Historically Black, historically underfunded: A higher-ed reckoning

When I stepped onto the campus of Florida A&M University in Tallahassee as a freshman more than 20 years ago, I immediately felt at home. It had a welcoming spirit that alumni from historically Black colleges and universities like mine speak of glowingly – a spirit that extends far beyond graduation. 

That sense of belonging continues to attract Black students, despite the schools’ long-standing lack of funding and history of violence and threats of violence against them. On Aug. 30, the Department of Homeland Security reported 49 bomb threats targeting HBCUs in the first eight months of the year. Even so, enrollment in many HBCUs is up.

An initial analysis of this fall’s enrollment figures released by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center on Thursday shows that undergraduate enrollment overall shrank again for a two-year decline of 4.2%. But HBCUs experienced 2.5% growth in undergraduate enrollment this fall, propelled by a 6.6% increase in freshman enrollment, leading to a 0.8% increase since 2020. 

A surprising finding

That could be good news far beyond those campuses. The atmosphere at HBCUs, one researcher posits, may be tied to higher elementary school math scores, regardless of the race of the teacher. 

Last month, The Hechinger Report noted a study indicating that having a teacher – whether Black or not – who trained at a historically Black college or university led to better math results for Black students in third through fifth grade in North Carolina between fall 2009 and spring 2018.

“I thought that this has to be wrong somehow because so many papers have found an effect for a Black-teacher Black-student match,” Lavar Edmonds, a graduate student in economics and education at Stanford University, told Hechinger. But no matter how many different times or ways Mr. Edmonds conducted his analysis, the results were the same. 

The study has not been peer reviewed yet, but if the researcher is correct, it speaks well of the schools’ relevance and of the role of diversity at these institutions. (In 2020, 24% of HBCU students were not Black, up from 15% in 1976.) Mr. Edmonds, who is Black, speculates that what led to the increased scores might be the schools’ hospitable spirit.

“Many of my family members went to HBCUs and a recurring theme is how they found it more welcoming.” Mr. Edmonds told Hechinger. “They felt more at peace, more at home at an HBCU. … I think there is a component of that in how a teacher conveys information to a student. If you’re getting more of that environment, yourself, as a student at these institutions, I think it makes a difference in your disposition as a teacher.”

Persistence despite inequities

The peace that Mr. Edmonds is talking about truly passes understanding when looking at some of the challenges that face HBCUs. Along with the recent spurt of bomb threats, there are persistent financial challenges. A few of the better-known schools have hundreds of millions in their endowment; Howard University, the wealthiest, has said its endowment goal of $1 billion is within reach. But that is far from typical. “The value of all HBCU endowments in 2020 combined is just 11 percent of Harvard’s endowment in 2020,” reports The Plug, a Black journalism and insights company. 

Why the disparity? The best apples-to-apples explanation concerns land-grant institutions established under the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890, the second of which was designed to make higher education available to Black people, especially in the former Confederate states. Some of the schools established under that act are today’s HBCUs, but for decades those 1890 land-grant institutions were deemed ineligible for the funding that 1862 institutions received, although both groups have the same “legal standing.” Efforts in the 1970s began to address these disparities, but stark inequities persist. 

For example, despite a requirement for state funding to match dollar for dollar certain types of federal funding for land-grant institutions, states have not kept up their end of the bargain – often providing more funds than required to white institutions while “waiving” funding for Black schools. This year, both Tennessee and Maryland are needing to redress cumulative HBCU underfunding of up to half a billion dollars apiece. 

Needed: A warm and well-funded welcome

Just last month, six students from my alma mater, Florida A&M, entered a class-action complaint alleging that Florida “has systematically engaged in policies and practices that established and perpetuated, and continue to perpetuate, a racially segregated system of higher education.”

The complaint compares state funding for the University of Florida (a majority-white school) and Florida A&M, both land-grant institutions. One example notes that the latter’s 2019 appropriations “amounted to $11,450 per student, compared … to $14,984 per student” for the University of Florida. The cumulative effect of such shortfalls since the late 1980s is more than $1.3 billion, the Tallahassee Democrat reports.

The Biden administration, and previous others, have spoken to the importance of HBCUs. But students and their families need more than observances. Funding Black schools fairly would not only support their success, but also acknowledge past disparities and indicate a future commitment to true equity – to welcoming these institutions into higher education’s full range of opportunities as warmly as the schools welcome their students.