Galveston County District Attorney Kurt Sistrunk, whose office has been investigating the school, determined last week he wouldn't file criminal charges over the discrepancies.
No evidence was found that anybody had committed a criminal act. Rather, a bad software system, poor record keeping and a lack of proper controls appeared to be to blame, Sistrunk said.
"We couldn't even determine that Galveston College as an entity was criminally responsible for anything," Sistrunk said.
Sistrunk said it appeared that, in the instances where top administrators were warned of the over-reporting, they made some attempt to stop it. Even so, the problem continued.
Joe Huff, a spokesman for the college, said officials are waiting to be told how much the college owes the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, which reimburses colleges for student hours.
"We haven't heard what the amount is, but we know there's a liability," he said.
The coordinating board was still determining what Galveston College owes, the board's internal auditor, Anthony Tegbe, said in a statement.
The district attorney's office first learned that Galveston College, located about 50 miles southeast of Houston, was over-reporting student hours when a school employee complained in December 2004.
She accused college officials of intentionally inflating student hours to draw in more state funding and make an accrediting agency think the college was more financially sound than it really was.
The college continued to report inflated student hours even after the district attorney and the state auditor began looking into the matter, according to the auditor's report.
State auditors found the coordinating board overpaid the college $720,000 in instructional funds for 2000, 2002 and 2004, the report said. They found the board overpaid the college another $159,000 for 2006.
Auditors also found the board paid Galveston College $520,000 for students taking remedial courses as part of a General Education Development diploma program. The board said it's not supposed to pay for such remedial instruction.
Information about whether the college had corrected the transcripts of students who got college credits and degrees apparently without a high school diploma or its equivalent won't be available until after the holidays. And the GED program in question was no longer being run as a stand-alone program, Huff said.
