By Savannah Tryens-Fernandes | stryens-fernandes@al.com
Talladega College is trying to avoid the fate of Birmingham-Southern College as it navigates its own financial “crisis.”
The school, which is the oldest private historically Black college in Alabama, said it is in “significant debt” after a few years of the payroll increasing while enrollment decreased.
Talladega Board of Directors Chairwoman Rica Lewis-Payton announced a strategic plan to ensure the school’s stability during a press conference on Thursday, prefacing the plan by saying “serving as board chair has been a challenge particularly in recent months as we have had some financial issues, a crisis quite frankly, in terms of ensuring that this institution that has stood for 157 years remains strong in this community.”
The strategic plan has four points focused on financial integrity and stability, academic excellence and integrity, recruitment and retention — which Lewis-Payton called the “lifeblood of the institution” — and institutional advancement and fundraising.
In recent months, Talladega College has missed payments to employees as well as vendors who they had not paid “for an extensive period of time,” failed to provide students with federal refund checks and cut the gymnastics team.
When asked if other athletic programs could be cut in the future, Lewis-Payton said “everything is on the table … there will be more hard decisions.”
Lewis-Payton declined to provide the exact amount of debt Talladega had accumulated or a ballpark estimate but said it was “significant in any arena.”
According to Lewis-Payton, employees were paid after a delay and the school has been able to make payroll every month since. Students have also received their refund checks thanks to a donation from Alabama Power. The Chairwoman said vendors “have been gracious in allowing us space to course-correct.”
The college’s chief financial officer, Sama Mondeh, resigned last week with Lewis-Payton calling it a “mutual decision.” The Chairwoman said Mondeh has since been replaced.
Gregory Vincent, the school’s former president, resigned in June and was replaced by interim president Walter Kimbrough.
During the press conference, Kimbrough said he is focused on “restructuring to live more within our means.” According to Kimbrough, he has reduced the payroll from $1.4 million to $1 million by cutting positions though he could not say how many.
“There were a lot of people on contract before I came. The board really looked at that to say we don’t need to have all these contract positions all across the country, so that has really brought down some of the costs,” Kimbrough said.
While payroll was going up over the last three years, Kimbrough said enrollment had declined by 24%.
“If you’ve been paying attention nationally, you know that we’ve seen a number of small private institutions close in higher education over the last couple of years,” Kimbrough said. “Higher education had a dip in enrollment for a decade straight, until last year was the first increase we had had in over 10 years. So that’s been a challenge for all of higher education and Talladega was not immune to that.”
Birmingham-Southern College, located less than an hour west of Talladega College, permanently closed in May after running a nearly $40 million deficit. The private Methodist college went from a $48 million endowment in 2012 to between $20 million and $25 million in endowment in 2024.
“Birmingham-Southern College had problems since 2010 … so it was a slow, rolling thing where 14 years later the institution closes. I think they tried to course correct along the way but there were some harder decisions that they probably didn’t make and a constant turnover of leadership that was probably part of that challenge,” Kimbrough said.
“The difference with us is we’re digging down to the studs to figure out where we are and address those forthrightly and move forward.”
The school has hired an outside firm to do a forensic audit – “to make a deeper dive because we know the funds were drawn down, but the question is what were they used for.”
Kimbrough said the school’s challenges have only appeared in the last few years but he’s optimistic they can be resolved.
“I’m not just saying pie in the sky, everything’s going to be OK. There could be other challenges that we’ll find out about as we go through these processes … But if we work through this systematically over a period of time, we can get back on track,” the interim president said.
