Published April 22, 2021

First in an occasional series

Last year was an extraordinary moment for many historically Black colleges and universities.

HBCUs shared the national spotlight with Vice President Kamala Harris, a Howard University alumna. And as the country grappled with a new racial reckoning in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, some of those schools received high-profile donations.

Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott gave $160 million to HBCUs and Black college organizations across the country in July 2020. She followed that in November with a $10 million anonymous gift to Prairie View A&M University to help students during the pandemic and another $40 million gift in December. 

“It’s not surprising that during a moment of national agony on race that minority-serving institutions stand out,” said Ruth Simmons, president of the HBCU, which is part of the Texas A&M System. “We’ve been around since 1876 doing the same work continuously throughout that time. … I think it’s our time to be recognized for what we’ve always been able to do and accomplish.”

But many officials and higher education experts say a single year of exposure and headline-grabbing donations cannot solve a longstanding issue. The pervasive underfunding and discriminatory treatment of HBCUs by state governments, philanthropists and corporations is going to take much more effort to reverse.

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For more than a century, HBCUs have strived to serve, educate and provide a haven for Black students, often without the equivalent support that predominantly white institutions receive. Lesser funding, in some cases, has affected operations, hiring of faculty, programming and the quality of facilities.

“Almost all of their struggles go back to financial concerns,” said Melanye Price, an endowed professor and director of the Center for Race and Justice at Prairie View A&M University. “They’re not just these struggling places. They struggle because of financial reasons.”

Like most Black colleges around the country, Texas’ only two public HBCUs — Prairie View A&M University in Prairie View and Texas Southern University in Houston — were byproducts of segregation and Jim Crow. The two schools were designed by the Texas Legislature to be Black versions of the state’s flagships Texas A&M University and the University of Texas at Austin, respectively.

The schools created spaces for African Americans in higher education when they were banned and rejected from other institutions, Price said.

“They are the legacy of people who were enslaved and legally prohibited to read and write, and almost immediately as they were emancipated, they built colleges — not elementary schools. They built colleges,” Price said. “They sat in them and learned to read and write. There’s no better educational story in this country.”

Inequalities linger

 

Prairie View, founded in 1876 — the same year as Texas A&M — was created on the former Alta Vista Plantation as an agricultural and mechanical college for Black students.

Texas Southern, established in 1927 as a night school for Black students in Jack Yates High School, was later recognized and funded by the state following the storied U.S. Supreme Court decision in Sweatt v. Painter. In that case, Heman Marion Sweatt fought for admission to law school at UT-Austin. Rather than allow a Black man into UT, state legislators agreed to fund Texas Southern and a new law school there as a “separate but equal” institution to UT-Austin. Sweatt won the case and was admitted to UT’s law school in 1950. History has shown the black institutions have been anything but equal.

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TSU and Prairie View have historically received less funding from the state government and private donors despite serving some of the state’s most vulnerable populations.

In 2019, Texas invested $16,472 per full-time student at UT-Austin, whereas Prairie View A&M and Texas Southern received $11,550 and $10,079, respectively.

The Texas A&M University System, however, has worked to allocate more funding for Prairie View A&M as lawmakers cut state funding, according to a university spokesman. Since the 2010 fiscal year, System Chancellor John Sharp and the board of regents have increased funding per student at Prairie View so much that it now surpasses funding of students at Texas A&M.

Such funding inequities — born during segregation and steeped in racism and ignorance — still linger today for many of the country’s HBCUs, creating a complex legacy, said Marybeth Gasman, a professor and researcher at Rutgers University who has studied historically Black colleges and universities and minority-serving institutions since 1994.

“There have always been discriminatory funding practices, and there have also been inequities in terms of private and corporate funding,” said Gasman. It’s a history that has forced Black colleges to work harder with fewer resources than their white counterparts. It’s where their unofficial slogan of “doing more with less” was born.

A cycle of funding deficits

 

The Sweatt case led to the high court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, which desegregated schools. Black colleges faced “widespread deficits, low endowments, fundraising struggles and increasingly under-prepared students,” according to a study by Gasman and Noah D. Drezner, a higher education professor at Columbia University.

Many HBCUs lost a number of students, particularly wealthy Black students, once white colleges desegregated in the 1960s. Enrollment and revenue decreased, but HBCUs continued their mission of educating Black students, of which 80 percent to 95 percent were low-income.

The fundraising need was acute, and that’s where Black colleges faced yet another obstacle.

White churches, a source for higher education funding, typically gave 60 percent less to Black colleges than they did to schools affiliated with their denominations, Gasman said, citing studies from the 1960s and ’70s. And most philanthropists gave larger gifts to predominantly white institutions — sometimes two to four times the amount given to HBCUs, Gasman and Drezner found.

The reasons varied, Gasman said. Donors and corporations sometimes wrongly assumed giving to one HBCU benefited them all. And some white corporations developed a disdain for HBCUs and their students who were involved or vocal during the Civil Rights Movement.

