Wednesday, May 20, 2009

CSU audit 'shocking,' expert says

Chi-Town:
Chicago State University’s accounting department appears to have been poorly supervised, under-staffed and less than competent, outside experts who looked at the school’s most recent audit are saying.

The audit, released by the state Auditor General last week, pointed out 20 problem areas in everything from handling student financial aid to doling out contracts and how the school uses its credit cards and purchasing cards.

“It’s sloppy accounting from that standpoint,” says Ray Whittington, the dean of DePaul University’s business school and an expert in auditing. “It points to the lack of controls in the organization.”

Eric Sussman, a lecturer at the Anderson Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles, says the audit – and the fact that many of the problems have been recurring for a year or more – point to incompetence, negligence or “extraordinary laziness” at the school.

“They’re not reconciling accounts. That’s kind of Accounting 101 type of issues,” Sussman says. He adds that it seems an “unbelievable irony, that a university can’t pass Accounting 101 is a little shocking.”

The most recent audit covers the last fiscal year, which ended June 30, 2008. That was the end of Elnora Daniel’s term as president. She came under fire starting in 2007 for misusing the school’s credit cards.

No comments:

Post a Comment

PLEASE READ FIRST!!!! Comment Moderating and Anonymous Comment Policy

While anonymous comments are not prohibited we do encourage you to help readers identify you so that other commenters may respond to you. Either read the moderating policy for how or leave an identifier (which could be a nickname for example) at the end of the comment.

Also note that this blog is NOT associated with any public or political officials including Alderman Roderick T. Sawyer!