One Of America’s Oldest HBCUs Just Filed For Bankruptcy. Here’s What It Means For Students
For nearly 160 years, Saint Augustine’s University sat on 105 acres in downtown Raleigh as a cornerstone of Black higher education in the South. This week, the school filed for […] The post One Of America’s Oldest HBCUs Just Filed For Bankruptcy. Here’s What It Means For Students appeared first on Essence.
Black News 
By Kimberly Wilson ·Updated April 29, 2026 < /> Getting your Trinity Audio player ready… For nearly 160 years, Saint Augustine’s University sat on 105 acres in downtown Raleigh as a cornerstone of Black higher education in the South. This week, the school filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, dropped a years-long legal fight to hold onto its accreditation, and announced yet another leadership change.
For the students still enrolled, it means one thing above almost everything else: find another school.
The filing landed Monday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. The university estimates it owes somewhere between $50 million and $100 million to a long list of creditors including federal and state agencies, private lenders, and a retirement fund tied to its own employees, though it claims assets that could be valued as high as $500 million. It intends to keep operating while a reorganization plan works its way through the courts.
“This structured, court-supervised process will enable SAU to organize its financial affairs in an orderly and transparent manner,” the university said on Tuesday. “The decision, made by the University’s Board of Trustees, reflects a deliberate and strategic step to advance the University’s long-term sustainability while addressing current financial realities.”
SAU is also walking away from its lawsuit against SACSCOC, the accrediting body at the center of the school’s troubles since 2023. After losing accreditation, winning it back temporarily, and losing it again in July 2025, SAU sued and secured a temporary injunction to stay open through the fall. That window closes May 15, and the board says it has no plans to keep fighting. The bankruptcy, it turns out, was not even the most significant thing the university announced this week.
Students who finish their degrees at the May 9 commencement will graduate from an accredited institution, but sadly everyone else will have to transfer.
For those students, the practical consequences go beyond just finding a new school. Once accreditation expires, SAU loses eligibility for federal financial aid programs, meaning any aid tied to the university disappears with it. The school says it is setting up teach-out agreements, which exist specifically to help students at closing or unaccredited schools land somewhere that will accept their credits and let them finish what they started. SAU has not yet named specific partner institutions publicly.
Also this week, Interim President Dr. Jennie Ward-Robinson stepped down after roughly four months on the job. Dr. Verjanis A. Peoples, the school’s former interim provost, is now taking over. The revolving door of leadership at SAU has been one of the school’s most visible problems for years. As recently as 2022, the school had around 1,100 students enrolled. By fall 2024, that number had collapsed to roughly 175. Alumni say none of this was a surprise.
“This was the theft of the university,” said alumnus Steve Williams. “You have alumni that were screaming for help.”
The school says it plans to continue offering nursing and technology certifications while it figures out a longer >Morris Brown College lost its accreditation in 2002 under similar circumstances, filed for bankruptcy a decade later, and spent twenty years rebuilding before regaining accreditation in 2022. Nobody is saying it would take that long for SAU, but nobody is saying it wouldn’t be either.
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