Others criticized Black colleges for having a small alumni base or for not thanking donors for their contributions, while many just preferred donating to more “prestigious” institutions, Gasman said.

Federal funding for HBCUs in the ’60s wasn’t much better. Just 3 percent of higher ed federal funding went to Black colleges.

College segregation: Histories of TSU and UH marked by segregation

The government tended to “de-emphasize” the role of Black colleges in improving the country, not giving them enough support but expecting them to produce positive results, sociologist Daniel C. Thompson noted in his 1973 book “Private Black Colleges at the Crossroads.”

Although “practically all of their students suffer from major socioeconomic disadvantages, Black colleges are somehow expected to miraculously transform them into creative citizens,” Thompson wrote. “About all private Black colleges are caught up in an impossible vicious cycle: They can’t get essential help because they do not measure up — and they can’t measure up without essential help.”

Many of these funding trends continue today, said Gasman, who is also executive director of the Rutgers Center for Minority Serving Institutions.

Mega-philanthropists continue to give large sums of money to the Top 5 private Black colleges and to nationally known predominantly white colleges that already boast huge endowments. New York businessman Michael Bloomberg, for example, pledged $100 million to be distributed among four HBCU medical schools last year and another $6 million in April, but he donated a full $150 million to Harvard University and has given at least $3.3 billion over the years to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University.

A 2019 report by the American Education Council and the United Negro College Fund showed that HBCU endowments, built through fundraising and donations, are generally 70 percent smaller than those at non-HBCUs. That means there is less security for the schools if state or federal funding decreases.

‘It’s more of a struggle’

 

The difference in funding could correlate to philanthropists or donors willing to give to a person with whom they have a connection than an institution when it comes to Black colleges, said James M. Douglas, a distinguished law professor and former president at Texas Southern.

In the case of Prairie View, many credit its current president for bringing added prestige to the college. Simmons, who did her undergraduate work at Dillard University, an HBCU in New Orleans, is former president of both Brown University and Smith College.

With the help of Scott’s $50 million gift, Prairie View A&M increased its donations by 540 percent four months into the latest fiscal year. Texas Southern, however, saw its donations and gifts increase by 12 percent to $6.5 million last year.

“There’s been a lot of platitudes. There’s a lot of people talking about equality in funding, but if you look at our bank balance, there’s been progress over the last three years, but TSU is still so far behind,” said Texas Southern Regent James M. Benham.

Texas’ six private Black colleges — Paul Quinn College in Dallas, Wiley College in Marshall, Huston-Tillotson University in Austin, Texas College in Tyler, Jarvis Christian College in Hawkins and Southwestern Christian College in Terrell — don’t receive state money, and the funding fight can be even harder.

“It’s a big challenge to get private and public corporations and wealthy individuals to buy into investing in smaller colleges,” Benham said. “The temptation is just to give to the large, established organizations that already have billions in endowments.”

Collette Pierce Burnette, president of Huston-Tillotson, said she has to work twice as hard to solidify a portion of what larger predominantly white institutions get.

“It’s more of a struggle for us to raise money than it is for other institutions in a similar situation that are not Black,” Burnette said. “They want you to be strong before they invest in you, but you can’t get strong until they invest in you.”

Incubators for success

 

For decades, HBCUs have helped Black and Latino young people — many of whom are first-generation college students or from low-income families — move up the socioeconomic ladder at a faster rate than they would at most white institutions, Gasman said.

“It’s safe to say that without the HBCUs in Texas, Texas would not have the Black middle class that it has,” Simmons said. But developing this population often takes more resources and investments — particularly for students who are in the greatest need of supportive or “wraparound services,” like tutoring, counseling, child care or transportation.

A profile of Ruth Simmons: Ivy League credentials and high expectations at Prairie View A&M

Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board data shows that Prairie View A&M and Texas Southern spend a larger percentage of their overall budgets to provide scholarships and support services to students than the state flagships do for theirs.

And the two HBCUs graduate a greater number of students with more debt than those at Texas A&M and UT. In 2019, the HBCUs had the highest average debt of any four-year public universities or colleges, exceeding $33,000, while debt at the flagships stayed below the state average of $25,374.

About 65 percent of Prairie View and TSU students are eligible for Pell Grants, a form of aid for undergraduates from the federal government that does not have to be repaid, whereas 22 percent and 23 percent are Pell Grant eligible at A&M and UT, respectively.

“Out of the gate, these students are coming from the most difficult social-economic circumstances in our society. They’re already starting in a hole, which manifests itself in interesting ways,” said Michael Sorrell, president of Paul Quinn College, an HBCU in Dallas.

Sorrell said slavery and subsequent racist laws and policies have kept many Black and brown families from achieving the same level of generational wealth as their white peers, so what the families of Black and Latino students can contribute varies.

Those financial constraints or the need to work while in school can result in graduating later than the average four- to six-year time frame.

