Since their founding, historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have been an important asset to the American higher education system. The original mission of this sector of institutions was to provide education to Blacks who at the time could not receive it elsewhere in the country because of both racial and systemic barriers that existed then and to a certain degree are still present today. While keeping true to their original mission, HBCUs currently provide educational resources to students from all racial and ethnic backgrounds and provide access to higher education to students that are still plagued by the systemic barriers that exist within this country.
However, the prevailing narrative associated with HBCUs is that of relevancy, purpose and effectiveness in a “post-racial” America. It is clear that these questions of relevancy continue to be heightened by various higher education and media outlets. Comparing the performance of HBCUs to the larger higher education universe continue painting a picture that does not reflect the critical success and impacts these institutions not only have on their students and regional communities but to the competitiveness and sustainability of our nation’s economy.
To be clear, the pace of innovation in the 21st Century has forced HBCUs, like many other higher education institutions, to fundamentally change their business model and approach to serving a new generation of students and these changes have necessitated a shift in how we measure the performance of these institutions. Traditional measures of higher education institution (HEI) success such as student enrollment, academic programming and facility quality have been overshadowed by outcome measures that prioritize retention and graduation, and increasingly post-graduate outcomes (i.e., employment, graduate school, etc.).
And without historical and demographic context, these performance changes are facilitating narratives that position HBCUs as inadequate because their data is rarely disaggregated, and generally discussed exclusively in comparison to their better-resourced institutional peers. For example, most institutions report to the U.S. Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDs) on the same data points, however, institutions are asked to report most data for first-time, full-time students only. A 2017 American Council on Education report showed that although federal graduation rates at public and private HBCUs were 34.1 percent and 43.9 percent, respectively, when compared to National Student Clearinghouse data, the completion rate for exclusively full-time students at public and private HBCUs increased to 62 percent and 66.7 percent, respectively. Although IPEDs’ Outcome Measures (OM) survey, released in 2017, captures a broader range of “non-traditional” students, including part-time, transfers and students that enroll throughout the year, not just fall (a major benefit to HBCUs), the current sanctioned compliance system does not reflect actual outcomes and still fails to account for race, gender and program-level outcomes.
More importantly, data often fails to address the impact of historically negative narratives for HBCUs. For instance, four years ago, the Department of Education released the College Scorecard to “provide students and families the critical information they need to make smart decisions about where to enroll for higher education” (U.S. Department of Education, 2013). The scorecard focused on five data points: costs, average amount borrowed, loan default rate, graduation rate and employment. The scorecard was touted as a comparison tool to help families make informed decisions about college selection. However, the College Scorecard failed to account the negative effect that it’s simplified approach would have on colleges that enroll underserved students, especially HBCUs and other minority serving institutions (MSIs) (Collins et al., 2014). Across the board, HBCUs underperformed on all metrics, except for costs, purportedly indicating an elevated level of inferiority for these institutions.
This is exacerbated by the increased emphasis on employment outcomes for colleges. Against this metric HBCUs are also hit by pundits. While it is true that HBCU graduates tend to have average salaries lower than graduates from non-HBCUs, the metric does not take into account the disproportionate student enrollment in education, social work, and other low-wage fields (Carnevale, Fasules, Porter, & Landis-Santos, 2016); the greater than average contribution HBCUs make to Black doctoral degree attainment; or the recent Gallup-Purdue University study that shows Black graduates from HBCUs tend to be better off in life than Black graduates from PWIs.
To tell a story more reflective of HBCU outcomes and showcase the significant contribution of HBCUs to society, we are offering the following recommendations:
