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Episode #2204
Progress Report on Black Education Part II
J Lewis: I went to North Carolina State initially and transferred to Winston, but now that I’m here I do see the relevance of the HBCU now. I know a lot of people ask that question, but I see the relevance of that now, and that close-knitness of the smallness, and it’s very intimate, so it helps a great deal in fostering education.
Lewis: That’s how some people feel about the value of historically black colleges and universities, but others question their performance. The rate of African-American college going and graduation still trails that of white students, and although most African-American graduates have HBCUs to thank for their degrees, these institutions of higher learning sustained great public pressure to produce even more. How well do we understand their challenge? We’ll talk about it next on Black Issues Forum.
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Lewis: Hello everyone and welcome to Black Issues Forum, I’m Mitchell Lewis. Fall is the time of year when many black college alumni return home to their alma maters to fellowship and celebrate with pride the memories from their undergraduate days. It should also be a time to celebrate the accomplishments of the schools. But clouding the air on many historically black college and university campuses are concerns about enrollment drops and financial stability. While there are more African Americans attending college now than ever before, according to a report by the American Council on Education, the white-black gap in enrollment has actually grown. With the emphasis the African-American community places upon obtaining an education, the many historical efforts to gain freedom of access and opportunity, and the hard work of colleges and universities to pull in black students, how can this be?
We have a very distinguished panel of guests to help shed some light on this subject. I’d like to introduce first, Dr. Diane Boardley Suber, president of St. Augustine’s College, a private HBCU in Raleigh. We also have Dr. James H. Ammons, the Chancellor of North Carolina Central University in Durham, which is one of the 16 public universities in our state. And we have Dr. Chuck Stone, professor emeritus of journalism for the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, a former political analyst and published author among his many titles. And to the three of you, thank you so very much and welcome to Black Issues Forum.
Suber: Thank you.
Ammons:Thanks for having us.
Stone: Good to be here.
Lewis: I think I’ll start off with you, President Suber, ladies first, that is, when we talk about HBCUs, a lot of people have said that HBCUs have outlived their usefulness, that they’re no longer viable. But as you look at your campus, how do you see that fact—well, not fact—but how do you see that not being so?
Suber: I think when you talk about viability of historically black colleges and universities, you really have to talk about the educational process as a whole. And when we look at what’s happening in America as attested to by any number of educational organizations who have generated data and reports relative to achievement gaps between African Americans and majority students in particular, you have to look at the fact that the issues of viability goes back to what’s happening to our young men and women as they come through the elementary schools, the middle schools and high schools. As a result of what is really a cumulative achievement gap, many of our students, African American students finish the pre-collegiate era with the achievement gap already in place, significantly in place. What our institutions do is continue to proffer the notion that potential is a critical component of success, and we continue to look at the potential of young men and women, not necessarily the academic track record that is recorded to be at risk of these young men and women coming through the system. So in terms of viability, definitely, there continues to be a very definite need for historically black colleges and universities, if for no other reason than we tend to look at the young student, the new student in a different light than probably many of our colleagues and counterparts.
Lewis: Chancellor Ammons, what are you seeing on Central’s campus?
Ammons: Well we’re seeing niches, really an emergence of the importance of the kind of culture and commitment that historically black colleges and universities like North Carolina Central has, to the total development of students who choose to come and study with us. We have seen in the five years that I have been there almost a 60% increase in enrollment. Our African American male enrollment, like on many other campuses, is somewhat lagging, but we have put in places programs and activities, especially outreach programs, into the communities, into the schools, churches, community centers, to help with that situation. So this institution, like the others, plays a significant role in providing opportunities for young people who ordinarily wouldn’t have those opportunities elsewhere.
Lewis: Dr. Stone, as we have mentioned earlier there are more African-American students attending colleges and universities, but there’s still that gap. Why is the gap there?
