Another HBCU on the Brink?

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that Clark Atlanta University in the Atlanta University Center (the largest African-American consortium of higher education in the United States), also known as the AUC has implemented a hiring freeze and cut back on raises to save money after about 240 fewer students than expected enrolled during the school's chaotic fall registration, school officials said this week. There are reports that there has been a 5 percent drop-off in undergraduate enrollment and an 11 percent dip in graduate student enrollment, to 4,271 total students.

With tuition and associated costs at over $30,000 per year, about half of the students who did not enroll cited issues with financial aid or housing.

Read the entire AJC article here.

Another Atlanta University Center school - Morris Brown College - was mired in a financial aid scandal which caused the school to lose its accreditation in 2002 (meaning students cannot receive federal or state financial aid for their school expenses). As of the Fall 2007 semester, Morris Brown College is scratching for survival with fewer than 100 students and a handful of faculty members. It appears that the only two viable colleges left in the AUC are all-male Morehouse College and all-female Spelman College.

All of the member schools in the Atlanta University Center are Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU). Most of the schools began as small glorified training schools to educate freedman after the Civil War and have a rich, long-standing place in the annals of African-American history. Prior to the 21st century, most African-American students who went to college were educated at an HBCU.


plez sez: everything has a time and a place. our oldest HBCU's served the Black community and America at a time when this country didn't know what to do with its newly freed chattel. when southern colleges and universities would not open their doors to Black Americans for close to a century after the end of slavery, these HBCU's were there to educate, motivate, and uplift the race.

i'm afraid that in the 21st century, the time for many (if not most) of the HBCU's has passed. the top students that once had limited opportunities to attend college now have a vast array of choices, most state universities have better/newer facilities, better trained faculty, more financial resources, lower tuition costs, better networking opportunities, and a global student population that cannot be found on a majority of the HBCU's. the issue of strained budgets, higher percentage of students needing financial aid, over-inflated faculty salaries, and dwindling student population is not confined to Clark Atlanta University. these same financial woes drove the administration of Morris Brown College to embezzle federal funds to keep that school afloat for as long as it did, and now it sits barely functional as an institution of higher learning and more a shell of its former tenuous existence.

look at a list of top colleges and universities in the United States and you'll wonder if these 114 historically black colleges even exist. save a handful of these schools (ex. Morehouse, Spelman, Howard, Hampton, Fisk, and Tuskegee), most HBCU's are irrelevant when speaking about HBCU's! in a country where Black people are no longer the largest minority, segregating our students in an educational ghetto is not uplifting the race. my two oldest brothers attended HBCU's, the quality of their education was vastly inferior to the education that the rest of my siblings and plezWorld received at mainstream universities. most of these schools are small (less than 10,000 students), private (with costs over $30,000 per year), old (most are over 100 years old), and financially strapped (with low alumni support).

read the HBCU Ranking in the US News & World Report.

i am thisshort of proposing the dismantling of the current HBCU "system," but i would entertain the contraction of the system. combine schools, such as those in the AUC into a larger more viable university. instead of having 4 small colleges, why not create one much larger university that reduces redundant function, cuts out the waste, and enhances the college experience. instead of Morehouse, Spelman, Clark, and Morris Brown as separate schools, create the Atlanta University. for those traditionalists, each campus could maintain a portion of their traditional identity (similar to what is done at Rutgers University in New Jersey), while having a student population that can support a true educational institution of higher learning.

similarly, this model can be extended around the country where traditional HBCU's can be absorbed or contracted into larger more viable HBCU's or mainstream state universities (for example, combine Florida A&M University with Florida State University, and combine South Carolina State University with University of South Carolina).

if you are a graduate of a HBCU, you will probably think what i wrote is heresy, but change is constant and inevitable. when one looks at the current state of HBCU's in the United States, to my way of thinking, it would be wise to be the cause of change rather than letting the change happen to you! the issues at Clark Atlanta University and Morris Brown College are not unique within the HBCU community, and it is only a matter of time before more and more of these historical educational monuments begin to disappear into the dust from which they arose.


plezWorld family education. My two oldest brothers graduated from HBCU's: Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) and Virginia State College (now Virginia State University). My third brother and sister graduated from University of Pennsylvania (Penn undergrad and medical school) and Rutgers University (The State University of New Jersey), respectively. My niece graduated from Old Dominion University (ODU). My mother-in-law and father-in-law graduated from Clark College (now Clark Atlanta University). My wife's brother graduated from Kansas State University. My wife graduated from University of Georgia (UGA). I graduated from Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) which is just a few miles from the AUC.

Neither of my parents attended a four-year college or university, but as you can see, they were fanatics about ensuring that all of their children were college graduates.