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Are
Historically Black Colleges Worth It?
Some scholars suggest that the “unique educational services” once
provided by HBCUs to Black students have now disappeared.
By Dwayne Ashley
Economists Drs. Roland Fryer of Harvard University and Michael Greenstone of
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently undertook a dense
statistical analysis, which concluded that attending historically Black
colleges and universities may once have conferred a “wage
advantage” for African-American graduates compared to those graduating
from majority White institutions — but no longer.
But do the data actually support such a conclusion? Or the Fryer-Greenstone
suggestion that the “unique educational services” once provided
by HBCUs to Black students have now disappeared? Hardly.
Higher education costs money, lots of it, as any family with college-bound
children can attest. But calculating the value of a college education can be
a tricky business and, when measured by a single set of criteria,
fundamentally misleading.
First, the Fryer-Greenstone discovery of a “wage differential”
over 20 years (1970s to 1990s) is a tenuous barometer of educational value
for money and not necessarily a measure of overall educational equality. How,
for example, would you evaluate income differences between a school focused
on the humanities and fine arts (endeavors usually associated with lower
earnings) with a school that has a large business and technology program? One
suspects that career goals, financial aid, likelihood of acceptance and
caliber of instruction will weigh much more heavily on a student’s
decision to apply than a hypothetical paycheck 10 years after graduation.
In fact, as Fryer and Greenstone acknowledge, HBCUs registered significant
gains between the 1970s and 1990s in several areas traditionally used to
measure educational quality, including SAT scores of incoming freshmen and
per capita student spending.
Second, any wage difference between graduates of HBCUs and majority
institutions is statistically swamped by the ever-widening gap between those
who earn a college degree and those who don’t. Simply put, large
numbers of HBCUs consistently graduate African-American students at higher
rates than do majority schools. This fact indicates that HBCUs’
retention rates, while roughly 33 percent, are higher than those of majority
institutions.
Would many of these HBCU students excel at majority colleges and
universities? Of course. But many others without the necessary family
backing, academic preparation or financial support to attend such schools
would not.
Even today, a remarkable percentage of HBCU students are the first members of
their family to graduate from an institution of higher learning. For such
students, HBCUs are vital in meeting the education needs of minority
populations too often ignored or underserved by majority public and private
institutions of higher learning. I see this reality every day as head of the
Thurgood Marshall College Fund, where we have provided more than $60 million
in merit-based scholarships to minority students: 98 percent of whom
graduate, and more than half of whom continue on to graduate school or
professional study.
Fryer and Greenstone speculate about the negative impact of U.S. v.
Fordice (1992), which required states to either integrate HBCUs or find
“educational justification” for their continuance. But HBCUs have
responded to this challenge by successfully integrating their student bodies
and faculties to reflect the nation’s growing diversity, while still
remaining true to their core mission of providing affordable, high-quality
education to African-Americans.
There is another possible explanation for the relative wage decline, one that
Fryer and Greenstone acknowledge: The data could reflect improvements in how
majority institutions educated Black students, and not a decline in HBCU
standards.
Looking at the data from this vantage point, the study could well be titled,
“African-Americans Demonstrate Education Gains at Majority White
Schools.”
Such a conclusion doesn’t even require particularly sophisticated
analysis. Following the civil rights movement of the 1960s, for example, a
relatively large number of African-American students entered the
nation’s colleges and universities. The result was a period of turmoil
and adjustment for students and institutions alike, as well as the lingering
impact of persistent racism.
In retrospect, it is obvious that HBCUs, largely spared these wrenching
social adjustments, would have advantages that could be reflected in
relatively higher incomes after graduation. Twenty years later, however, America was a
very different place. Although issues of discrimination and racial inequality
persisted in the 1990s, it is clear that both majority colleges and their
Black students became better equipped to succeed in the classroom and beyond.
The Fryer-Greenstone study underscores the dynamism and complexity of higher
education in the United
States, and HBCUs, like all colleges and
universities, must continue to innovate, improve and strive for academic
excellence.
To honor their historic mission, HBCUs cannot look to history but to the
knowledge and skills required of today’s students to be successful in
the classroom and in a global marketplace — and to the high calling of
educating African-Americans and students of all racial and social backgrounds
to take their rightful places as leaders of the next generation of Americans.
When they can do that, there is no question that HBCUs are more than worth
it.
— Dwayne Ashley is President and CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College
Fund.
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© Copyright 2006 by DiverseEducation.com
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