The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools has given Georgia Perimeter College, a two year institution in Dunwoody, a 12 month warning to fix problems or lose its accreditation.

The school wanted to offer a bachelor’s degree program. That request was denied.

Georgia Perimeter is facing a 25 million dollar budget shortfall. An audit by the University System of Georgia found the shortfall was not the result of fraud, but the college president stepped down.

The SACS board placed the school on 12 month warning because of concerns over financial stability, its financial resources and control of those resources.

Meanwhile, The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools has reaffirmed Shorter University’s accreditation for another ten years.

The panel conducted its regular review of the Georgia Baptist school in Rome last summer. Shorter was in the middle of a controversial decision to require all faculty and staff to sign a personal lifestyle statement. The statement says employees must find premarital sex, adultery and homosexuality unacceptable.

Several faculty and staff quit rather than sign it. And a group opposed to the statement called “Save Our Shorter” said the school violated its agreements with tenured faculty by requiring them to sign it.

But the SACS board found that the lifestyle statement is within the school’s purview to require.

Several other Christian schools ask for similar pledges from their faculties, but Shorter University is the only one which required tenured faculty to sign it. Other schools have professors sign it when they are first hired.

The SACS board also approved merging 8 colleges into four. That will allow those schools to consolidate, begin operations and appoint presidents.

Tags: Georgia Perimeter College, Shorter University, College Mergers, SACS. Southern Association of Colleges and Schools