October 11th, 2024 by WCBC Radio

The teaching faculty of Frostburg State University are becoming more vocal since the no-confidence vote they returned for President Ron Nowaczyk in late September.  The number of faculty has reduced by 75 since 2017, many positions remaining open after retirements. Andy Duncan, a professor on the faculty, also tells WCBC that a major error within financial aid doubled student amounts, causing costs to go from $7 to $14 million dollars in one fiscal year…

“And that’s the very financial aid office that the state just cited for mismanagement which the president, on WCBC on the first, blamed on software that, as he put it, was behaving like a rogue A-I. And a lot of faculty are wondering whether faculty are poised to lose their jobs with more students suffering and to cover up the real cost of this financial aid debacle.”

The faculty is calling for a full disclosure of the issues around the financial aid software that the college has since quit using…

  

“We need a full accounting of precisely and exactly what that financial aid debacle has cost us and is continuing to cost us because if somebody has got their financial aid doubled for the duration of their enrollment here, that’s an ongoing big budgetary expense. Why, it’s enough to cause you the structural deficit that Ron keeps talking about.”