Will the nation’s 105 public and private historically black colleges and universities meet President Barack Obama’s challenge of graduating an additional 167,000 students by the year 2020?
Clearly, the leaders of those schools - many of whom are in Washington, D.C. this week attending a conference hosted by the White House Initiative on HBCUs - believe so.
“We are up to the task,” said George E. Ayers, who formerly headed both Central State University in Ohio and Chicago State University and now runs a Virginia-based consulting firm.
“It will take a great deal of work, a great deal of strategizing, and, of course, resources, but we can achieve anything,” Ayers said Monday during a break in the opening session of the two-day conference, "HBCUs: Engaging the World Anew."
Nationally, the percentage of students who graduate from college with a degree in six years is 57 percent. The African-American graduation rate nationwide is 41 percent; at HBCUs the rate drops to 37 percent.
President Obama wants to have 8 million more college graduates between now and 2020, with 2 million of those graduates being African-American. To reach that mark, HBCUs have to graduate an extra 167,000 students.
Elaine Johnson Copeland, president of Clinton Junior College in Rock Hill, South Carolina, likewise expressed confidence in meeting the president’s goal.
“We will take our share of that load,” said Copeland. "We are used to making bricks without straw"
The message from the White House to the more than 400 educators attending the conference was that the “straw” is on the way. The president has already committed to invest more than $850 million in HCBUs over the next 10 years.
“Your president knows how hard you work, and he applauds your progress,” said Valerie Jarrett, senior advisor to the president, bringing greetings from the White House. She told attendees that HBCUs are central to reaching the president’s goal that by 2020, the United States will once again lead the world in the number of college graduates, a position it had held since 1995.
According to Jarrett, recently released figures show that the U.S. has slipped to 16th place after being in 13th place in 2009. She said, “Korea now holds the top spot, with 63 percent” of their adults ages 25 to 34 having college degrees.
By comparison, only about 40 percent of Americans between the ages of 25 to 34 are college graduates. The rate for African-Americans is 30 percent and 25 percent for Latinos.
“The president is determined to do whatever it takes to make your work a little easier,” continued Jarrett, who shared that her father is a graduate of Howard University, and that her great-grandfather, an architect, designed many of the buildings on the campus of Tuskegee University.
Faced with declining enrollments, shrinking endowments and rising costs, meeting the 2020 benchmark will be daunting for black colleges and universities, admits John Silvanus Wilson, executive director of the White House Initiative on HBCUs, adding that everyone at the conference is painfully aware of that reality.
The gap between where HBCUs are and where they can and should be is wide, said Wilson, a graduate of Morehouse College, who mentioned that he and his “good friend” filmmaker Spike Lee entered together as freshmen.
“The goal of the White House Initiative is to change the narrative,” said Wilson.
He explained that in the past, there were those who questioned the need for HBCUs, suggesting that the schools are a relic of a time when segregation ruled. He said that question is no longer on the table. Not only does the country need HBCUs, said Wilson, but that they need to “thrive” if the 2020 goal is to be met.
It’s a truth underscored by the fact that although HBCUs represent only three percent of the nation's colleges and universities, they graduate nearly 20 percent of African-Americans with undergraduate degrees. The numbers only go up to more than 50 percent for African-Americans earning professional degrees.
Continuing, Wilson said the president’s “grand vision for HCBUs” boils down to three elements: “Perception enhancement, capital enlargement and campus enrichment.” To that end Wilson’s office is making sure that HBCUs are strategically positioned to better benefit from federal spending, as well as forging strong relationships with private and philanthropic funders.
Pointing to recent success, Wilson noted that since Obama came to office, “federal funding to HBCUs is up.” He said HBCUs received “$312 million more (in federal money) from last year to this year,” which includes an increase in Pell grants.
“There were 6 million Pell grant recipients when Obama took office," Wilson said. "That number is now approaching 10 million recipients, including 45,000 new recipients in HBCUs.”
Pell grants are critically important to HBCUs since two-thirds of their students are recipients.
In addition, HBCUs have seen a $65 million increase for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) programming.
Nearing the end of his remarks, Wilson showed a clip from his “friend’s” movie, "School Daze," in which two characters are arguing about why HBCU grads don’t give back financially to their schools.
“We have to raise the rate of alumni giving. It's a real problem,” said Wilson, as many in the audience nodded in agreement. He said that the average nationally for alumni giving is 13 percent. “At HBCUs, its five to seven percent. We want to work with you to get the percentage of alumni giving up. That makes a statement.”
Wilson went on to make a passionate plea for HBCU leaders to “engage” with his office.
“When it comes to HBCUs, there is enormous history, enormous production and enormous unfulfilled potential,” he said. “We have this unrealized vision of our predecessors, of our ancestors, that must be realized, and that is that HBCUs should be competitive with and holding their own with the best universities in the nation.”
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