Stone: Well I think that the major universities, the white universities, have reached out, have been aggressively recruiting to get more black students for a lot of reasons: athletics is very prominent. We have a joke we always say, we say white men can’t dunk a basketball. Well, black men can dunk a basketball. You look at a basketball team, Duke, our team at UNC, you have four out of five blacks on the team. So the athletics, they play a dominant role, and I think that’s why so many blacks go to the white universities.
Lewis: Dr. Suber, why is it such a challenge in trying to attract African Americans to historically black colleges and universities, what’s the challenge there?
Suber: Well, I think today’s students have a wide variety of choices, unlike any students in any other period of time. There is a pervasive myth, if you will, that bigger and whiter is better. One of the challenges that we face is to develop the kind of marketing strategies and to promote our institutions so that not only African-American students, but students in general, understand that historically black doesn’t necessarily mean exclusively black, and it certainly doesn’t mean at all inferior. I think all of our institutions are not unlike other institutions in that we have strong programs and we have programs that we continue to work at enhancing, but I think the challenge is a pervasive myth, an existing stereotype that continues to be part of our societal fabric in many ways.
Lewis: Chancellor Ammons, as far as Central is concerned, or historically black colleges and universities in general, are you witnessing any types of myths or stereotypes?
Ammons: Well certainly. I mean, and these have been historic. I mean if you go back to the beginning of the existence of historically black colleges and universities and the responsibilities that they had to educate people who didn’t have an opportunity to get an education in other places, and the kind of stereotypical comments that you hear about historically black colleges and many organizations and entities that are black or African American, that there is this notion that because they’re African American or historically black, that they may not have the type of quality that you would have in other institutions. And we can show you time and time again, when you see graduates of HBCUs go on and become leaders in their respective fields. And it’s based on that fundamental education that they got at the historically black colleges and universities, you would think that at some point that would be enough evidence to show that our institutions are as good as any other institutions.
Lewis: Dr. Stone, President Suber touched on this earlier about some of the problem may like when it goes back to secondary education, in elementary and high school.
Stone: That’s true, that’s very true.
Lewis: And you have been in testing.
Stone: Oh, I worked at the Educational Testing Service for two years and there was a big gap between black and white students on the SAT, and the gap still persists. The gap is 170 points, that’s a big gap. And because so many of the minority students don’t get the education, as Dr. Suber pointed out, in their lower levels and when they’re in high school or grammar school, and that’s when the gap begins to assert itself. That’s the unfortunate aspect of what happens when black students come to college. And then many times when they get to the St. Augustine’s or North Carolina Central, both chancellors have to have programs that sort of help to teach these kids, they’ve got to bring them up to snuff; they’re not ready to do college work, but they want to go. And that is commendable that they have that kind of zeal and affection for a black college/university. And when I add respect to it, it’s very important.
Lewis: When you look at SAT scores or ACT scores, how does a family’s income factor in?
Stone: Oh, completely. The higher the family income, the higher the SAT scores. And one of the depressing things that I learned when I was at ETS was that a white kid who has a median family income of $8000 or $9000, had a higher SAT score than a black student whose family was making $50,000. And I told this to my students in class and I say, why is this true? And I tell this in class and they say, oh, the test, the race—and I say well, I went through there. And they said, well, you’re different. I said, I’m not different [LAUGHS]. But that does exist, and people can’t explain why. My son, who is a successful director, drum line and “Mister 3000” and so forth, he had terrible SAT scores. He was so embarrassed that when got them, he was sitting in the back yard and he didn’t want to show them, he began crying. I said, Charlie—we call him Charlie—I said I’ve been telling you that these SAT things are a bunch of nonsense. You’re going to be a big success despite that. And he became a big success. I said, according to your SAT score, we’re on welfare. [LAUGHTER] That’s how bad they were. But look how successful he became.
Lewis: But do you see these scores, or the testing itself, because a lot of people say that they’re racially biased.
