North Carolina Central University has agreed to pay the U.S. Department of Education more than $1.1-million for federal loans taken out by students at an unauthorized satellite campus the institution operated in Georgia, The News & Observer reported. According to the newspaper, the repayment plan was announced today at a meeting of the executive committee of the university’s Board of Trustees.

The university ran the campus, in classrooms at a megachurch in a suburb of Atlanta, for four years, without getting its trustees’ approval or notifying its accreditor, before shutting it down last summer. The university’s accreditor, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools’ Commission on Colleges, had raised questions about the program and the validity of degrees awarded to 25 students at the satellite campus, but ultimately the accreditor decided to recognize the degrees. —Charles Huckabee