them together for tutorial sessions or extracurricular activities.
students choose an HBCU, the quality and relevance of the courses must hold them.
Research going back decades and the real-time experiences of presenters at our symposium clearly indicate that students find it overwhelming to leave high school, even a large one, in the spring to navigate an institution many times larger a few months later. Smaller learning communities provide a transition zone for younger people into the world of higher education.
A remarkable achievement of historically black colleges and universities is their ability to survive and even thrive with a paucity of funds compared to other institutions of higher education. Before the 1920s, very few HBCUs received any public funding, so feverish fundraising was the rule. Today, 54 of the nation’s 105 HBCUs are still private institutions and thus receive limited public support. That said, private colleges tend to have larger endowments. Even so, the bestendowed HBCU, Howard University, had a portfolio of $484 million in 2009, while more than 50 majority institutions had endowments of more than $1 billion — led by Harvard, with more than $25 billion.
The value of learning communities may well be even greater at HBCUs. The opportunity for more personal and immediate tutorial attention benefits HBCU students, many of whom are admitted from less financially and academically robust high schools. Academic support programs will have only limited success, however, if a college’s curricula are static and dated. Inadequate programs will drive away the serious scholars and handicap even the most visionary retention programs. Certainly, the overall quality of the institution’s product will be subpar if the courses fail to meet the standards of the marketplace.
HBCU presidents have long shouldered the burden of fundraising, and the task is
Regular evaluation of existing methods of teaching core courses must not be lost in the excitement of adding innovative programs in burgeoning fields like biotechnology. The goal, of course, isn’t change for the sake of change. The guiding motivation should be relevance to students’ current and future experiences, and enhanced and improved learning outcomes as measured by retention, graduation, licensure and employment success.
no less weighty today. Federal and state student aid to colleges has increased, but so has the cost of operating the institutions, from hiring professors to buying supplies. Volatility in the American economy roils all of higher education, but smaller schools with tighter budgets and more sensitive investment portfolios suffer greater jolts when markets swing wildly. The constant eye that HBCU leaders must keep on fundraising can divert them from other vital concerns.
associate professor of higher education at the University of Pennsylvania, noted, African-Americans give more of their discretionary income to charity, but for schools to be the recipients of that largesse, “one must be asked.” The campaign should begin at freshman orientation. It should include examples of how past gifts enable current students to enjoy a postsecondary education. The program should have components for each year in college. It should also take advantage of key milestones in the school year — homecoming, founder’s day, and the like — to remind students of the value of contributing to their schools. Ideally, such a program would feed directly into the more established fundraising programs that most HBCUs direct at alumni. Legislators
A remarkable achievement of Historically Black Colleges and Universities is their longstanding ability to survive and even thrive with a paucity of funds compared to other institutions of higher education.
A clear message from June’s symposium is that today’s minority students don’t necessarily grow up wanting to attend an HBCU. They know, in fact, that they have choices. HBCUs are doing a credible job of making themselves visible to their traditional and nontraditional bases. Once
It is a valid criticism that too many HBCUs fail to emphasize to their students — early and often — the financial needs of their chosen schools and the importance of philanthropic giving to them. As symposium speaker Marybeth Gasman,
should be persuaded to invest in the fundraising infrastructure at HBCUs. A thriving fundraising operation offers a significant return on investment not only for taxpayers but also for governments heeding the call to cut budgets. The more funds an HBCU can raise from private sources, the more services it can provide to the state and nation.
But until private fundraising initiatives bear significant fruit, pressure must be maintained on government to increase public funding of the schools. In Gasman’s words, “We currently spend the least amount of money to prepare the least prepared students.” The point must be voiced clearly and regularly: HBCUs are more effective at providing college degrees to America’s minority youth than their peer institutions, and the nation is more humane and economically stronger because of them. They have earned and deserve our support.
2 White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities 3 U.S. General Accounting Office report, “Postsecondary Education, College and University Endowments Have Shown Long-Term Growth, While Size, Restrictions, and Distributions Vary” Feb. 2010
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