Rebecca Brown, the CFO of Florida A&M University, was on the receiving end of harsh remarks from the state’s Board of Governors last week after audit findings revealed multiple delayed reconciliations, poor internal controls and the continuation of financial issues the state university system has failed to address for over a decade.
During a meeting on June 18, members of the Florida Board of Governors’ audit and compliance committee expressed their concerns about the university’s finance function and its practices. Multiple board members also questioned Brown’s performance.
“From my perspective, the CFO failed pretty miserably in this job,” said Board of Governors member Aubrey Edge, who chairs the audit committee. “She’s been there two years and five months, which is long enough to know that you’re not reconciling your statements.”
Brown’s dual role as CFO and senior vice president for finance and administration came into question regarding the school’s poor financial practices. She’s held the roles since January 2023. Interim President Timothy Beard said the university is reviewing structural changes to address Brown’s dual role.
An operational audit of FAMU from July 2022 through Dec. 2023 found delayed bank reconciliations, missing performance evaluations and slow vendor payments that violated both university rules and state law. The audit also found discrepancies in how FAMU’s finance team reported restricted and unrestricted investment income and made note that the college’s internal accounting controls required improvement.
Though FAMU has implemented a corrective action plan, the board referred to the financial issues at FAMU as “serious” and “systemic,” signaling the problems are deeper than one-off errors. Edge, who also serves as president and CEO of First Coast Energy, an ownership group of over 160 Daily’s and Shell-branded convenience stores throughout Florida, said the issues are more than just Brown’s poor performance.
“This is serious. It’s systemic, and that’s a word I don’t think they were tossing around lightly, and this time around it’s pretty systemic in the accounting side,” Edge said. He noted the Board of Governors began tracking more than 30 corrective actions at FAMU back in 2013 to address internal control deficiencies and said many of the problems highlighted in the latest audits are similar to those identified back then.
CFO turnover, a challenge in businesses across both public and private sectors, is likely a factor in Edge’s labeling of the university’s financial challenges as systemic. The finance team’s track record indeed has its blemishes, like a failure to do due diligence on a $238 million fraudulent donation last year, but the university has also had seven CFOs since 2018, with an average tenure of 11 months per person. Reports indicate several critical finance roles still remain unfilled, like a comptroller and a CPA position.
At last week’s meeting, FAMU leaders cast blame for the lack of financial controls on turnover. “We’ve had instability in leadership, and the turnover has changed the staffing in those functions as well,” FAMU Vice President for Audit Credentials Joseph Maleszewski said.
Board member Eric Silagy criticized the university’s oversight culture, candidly comparing the situation to what would likely occur if similar finance practices were to be done in the private sector.
“For a chief financial officer to have this systemic breakdown and this loss of risk controls, they would be shown the door so fast it would make their head spin,” Silagy said. “They sure wouldn’t be getting an increase in their base salary, and they sure wouldn’t be getting a bonus.”
Kristin Harper, FAMU Board of Trustees chair, said a monthly scorecard has been implemented to monitor progress and ensure reconciliations and other corrections remain on track. Brown still serves in her dual role as of now, though her autonomy in managing the finance function is likely to be limited in the upcoming months.
The audit concerns come at a time when the perceived value of higher education is under increasing pressure nationwide. Dozens of colleges have announced closures or mergers in recent years amid declining enrollment and rising operational costs. At the same time, public confidence in universities has eroded due to ballooning student loan debt and questions over return on investment.
For public institutions, as well as those that are Historically Black Colleges and Universities like FAMU, ongoing financial mismanagement and governance failures risk further undermining trust. Other HBCUs have had financial problems of their own due to poor leadership, and the consequences of poor financial controls have been playing out in some of the country’s largest public university systems.
