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| Re: 2 COPS SHOT (1249913) | |||
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Re: 2 COPS SHOT |
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Posted by FtGreeneG on Tue Dec 23 00:42:39 2014, in response to Re: 2 COPS SHOT, posted by Train Dude on Mon Dec 22 23:28:32 2014. An interesting article I actually read a vouples wks ago about this. The whole article here [url]http://time.com/2907332/historically-black-colleges-increasingly-serve-white-students/[\url]'Historically Black Colleges Are Becoming More White An average of one in four students at traditionally black schools in the U.S. is a different race than the one the college was intended to serve When junior Brandon Kirby brought home an award from a national biomedical conference, it was a nice boost for his small college in a dying coal town in the heart of Appalachia.It also seemed incongruous, given that the conference was for minorities, the college is historically black — and Kirby is white.So are 82 percent of the students at West Virginia’s Bluefield State College, which nonetheless qualifies for a share of the more than a quarter of a billion dollars a year in special funding thefederal government set asidefor historically black colleges and universities in 2011, the last year for which figures are available. These schools, known as HBCUs, can also apply for federal loans through the Historically Black College and University Capital Financing Program. Last year, they got $303 million from that program, on top of $1.1 billion in previously approved loans.The HBCU designation was created by Congress in 1965 to refer to any accredited school “established prior to 1964, whose principal mission was, and is, the education of black Americans.”HBCU’s have always enrolled students of all races, but they are increasingly becoming less black. At some, like Bluefield, blacks now comprise less than half of the student body. At Lincoln University in Missouri, African-Americans account for 40 percent of enrollment while at Alabama’s Gadsden State Community College, 71 percent of the students are white and just 21 percent are black. The enrollment at St. Philip’s College in Texas is half Hispanic and 13 percent black, according to 2011 enrollment data from the U.S. Department of Education. Nationwide, an average of one in four HBCU students is a different race than the one the school was intended to serve, according toresearch conducted at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education.Many HBCUs were started under segregation to provide African-Americans with higher education opportunities. After integration, they became seen as places for black students to overcome economic and educational inequities. Indeed, HBCUs have been instrumental in developing the black middle class, graduating substantial numbers of teachers, engineers and other professionals. But as schools that had been predominantly white opened their doors to other races, black students became scarcer at historically black colleges. To survive, the universities have had to market themselves to all students.But George Cooper, the executive director of the White House Initiative on HBCUs, says such wild demographic swings are a testament to the modern-day flexibility of HBCUs. These schools still are, and always will be, legally considered historically black, he said.“The definition is a federal definition,” Cooper says. “They’re living up to it.”Congress has never stipulated whether an institution could continue to be considered historically black if it became mostly white. The legislation that gives the schools their largest pool of money says only that they have “contributed significantly to the effort to attain equal opportunity through postsecondary education for black, low-income, and educationally disadvantaged Americans.”Not everyone agrees. Economist Richard Vedder favors eliminating special funding for HBCU’s on the grounds that all schools should receive money based on present realities, not historic mission. “If you’re going to give subsidies for institutions, you shouldn’t give it on the basis of some sort of historical [legacy],” says Vedder, director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity.At Bluefield, officials and students contend they haven’t strayed from their original mission for the same reason Kirby and his classmates are allowed to participate in the biomedical conference.“We’re all considered minorities because we’re in a poverty state,” Kirby says, referring to West Virginia.' |
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