Life
HBCUs offering ways for students to become job creators
Graduating class at Morehouse College. PHOTO/Erik Lesser/Getty Images
Budget pressures are forcing state legislatures and the federal government to reconsider financial support for historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs).
The schools are turning to private financial sources and recruiting non-black students. The number of black students in college is growing, and nearly 80 percent of them attend non-HBCUs. That should be viewed as a measure of social progress, a reflection of greater access to choice often driven by predominately white schools’ rich endowments. Still, HBCUs produce about 40 percent of America’s black science graduates and a significant share of its doctors, judges and business owners.
President Obama himself has said this about HBCUs: “People who say they’ve fulfilled their purpose, that after all the progress we’ve made, their reasons for being are obsolete. It’s because of these schools that the black middle class is filled with black doctors, lawyers and engineers. It’s because of these schools that one of every two wide-eyed freshmen is the first in his or her family to go to college.”