Taylor said he will cut jobs beginning Jan. 1, but he did not give a number. The 117-year-old school currently employs about 525 people.

"We have too many employees here," Taylor says. "We're going through a process of identifying who the best employees are and who we, unfortunately, will have to let go."

Taylor said Morris Brown will ask Georgia's African Methodist Episcopalian churches, with which the school is affiliated, to pledge at least $2.5 million by June, says Deloris Saunders, the school's national alumni association president.

In addition, the school hopes to raise $2.5 million from alumni by the end of this year — $1,000 from each of the 2,500 members of the national alumni association.

In related news, a former top school official filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against the school and ex-president Dr. Dolores Cross.

Jonnie Brown, who was vice president of fiscal affairs, said in the suit in federal court that she was fired for blowing the whistle on improper spending.

Brown said she alerted Cross, who resigned in February, about mounting financial problems as early as June 2001.

The lawsuit said she also reported the problems to the school's board of trustees, its external auditor and the U.S. Department of Education.

Cross later demoted Brown and then fired her in January 2002, the lawsuit said. Brown, whose salary topped out at $120,000, is also seeking back pay.

Cross, who became president in 1998, has denied any wrongdoing, saying she worked hard to solve the school's problems. In an interview in November, she said she fired Brown for not making improvements in her department fast enough and for fighting with financial aid director Parvesh Singh.