we are doing something right. We need to understand and appreciate those best practices, even as we deal with the reality that HBCUs have always been financially strapped and will continue to be so for years to come. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, keynote speaker at the symposium, summed up our situation this way: “That daily challenge — of seeking to do more with less — is real. I don’t minimize for a second that tough assignment, especially in today’s economy. Yet for all of the longstanding issues that HBCUs face, I am convinced that HBCUs have much to teach other institutions of higher education about access and retention.” HBCUs continue to provide educational, cultural and athletic opportunities to the communities that surround them, and they act as catalysts and staging areas for community health education and social justice initiatives. The founders of America’s HBCUs may or may not have predicted the immense social and educational good that the schools have produced. But no doubt they would be proud.
money is the lifeblood of the academy, and those who care for HBCUs have every reason to worry about the patient. The impending retirement of the baby boom generation presents a threat and an opportunity to HBCUs. The effect
imperative that current administrators steer the gaze of executive-quality men and women toward historically minority institutions — to create a pool of replacement deans and chancellors. There is little time to lose. The leaders of the 1970s and 1980s navigated vast social changes. It would be a tragic waste for HBCUs, and for all of higher education, to lose that store of experience, especially as the challenges in the 21st century appear no less daunting. Many of today’s HBCU students — and young administrators — have an inadequate understanding of the vision and raw courage that it took yesterday’s leaders to establish most of the HBCUs in the United States. Future deans, provosts and presidents or chancellors must be reminded of this history so that they fully understand what’s at stake if they fail to protect the schools from shutdown threats. They need to know why it’s so important that they remain open in clear terms that they can communicate to the public at large.
HBCU leaders have responded to concerns about recruiting and retaining students by launching a host of new programs, especially for low-wealth and HBCUs exist amid the powerful first-generation students. That social upheaval that is affecting rapid response is gratifying. all of American society right Successful student outcomes now, and American higher must be the reason for an education specifically. Colleges Arne Duncan, the U.S. education secretary, delivered the keynote institution’s existence. Parents, find themselves having to address at the symposium. state and federal legislators, provide remedial instruction grant-makers — and public to an increasing proportion of opinion — increasingly will turn students before they can master the rigors of this retirement trend on university on institutions that fail at this fundamental of college scholarship. A flood of consumer faculty ranks is well documented. But task. Such efforts need to be ongoing, with technology puts information at the modern administrative offices are no less affected, HBCUs developing new strategies to student’s nimble fingertips. Yet studies with more and more HBCU leaders address the fast-changing pulls on students’ increasingly show that the techno-flood entering retirement and taking with them time and attention. shortens the attention spans of would-be decades of experience and institutional scholars to a worrisome degree. memory. HBCU leadership also is subject Both minority and majority institutions to aggressive recruitment by majority have found that retention efforts improve In recent decades, fundraising has schools of leadership-quality personnel — when freshmen (and sometimes those in demanded more time and attention of talented people who otherwise would have upper classes) are provided with smaller college presidents and their staffs. And gravitated to minority-founded schools. learning communities. This is the practice of while fundraising is a critical component placing participants in a particular program at nearly every college, it is a particular The wider employment landscape that in the same residence hall, ensuring that concern for HBCUs. For better or worse, potential HBCU leaders enjoy makes it they share class sections, and bringing 18
FALL 2010