TNJ - April 2001 - Editor's Note - The Good Competition by Njeru Waithaka

Editor's Note
April 2001

The Good Competition
by Njeru Waithaka

Historically black universities are having a tough time attracting top-performing black students from high schools because of stiff competition from Ivy League and other mainstream universities. This has alarmed black college recruiters and aroused them to a more aggressive campaign to attract the best.

In the past five years, students who would have enrolled in historically black colleges such as Howard University, Spelman or Morehouse, have been lured away to top mainstream universities such as Columbia, Yale, Princeton and Harvard, leaving black colleges in an inexorable decline in enrollment.

Between 1976 and 1994, for example, the number of blacks enrolled in white colleges rose 40 percent compared with a rise of 20 percent in historically black colleges.

But while the belated trend toward diversity in mainstream institutions is indicative of the distance blacks have traversed since 1896, when Federal law sanctioned “separate but equal” doctrine in Plessy v. Fergusson, there are certain rewards that blacks can only have in black colleges videlicet role models, mentors, leadership opportunities, courses reflecting black history and achievement, a sense of belonging and a firm sense of self-identity.

It is true, as one of our writers in this career issue has pointed out that the number of black professors in mainstream universities has risen in the past decade but, as happens in the workplace, black students in predominantly white institutions have to study under a lot of pressure in order to prove themselves in an environment in which they are still dismissed as the direct result of affirmative action and quotas.

Nonetheless, even with all their merits, historically black universities have to surmount gross financial problems in order to attract the top of the cream. While most predominantly white universities can easily promise financial aid to their applicants, only a few historically black universities can promise financial aid.

Spelman College, an historically black women’s college of 2,000 students based in Atlanta, GA, can only provide about 100 full scholarships per year. On the other hand, Hampton University, another historically black institution founded in 1868 in Virginia, and the 134-year-old historically black Howard University in Washing ton, DC, have an easier time attracting top performers. But these are older institutions with more endowments and can afford to provide envious financial aid packages to their applicants. Hampton University, for example, has about 9,000 applicants every year but it accepts only 1,000 applicants. Howard University on the other hand is located in the capital and can easily sell its long-standing reputation of educating prominent blacks.

All in all, as the U.S. heeds the call to diversity in the workplace and in institutions of higher learning, enrollment in historically black colleges will continue to decline. But in the spirit of the1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, in which the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was unconstitutional, competition leading to openness and greater freedom of choice is a necessary good.

Click here for January 2002 Editor's Note - A Bright Economic Horizon

Click here for November 2001 Editor's Note - Initiatives Rigged in Controversy

Click here for April 2001 Editor's Note - The Good Competition

Click here for February 2001 Editor's Note - The Perennial Debate

Click here for January 2001 Editor's Note - The Beleaguered Media

Click here for October 2000 Editor's Note - Selling Out Cheaply

Click here for September 2000 Editor's Note - A Question of Trust

Click here for July / August 2000 Editor's Note - Value In Differences

Click here for June 2000 Editor's Note - Be Wary of Numbers

Click here for May 2000 Editor's Note - A Sobering Reminder