There’s a new club on the campus of Cheyney University that’s serious about doing its homework, and these students of the college’s struggling finances could turn in a term paper in May that alters the course of the nation’s first historically black college.

The Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education has assigned a task force to put together a solvency plan for Cheyney, according to a Philadelphia Inquirer report by Susan Snyder.

“We’re committed to its future,” said spokesman Kenn Marshall. “But it needs to operate in a different way. They need to either be able to operate on a smaller budget or come up with a way of generating additional resources.”

Cheyney owes about $60 million — twice as much as its annual budget — and may have to pay back $29 million more to the federal government, the article stated. Its current 746-student count is half the enrollment it had just six years ago.

“When everybody else gets a cold, Cheyney gets pneumonia, because it just can’t absorb those kinds of reductions,” said task force member and State Sen. Vincent Hughes.

Read more about Cheyney’s financial woes and the task force charged with fixing the situation in the Philadelphia Inquirer here.