The economic situation our nation has found itself in over the past two years has revealed many outdated business models. As a country we are looking to get leaner and more efficient for the 21st century. I believe one of those models is the need for the historically black college and university (HBCU). HBCUs exist out of a historical need to provide institutions of higher education for African American students during a time in which they were excluded from the majority serving colleges and universities. Now, times have changed. We live in an increasingly less racist society and an institution that primarily serves African Americans is now as outdated as the model T.
HBCUs have been exposed due to a financial squeeze from financial assistance to the students and state assistance to the institutions. Many of these schools do not possess large endowments and the loss of student enrollment cripples the economic outlook for these centers of higher learning. The education received by students that attend HBCUs is another issue for the next generation of learners. Is the learning experience provided by HBCUs adequately meeting the needs of the next generation of leaders? In a worldwide economy, American needs world class education not world class exclusion! The United States is already behind the rest of the world in education, I don't believe we should be separating our talent pool, by the color of their skin.
The opponents of my viewpoint, say that the HBCU is a bastion of academe that still harvest and cultivates black scholars in an environment that nurtures their talents to a greater extent, than at predominantly white institutions. I would say that they are probably correct. I would also add that a student that hails from a prominently black high school and home environment is more likely not to feel overwhelmed or 'lost' at a HBCU, and studies show from all grounds of higher education that if the student feels comfortable, the student will perform better. At an HBCU, the expectation of black students will be success whether than survival, because the schools have provided avenues of student success for African Americans for over one hundred years. As the scholar Dr. Cornell West says that "expectations are self-fulfilling prophecies," those prophecies are still coming to fruition at HBCUs.
Another argument for HBCUs would be on the behalf of under prepared students coming into the university experience. Unprepared students need a traditional four year environment because they need to get out of the communities in which they grew up to learn effectively. So advocating that they should go to a community college is without merit. What good does going to class during the day serve if you are dealing with drug dealers and crime on your streets at night? Learning can not be effective in those types of environments. If the argument is that higher learning is a cycle of learned successes, there possibility for success is very low in those environments.
This is not some sort of an empty rhetoric piece for assimilation. This is a recognition of the diversity of each one of us makes the whole society stronger for all. This could be an opportunity to have a 'higher education stress test'. The schools that are no longer up to par can be dissolved into the state college and university system. That way we don't lose students in the shuffle, and we begin the transition to a more effective higher education model in the United States. A model not based on the color of one's skin, but the content between their ears. We must prepare ourselves for an ever-increasing 'black and brown' world and educating the students of color in one house and the white students in another just doesn't make sense. To achieve true racial equality, and not just have diversity departments as tokens for recruiting students or companies (or some superficial program marketing campaign), we need to move beyond our old infrastructure and embrace learning and teaching methods for the next generation. I believe that we can provide an equal opportunity for students at all of our institutions of higher learning. If we do not, we will fail as a society. This needs to be a paramount imperative of our educational system, to know that we can provide equal opportunity and access to all students in higher education without having to specialize with the student's skin color.
