{"id":214014,"date":"2026-06-08T22:21:25","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T22:21:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/214014\/"},"modified":"2026-06-08T22:21:25","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T22:21:25","slug":"albright-college-president-clarifies-10-million-surplus-claim-audit-findings-berks-regional-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/214014\/","title":{"rendered":"Albright College president clarifies $10 million surplus claim, audit findings | Berks Regional News"},"content":{"rendered":"

READING, Pa. \u2014 You may have seen the recent headlines. A Spotlight PA report raising questions about Albright College’s finances<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The report is based on an independent audit that found the college’s finances were not as strong as previously reported. We sat down with Albright President Debra Townsley to get her take on the findings.<\/p>\n

“What we found was that we had a positive change in net assets is what that means, so we had positive cash flow,” Townsley said.<\/p>\n

Last year, Albright announced what it described as a $10 million surplus.<\/p>\n

But according to a report by Spotlight PA, the audit found that number was actually about $4.6 million.<\/p>\n

Townsley says part of the confusion centers around how certain real estate assets were valued during the audit process.<\/p>\n

“We were counting what’s called a mark-to-market,” Townsley said. “So, we were upgrading the value of some properties in the first run at our audit, but the auditor didn’t want to include that in the audit. They wanted to have us do a note about it. So, we switched it to a note about it, and it showed about a $4 million positive change in net assets. And if you did the mark-to-market with the increase in the value of the real estate, it would have been about $10 million.”<\/p>\n

Townsley says the college continues to move forward. This summer, Albright plans to reopen its renovated library and launch new athletic programs.<\/p>\n

“As you know, higher education is in quite the throes of change right now, and we’re not immune from that,” Townsley said. “And frankly, it’s an opportunity for us to look at what we’re doing and how we can do things differently.”<\/p>\n

Including embracing artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

“We have just started an AI major,” Townsley said. “So, this is the first fall for that, cybersecurity and computer science.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. \u2014 You may have seen the recent headlines. A Spotlight PA report raising questions about Albright…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214015,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[12959,93738,93735,93736,4346,128,130,129,35562,1478,93737],"class_list":["post-214014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-albright-college","tag-artificial-intelligence-major","tag-debra-townsley","tag-financial-audit","tag-higher-education","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-real-estate-valuation","tag-spotlight-pa","tag-surplus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}