Trying Times for Bishop State 
The Alabama school is struggling to overcome a string of financial aid and scholarship scandals.

By Blair S. Walker

Decades before segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace blocked the University of Alabama’s doors to African-Americans in the 1960s, Bishop State Community College was serving as a bastion of Black higher education. 

These days, though, the Mobile, Ala., HBCU is going through one of the more trying periods in its 79-year history. Bishop State’s current crisis stems from charges that scholarship money has been systematically pilfered and misappropriated at a school where, according to state records, 81 percent of the 4,077 students receive financial aid.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, the university received $10.8 million in federal aid in 2005. The school’s 2006 student body is 60.9 percent Black and 34.4 percent White, according to Bishop State statistics.

Earlier this year, federal authorities ordered Bishop State to repay $150,000 in Pell Grant funds after reviewing the community college’s books. Six people, including three school employees, have been accused of participating in a scheme to funnel student aid and scholarships to bogus Bishop State students.

The six have been charged by the Mobile County District Attorney’s office with felony theft by deception, in conjunction with more than $75,000 in missing financial aid. No trial date has been set on the charges, which could carry 20-year prison sentences for the defendants.

The turmoil enveloping Bishop State “will have an effect on the college, but one we will be able to handle,” university president Yvonne Kennedy assured The Associated Press. “Our students will certainly not be deprived of an education.”

Reports of alleged financial aid improprieties surfaced at Bishop State following the 2003-2004 school year, when the Education Department produced an unfavorable audit of aid payments.