Sorrell, who has been praised for leading Paul Quinn’s unconventional approach to educating and preparing its students for the workforce, agrees.

The private college, which enrolled more than 500 in 2019, has introduced a work program that pairs students with companies so they work during the school year to gain experience and get paid as they pursue their degrees.

During the COVID pandemic, Paul Quinn College assisted students by cutting tuition and fees, switching to virtual learning, sending students laptops and WiFi at no cost, and helping them return home when the pandemic worsened in March.

Solutions on the way?

 

Experts and officials say creative approaches to education and supporting HBCUs are needed to ensure funding is more equitable and that both the institutions and their students thrive.

Burnette, the president of Huston-Tillotson in Austin, suggested that boards and the grant-making process should be revisited and include more people of color and that investments in colleges should be made more thoughtfully, “with an intent to invest in opportunities or institutions that are educating more people to truly heal our nation and to right the ‘wrongs.’”

Megaphilanthropists, in particular, should consider where their money could make the greatest impact, Gasman said, adding that businessmen like Bloomberg could fundamentally change the sustainability of Black institutions and conditions of Black people by strengthening HBCU endowments.

“Texas lawmakers should show their dedication to equity in higher education by increasing their funding to HBCUs to a level that matches or exceeds their investments in public flagships,” Ashley Williams, a policy analyst for nonprofit Every Texan, wrote in a 2020 report.

HBCUs in other states, like Mississippi and Maryland, have taken legal action to gain equity.

Maryland’s four historically Black colleges — Morgan State University, Coppin State University, Bowie State University and the University of Maryland, Eastern Shore — saw some accountability from the state after a 15-year fight to recognize decades of inequitable funding, treatment and unfair duplication of its programs.

The Coalition for Excellence and Equity in Maryland Higher Education, which represents the HBCUs, proved to a federal court that Maryland violated the U.S. Constitution by failing to enhance the programs of HBCUs, which often were duplicated by the state’s predominantly white institutions. In March, Maryland’s lawmakers passed legislation signed by Gov. Larry Hogan that will allocate $577 million in supplemental funding to the colleges over a decade.

The money will be used to boost the colleges’ academic programs, assist the institutions in becoming more competitive to appeal to prospective students and to help bridge gaps within higher education in the state.

But Sorrell, the Paul Quinn president, said despite the history, HBCUs like his are “spending zero time saying “woe is me.”

“Existential threats aren’t a new experience for HBCUs,” he said.

HBCU bibliography

 

Recommended viewing and reading to learn more about the history and mission of historically black colleges and universities.

Books

“Born to Serve: A History of Texas Southern University” by Merline Petri, University of Oklahoma Press

“Private Black Colleges at the Crossroads” by Daniel C. Thompson, Praeger Publishers/Greenwood Publishing Group

“America’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities: A Narrative History, 1837-2009” by Bobby L. Lovett, Mercer University Press

“Principles of Leadership” by William R. Harvey, president of Hampton University, Hampton University Press

“Dreaming No Small Dreams: Williams R. Harvey’s Visionary Leadership” by Lois Benjamin, Ph.D., Tapestry Press

“The Athletic Experience at Historically Black Colleges and Universities: Past, Present, and Persistence” edited by Billy Hawkins, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.  

“Reinventing Black Colleges & Universities: A Historical Perspective Paperback” by Bobby E. Mills, Ph.D.; Charles W. Moore, independently published

“The HBCU Guide: 100+ Things to Know (and a Few Other Things You Need to Do!)” by Robin May, insider tips for students considering or enrolled at an HBCU, iUniverse/self-published

“I Love My Future HBCU: Teaching Children about Historically Black Colleges and Universities” by Nathalie Nelson Parker (children’s book)

“Henry’s Going to an HBCU!” by Kyle McMurtry (children’s book)

Documentaries

“Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities” (2017), directed by Stanley Nelson and Marco Williams, PBS

Films

“Stomp the Yard” (2007) on black fraternity and sorority step shows, directed by Sylvain White

“School Daze” (1988) directed by Spike Lee

“Drumline” (2002) on HBCU marching bands, directed by Charles Stone III

“The Great Debaters” (2007) starred Denzel Washington who sought legendary TSU professor Thomas Freeman to help prepare him for the role as a debate coach.

TV shows

“A Different World” (1987-1993), a spinoff of “The Cosby Show” featuring life at the fictional Hillman College and filmed in Atlanta at Morehouse College, Clark Atlanta University and Spelman College. 

“College Hill” (2004-2009), a six-season reality-TV show on BET that chronicled life on several Black college campuses.

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Credits

 

Reporter: Brittany Britto

Editors: Felicia L. Mason, Mizanur Rahman

Librarian/Archivist: Joyce Lee

Photo editing and design: Jasmine Goldband

Copy editor: Charlie Crixell

Audience: J.R. Gonzales 

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