(NAME-MCE) Changing Times for Black Colleges

[Anselmo Villanueva]

For better format, related stories, and abstract of this report, surf to:

http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/04/19/hbcu

April 19, 2007

Changing Times for Black Colleges

Two economists have applied an income analysis to the graduates of
historically black colleges — and the scholars have come up with
findings that could be problematic for the institutions or could
suggest that they are remaining true to a historic mission.

The report found that the economic gains for a black student of
attending a historically black college as opposed to a traditionally
white institution changed dramatically between the 1970s and 1990s.

In the 1970s, when many of the most prestigious American colleges were
just beginning to actively recruit black students, an economic-driven
calculus would have sent a student to a black college. Now, according
to the authors, the opposite is true, and graduates of black colleges
have seen a significant decline in relative wages over the course of
the two decades studied.

In addition, in a separate comparison, the scholars looked at elite
black colleges and found significant declines in the proportion of
students — compared to black students at predominantly white
institutions — who would pick the same college again, who felt
prepared for working alongside other racial groups, and who felt their
leadership skills had been developed. (Black college students,
however, in the latter comparison were more likely to be engaged in
social or political activities.)

The question, of course, is: What does all of this mean?

The study was released Wednesday by the National Bureau of Economic
Research and an abstract is available here.

The authors of the study — Roland G. Fryer, an assistant professor of
economics at Harvard University, and Michael Greenstone, a professor
of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — write that
they conducted their analysis with the idea that decisions about
historically black colleges should be made on more than on "theories
and historical anecdotes." With the Supreme Court insisting in
desegregation cases that black colleges provide a clear justification
for their role, and public and private black colleges relying on
federal funds (the latter primarily for student aid, not operating
support), the authors write that the institutions need to be able to
demonstrate their value. They used several longitudinal databases to
come up with their conclusions.

On one level, the authors note ways in which their study does not
reflect well on the black colleges. During the period covered by the
study, the authors note, various measures of pre-college academic
preparedness (such as test scores) went up at black colleges, so the
relative income declines took place during a period when the opposite
might have been expected.

One possibility for these trends, the authors write, has nothing to do
with black colleges. The black students doing better financially and
feeling better about their experiences elsewhere may primarily be a
result of "improvements in traditionally white institutions'
effectiveness at educating blacks," the authors write.

Leaders of historically black colleges agreed that the report may
ultimately say as much about predominantly white institutions as about
their own.

"Our schools educate students from disproportionately low-income
backgrounds, many of whom have attended low-performing schools for
their entire lives," Lezli Baskerville, president of the National
Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education, said in a
statement. "After more than 30 years of litigation, HBCUs have not
received comparable funding to [traditionally white institutions]. The
authors' analysis does not reflect the fact that HBCUs take students
from where they are, bring them up to speed, and help them succeed
with fewer resources. The authors also do not account for the economic
and social costs of not helping underprepared students to get a
college education, a role that HBCUs fill successfully more so than
other institutions."

Baskerville said she hoped the two scholars would present their
findings to black college presidents at a meeting later this year.

Michael L. Lomax, president of the United Negro College Fund, said he
hasn't had time to study the report yet, and that it raises "complex"
questions. He said that a key difference to consider is that in the
first time period covered by the scholars, black colleges were
attracting significant numbers of students from professional, middle
class black families. These are now the students who "are
cherry-picked by highly selective, prestigious institutions" that
weren't looking for them in the 1970s, Lomax said.

Lomax stressed that there was nothing wrong with those institutions
recruiting black students. "It's a wonderful thing for those
students," he said.

But Lomax said that black colleges in the 1970s and today also make a
lot of room for students who are the first in their families to attend
college, who have academic talent despite having attended poor high
schools, and who may have little or no money. Wealthier institutions
can offer lots of aid — and not all of it based on need — to attract
the better prepared and more affluent black students who once were a
key part of a black college's student body, he said.

"Our institutions are for diamonds in the rough. The traditionally
white institutions are looking for diamonds that have been pretty well
cut already," he said.

— Scott Jaschik