Stone: No, they’re not really racially biased, and actually you don’t need to take SAT—each college and university could apply its own test scores. That’s the main thing they ought to do. ETS has got the biggest hustle going, because it’s what we call normative test scores, we have a bell curve. But Dr. Suber and Chancellor Ammons, they could have their—but they do, when you went all the way through college, you didn’t get any scores, any tests from a large—the teacher gave you the test, you had to learn history, economics, political science and so forth. So you got it in high school or in undergraduate. So I think you really don’t need SAT. We could have each college and university could have its own test to admit students.
Lewis: Well I’ll address this to the two college and university leaders here, Dr. Suber, how much is the SAT factored in in bringing kids, or admitting students to your institutions of higher learning?
Suber: Well, we certainly use the SAT scores and ACT scores, with a combination of students, high school cumulative grade averages, to make some determinations about students’ readiness for college rigorous work. But we also do take very strongly the recommendations of persons who have worked with the students and, you know, I’m an old elementary school principal and so I still believe that the measure of success is the light that goes on in the kid’s eyes. And as unscientific as that is, I can name you many, many kids who had wonderful lights in their eyes, and not so strong in SAT scores, who have gone on to do extraordinarily well. So I think from a competitive marketing vantage point, we certainly do use a composite of admissions requirement. But I think one of the advantages that we certainly have as a private institution is to buy into the concept that there is potential that is oftentimes undata-ized, if you will, and I think that’s a critical piece to why our institutions are so important and certainly one of the driving forces that we have in terms of staying true to our mission as an institution.
Lewis: What do the two of you, do you see your students, is there any data out there saying that students who attend historically black colleges and universities, are they doing as well as their counterparts?
Ammons: Certainly. First of all, at NCCU, as a member of the University of North Carolina, the SAT—North Carolina is a SAT state, so therefore our students report SAT scores. We use what we call a profile, similar to what Dr. Suber just described, where we take a look at the test score, high school GPA, type of courses taken, rank in class, recommendations from teachers, guidance counselors, ministers, etc. But what we have seen and what we know is that a test alone is not the best indicator of potential and success.
Stone: ETS concedes that in its literature. ETS points out that the grade point average, GPA, is the most accurate predictor of performance. They admit that, but you know what it is, it’s in the next to last page where they concede that. They want to sell the test, and that’s why.
Lewis: Let’s talk about another issue involving HBCUs, and that is accreditation. Chancellor Ammons, I’ll ask you, how important is accreditation, what is done when you go through the accreditation process?
Ammons: Well, as a former member of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, former member of 15 visiting committees and former chair of five of those committees, I know a little bit about accreditation, and I can tell you this: accreditation is the lifeblood of an institution. Without accreditation, the institution is not eligible to participate in federal funding such as the student financial aid programs. And for historically black colleges and universities where we see a high percentage of our students who are dependent upon federal financial aid, it is extremely important, it’s crucial that we have it. But the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools and other regional accrediting agencies have what they call standards. And these standards are really sort of minimum qualitative statements that each institution must meet in areas such as administration, finances, educational programs, student support services, etc. And the accreditation process is a peer review process. In other words, presidents and chancellors, faculty members and deans are members of these committees, and also are members of the commission which makes the final decision about accreditation. We are now in a great position in the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, we have a new president and CEO, Dr. Belle Waylon [ph] who I think is bringing enlightened leadership to this area, and she has a deep appreciation for the role of historically black colleges and universities, as well as the other universities in the region.
Lewis: Dr. Stone, I’ll ask you, do you feel that some of these accreditation processes are—because since HBCUs seem like they have been a target, do you feel that they have been unfairly addressed?
Stone: Oh no, no, no; I think Dr. Ammons spelled that out; you have to be accredited. It’s like anything else, you’ve got to pass the grades, it’s like a score, you have to get a minimum C to pass or a B… In graduate school, when I went, I didn’t know how difficult graduate school was going to be, I had to have a B average. I skipped by with a B-minus average. But I had to have a B average in graduate school, and I really had to work hard, but that’s what it should be. And then when I went to law school I was even worse. That was even worse. [LAUGHTER]
Lewis: Go ahead, Dr. Suber.
