PUBLISHER’S PAGE Response to ‘WSJ’ article, ‘Black Colleges Need a New Mission . . .’ J
ason Riley’s article, “Black Colleges Need a New Mission. Once an essential response to rac- ism, they are now academically inferior,” is an echo chamber for views we’ve rebutted time and time again.
For years, Riley’s spurious conclusions in the Wall Street Journal article have been the
refrain of ‘ivory tower’ researchers and university administrators at traditionally white colleges in state higher education systems. And the refrain has gone like this: Since historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are vestiges of discrimination, they no longer have viable roles; we’re doing a better job with black students than HBCUs with lower graduation rates; since we in traditionally white educational programs are under pressure to support diversity, closing HBCUs or merging them into our campuses would solve that problem. Examine such claims up close, however, and the picture looks entirely different. Historically black colleges and universities remain the only institutions willing to accept many of the poorest black students from underserved schools. Not only are HBCUs more willing to consider students with GPAs that make them less attractive to so-called mainstream schools, they also are more affordable.
And the idea that traditionally white institutions do better at educating black students falls apart when you look at these two facts ignored by Riley: HBCU graduates are more likely to pursue post- graduate study; over the quarter of century that Career Communications Group and the Council of Engineering Deans of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities have hosted BEYA, majority of the top performers marching across the winner’s stage have been HBCU graduates. Those corporate go-getters like Rod Adkins and Art Johnson certainly were not held back by hav- ing completed their education at HBCUs, and their employers were not held back from hiring them, appreciating their contributions and promoting them. Undoubtedly, black colleges are expanding. Howard pursued aggressive building activity during the H. Patrick Swygert years, as did Morgan State under the estimable Dr. Earl Richardson. Hampton’s steady growth, and the crop of new engineering schools at Virginia State, Norfolk State, Alabama A&M and Jackson State also are proof that the need for HBCUs is still extant, their achievements unassailable, and their graduates continue to march on into the bright blue future. Their students’ SAT scores would get them into many traditionally white institutions they es- chewed. But as the National Institute of Medicine pointed out in its report on blacks in the sciences, and as a recent Bayer study showed, blacks enter “mainstream” institutions with the same inclination to pursue STEM careers as whites, but then get dissuaded by faculty and administrators. That just doesn’t happen at HBCUs. So enough of Riley’s balderdash. We’ve rebutted it time and time again. At the end of the day, black colleges are not going to dry up and blow away.
The full version of this article was first published in September 2010
http://diversitygps.com/ response-to-wsj-article-black-colleges-need-a-new-mission-once-an-essent-p136-103.htm
Tyrone D. Taborn Publisher and Editorial Director
4 USBE&IT I SPRING 2011
www.blackengineer.com
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