcast / BBT #14 Snippet | The NC A&T Scholarship Scandal
Transcript
- Thomas: might've heard about, ⁓ you tried that, bud. Malcolm: ⁓ man! Thomas: You might have heard about our alma Malcolm: are illustrious, man. And it's like, let me be clear. I absolutely hate, for one, talking about anything negative about HBCUs, not because I'm ignorant or because I just think HBCUs are perfect and have no flaws. That's not the case. I know we are crooked sometimes and we have our own fair share of issues, whether it's across housing, financial you know. student organization, like I'm, we have seen all of it in the end, but I try my best to avoid, especially our alma mater, you know what I'm saying? Like I try to avoid the headlines just because of the fact that, you know, like. We already get a lot of negativity as is. We get a lot of bad headlines, bad of spotlight, you know what saying, without even trying. So anytime I got a chance to highlight us or talk about something good that we actually did, that's usually my focus. But this one right here is, this is unacceptable. Thomas: Yes. What's five, what they say, five million over five million misappropriated funds and scholarships over the past, well, from 2017 to 2025. So basically for people who don't know, our alma mater, North Carolina Agriculture Technical State University, like many other schools, should I add, which I'm going to, I got some stats and information I'll share, did some finagling with the numbers. Malcolm: This is unacceptable. Thomas: for people trying to use scholarship money to help their people they know, basically help certain people get into school in an unfair way. Which for HBCU, five million from 2017 to 2025 is unfortunately a lot of money. However, there are other schools doing billions, ⁓ hundreds of But we're focusing on ANT right now, or to come on to other schools later. Malcolm: ⁓ yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we're going to give you some more rundown of details, man. Got a cool little case for you out here to give you all the context. So anyone that's listened to this that is familiar with ANT, you went to ANT, I'm sure you already heard about the situation. But for people that may be new or kind of a little lost of what we're talking about here, we're going to give you a quick rundown, all right? So an investigation by a North Carolina office of the state auditor found North Carolina AOT State University in improperly distributed millions of dollars in student financial assistance over several years. Like Thomas said, 2017 to 2025, more than 5.1 million improper disbursements between July 2017 and June 2025. The audit found that administrative recovery funds or ARFs, fees that student pay for services like housing, dining, parking, were used to provide financial assistance to Pacific students without proper oversight. So This means that these funds were awarded to students without evidence of merit or need based criteria, i.e. they were given to students over students that actually needed them, that actually needed those need based emergency resource scholarships that actually earned those merit based scholarships for their achievements. They were being given to specific students because know people. They found that, and this low key does look bad on us, but we don't got nothing to do with this. Auditors found that about 65 Thomas: Thanks. Malcolm: 64 % of the funds went to out-of-state students. More than $781,000 was distributed to students with direct ties to university employees, including family members and individuals with professional connections to school officials. A few examples. daughter of ⁓ NCAT Center for Teaching Excellence Advisory Board member received $23,052. The nephew of The former executive director of the Real Estate Foundation received $73,063. The son of a former part-time English instructor received $22,545. The son of a former associate vice chancellor for campus enterprises received $18,707. The daughter of a former assistant vice chancellor for business and finance received $14,888. In one instance, a former vice chancellor for business and finance approved more than $49,000 in aid for an out-of-state student, then unauthorized an additional funding of $36,654 and $12,000 for that student's friends. Yo! Thomas: That's insane. That's crazy, bro. Malcolm: I ain't gonna lie bro.