Copyright 2004 The Economist Newspapers Ltd.


A tough time for black universities


A quirk of history faces a new challenge

WHEN first-year students at Benedict College in Columbia, South Carolina, receive their grades, they may see As or Bs, even if their academic performance doesn't merit it. Under Success Equals Effort (SEE), a controversial new grading policy, freshman grades at the historically black university are calculated on a 60-40 formula: effort counts for 60%, academic performance for only 40%. In their second year, the formula is 40-60. Only in their third junior year will students be judged strictly on academic performance.

The SEE programme, which is being scrutinised by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges, was introduced a year ago by Benedict's president, David Swinton, who went to Harvard himself, but insists that incoming students lack the study habits and other skills necessary to succeed. It has caused an uproar among faculty members, and alumni too have wondered whether the quality of their own degrees will be questioned.

The fuss about the SEE policy has crystallised worries about black education in general (blacks score lower in normal exams than whites and Asians) and about "historically black" universities in particular. Benedict College is one of 105 such institutions that educate some 300,000 students. Many of them were founded in the South in the late 19th century to serve black students banned from attending segregated state universities. Martin Luther King, Spike Lee and Toni Morrison all attended black colleges. They may account for only 2% of America's student population, but they award a quarter of all bachelor's degrees given to blacks.

Black universities are still around 90% black. Yet ever since segregation disappeared in the 1960s, they have faced direct competition from better funded universities for the best students, professors, administrators and donors, and this competition has often done damage. While universities have been growing like topsy in America over the past quarter-century, a dozen black colleges have closed. The biggest problem is money. William Gray, the former president of the United Negro College Fund, reckons that the combined endowment of the black colleges is $1.6 billion--roughly equal to that of Brown University, which has 8,000 students.

Black colleges often take on students who might not otherwise go to university. Such students are often not just poorer, but need more time to achieve a degree. At North Carolina A&T University in Greensboro, only a quarter of the students who entered in 1992-99 had graduated after four years. When such students leave, they tend to be more in debt. In Georgia, historically black Savannah State has similar enrolments and charges as Georgia Southwestern State, a whiter rural college, but Savannah has recently had more students defaulting on their loans. Black colleges are particularly dependent on government aid, both directly (they should get $224m from the federal Department of Education alone in 2004) and indirectly, through grants to students.

Those have been cut both at the state and federal level, which has an effect on the sort of teaching offered. Earlier this year, the Institute for Higher Education Policy, a liberal-leaning Washington think-tank, gave warning that black colleges were falling behind on technology spending. However, many of the black colleges' problems have been self-inflicted, with a number of notable scandals. Morris Brown College in south-west Atlanta, founded in 1881 by the African Methodist Episcopal Church, lost its official accreditation last year because it was $27m in debt with no obvious way to pay it back. This month its former president and financial-aid director were indicted on fraud charges, including using federal grants to pay $5m in back loans and taking student aid for students not actually enrolled. Southern University, a well-known black university in Louisiana, is investigating claims that an employee in the registrar's office took money to change the grades of 500 students.

Yet others are thriving in the same harsh market. Just down the road from Morris Brown, Spelman College, which is for women only, boasts a $219m endowment and a posh Phi Beta Kappa chapter. Michael Lomax, the new head of the United Negro College Fund, helped raise $60m in his former job as head of Dillard University in Louisiana. Norfolk State University has positioned itself as an economic-development hub in southern Virginia. And new donors are stepping forward: the Tom Joyner Foundation, started by a radio host, has raised more than $20m since 1998.

A sort-out would be good, not least because the idea of a "black" university seems bizarre nowadays. The National Hispanic University, set up in 1981 in San Jose, California, cites the black colleges as a model. But, on the whole, other minorities have eschewed the approach, and blacks themselves might wish their colleges were a little less distinctive.