‘Grossly inaccurate.’ Audit of NC Central University finds $45 million in reporting errors
An audit released Thursday said that North Carolina Central University’s financial reporting was “grossly inaccurate” and contained over $45 million in errors.
In a statement, State Auditor Dave Boliek said the university “fell far short of the standards expected of our (higher) education institutions.”
However, Boliek said he has since had meetings with the university’s new leadership team and has “confidence (that) NCCU is on a better path.”
In June, the UNC System Board of Governors named Karrie Dixon as the new chancellor of the historically Black university in Durham.
In a letter responding to the state audit, NCCU officials said that they have established a new evaluation process for financial personnel and hired a new chief financial officer.
“By implementing and monitoring these strategies, university management can enhance the reliability and accuracy of their financial reporting processes, even during challenging periods,” according to the university’s response.
The 79-page audit details a variety of financial reporting deficiencies that it says have “snowballed” over the last several years.
Among the errors are an overstatement of the university’s expenses on supplies and services by $8.3 million due to a classification error and an overstatement of its cash by $4.9 million due to inaccurate journal entries, according to the audit.
“If these errors had not been identified and corrected, financial statement users would have been misinformed about the university’s financial condition or operating results,” the audit says. “In addition, university management could have made financial decisions based on unreliable or incomplete information.”
Previous audits of the university in 2021 and 2023 also found significant deficiencies in its financial reporting, but Thursday’s audit was the first to amount to material findings.
Boliek, a Republican who took office in January, stressed that those findings “should not signal that the university is in financial trouble.”
“NCCU has a proud tradition of providing a higher education experience that prepares its students for success across a wide spectrum of careers,” he said. “That tradition should continue.”
This story was originally published March 27, 2025 at 3:24 PM with the headline "‘Grossly inaccurate.’ Audit of NC Central University finds $45 million in reporting errors."
