Here he has a 3.6 and was named “Mr. HBCU” in a national contest that crowns an informal HBCU student “king.”
“The teachers here just took me in and saw something in me, and said, ‘I think you will be successful,’” he said.
But the harsh reality is many HBCUs don’t have the resources to give every student that kind of attention.
Howard and Spelman have endowments valued in the hundreds of millions, but Edward Waters has just $1.6 million. Flagship universities typically get the lion’s share of state funding over public HBCUs.
In a perfect world, say experts like Kevin Carey of the think-tank Education Sector, HBCUs would have more resources to spend on the toughest students. But they don’t, and “if you don’t have the resources to serve students, you’re not doing much good.”
“Some of these institutions ... have struggled along for some time and have just tried to be available, an option for students, and have focused on the experience,” said Dr. Marybeth Gasman, a University of Pennsylvania historian of HBCUs. Many do heroic work with students others ignore, she said. But graduation rates below one-quarter won’t cut it in an era of tighter accountability.
“You have to keep in mind these students may be taking out loans and going into debt and still not get a degree,” she said.
Philander Smith’s Kimbrough says neither HBCUs nor any college should admit students if they don’t have the resources they need to get them through.
“I think it’s immoral to take someone when the indicators suggest this person is not going to graduate, and I don’t have anything special for them,” he said. “I’m just taking their money.”
© Copyright 2005 by DiverseEducation.com