Suber: Well, one of the points I wanted to add though, is because—and you reference the HBCUs being a target of the accreditation process, but I do want to add that one of the pieces that gets missed in that media blitz that says we’re targeted is that almost never are there issues of quality of program, quality of faculty, athletic student services. The challenging area for accreditation for us is financial resources. It’s not even the area of financial stability or solvency, or management of finances. It’s the area of resources. And that’s a challenge that I think in many instances is the area that when you talk about challenges of attractions for our school, that’s the area. It’s the ability to access resources. And I do need to make that clear, because oftentimes people associate the issue of accreditation with again, inferior programs or inadequate programming, and it’s generally not that, it really is usually the area of financial resources.
Lewis: You’re talking about financial resources, but Dr. Ammons, I’ll ask you this question: what role does the alumni play, especially when you started talking about financial; are the alumni giving, compared to other universities?
Ammons: Well, I’ll speak for North Carolina Central University. We have eclipsed a significant point in terms of the percentage of alumni who are contributing to the university. We have gone over 10%, somewhere around 13% is a measure that is being talked about nationally for alumni giving, but I can tell you it makes it easier for us when we approach donors such as corporations, as well as individuals, and we can say to them that we have the full support of our alumni through their giving. It makes it easier for us to make the request.
Lewis: We’re coming down to about a minute, and I would like to ask the both of you, what initiatives do you have in place to try to attract more African-American students to your respective institutions of higher learning? Dr. Suber?
Suber: Well, we’ve taken the position of developing programs that attract students, this area of students to the program, with the expectation that if we can develop those kinds of programs, and we’ll not only attract African-American students, but we’ll attract a more diverse population as well. So we’ve focused in very strongly on programs that are not offered in other institutions. We have a forensic science program out of our criminal justice program that we are now the only institution in the state of North Carolina that has a working relationship with the State Bureau of Investigation, in terms of support from that program. And also our Center for Real Estate Management is a program that is unique to St. Augustine’s College, but is also unique to not only historically black colleges and universities in this area, but state and private institutions in the region.
Lewis: Chancellor Ammons?
Ammons: We are extremely fortunate that we were selected as one of two institutions in the University of North Carolina to be a part of a statewide initiative in bio-manufacturing. This initiative is geared toward making North Carolina the number one state in the nation. The thing is, in terms of attracting students, there is no substitute for high quality academic programs that are relevant for today. And when you look at what has happened in North Carolina with the decline in tobacco, textiles and furniture, biotechnology is going to be one of the engines that will drive this new economy. We have such a program. But again too, you also have to have creative marketing programs. I do a statewide bus tour every spring break where we get on a bus with faculty and students and go across the state of North Carolina. I think you also have to have lucrative scholarship packages that attract the best and the brightest to your institutions, and you’ve got to have great facilities, because students today—and we’re all a part of spoiling them—but students today want to live like they lived at home, and therefore—
Suber: Or better.
Ammons: Or better, right. And so the facilities make a great difference in terms of where they decide to go.
Lewis: And I’ve got to get you in here, Dr. Stone, just quickly. What can HBCUs do to make themselves more visible?
Stone: Oh, I think a lot of it is marketing. Marketing is always the key to getting a product before the public. But I think when they have people, leaders like Dr. Suber and Chancellor Ammons, that’s going to be a factor too, when you have a reputation. They see their names on commissions and national committees and so forth, they get a reputation. Plus the alumni, they’re also out there beating the drums for success. And so I think the reputation that they have certainly developed and—not imposed—but placed on the universities, have been a big factor in attracting. But having a good athletic team doesn’t hurt either. [LAUGHTER] As we learned with Dean Smith at Carolina, you know, that’s something we’ve got realize.
Lewis: And we’re going to have to stop it here. Thank you so much for being here, and great success to all of you. For information of this edition of Black Issues Forum, visit us online at unctv.org/bif, or you can leave us your comments at 919-549-7167. Thanks for joining us.
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