HBCUs
Historically black colleges and universities (HBCU), institutions of higher education in the United States founded prior to 1964 for African American students. The term was created by the Higher Education Act of 1965, which expanded federal funding for colleges and universities.
The first HBCUs were founded in Pennsylvania and Ohio before the American Civil War (1861–65) with the purpose of providing black youths—who were largely prevented, due to racial discrimination, from attending established colleges and universities—with a basic education and training to become teachers or tradesmen. The Institute for Colored Youth (briefly the African Institute at its founding) opened on a farm outside Philadelphia in 1837. It is today Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, which is part of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. The Ashmun Institute, also located near Philadelphia, provided theological training as well as basic education from its founding in 1854. It became Lincoln University in 1866 in honour of U.S. Pres. Abraham Lincoln and was private until 1972. The oldest private HBCU in the U.S. was founded in 1856, when the Methodist Episcopal Church opened Wilberforce University in Tawawa Springs (present-day Wilberforce), Ohio, as a coeducational institution for blacks who had escaped slavery in the South through the Underground Railroad. It closed in 1862 but reincorporated in 1863 under the auspices of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), a historically African American Methodist denomination.
Following the end of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, HBCUs were founded throughout the South with support from the Freedmen’s Bureau, a federal organization that operated during Reconstruction to help former slaves adjust to freedom. Such institutions as Atlanta University (1865; now Clark Atlanta University), Howard University, and Morehouse College (1867; originally the Augusta Institute) provided a liberal arts education and trained students for careers as teachers or ministers and missionaries, while others focused on preparing students for industrial or agricultural occupations. Some institutions, such as Morehouse, were all-male schools. Others, such as Spelman College (1924; originally founded in 1881 as Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary), were all-female. Most, however, were coeducational.
The growth of HBCUs spurred controversy among prominent African Americans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Some critics noted that many HBCUs, particularly those existing in the years immediately following the Civil War, were founded by whites, many of whom had negative preconceptions of the social, cultural, and intellectual capabilities of blacks. As blacks were generally barred, particularly in the South, from established institutions, critics questioned whether separate schools in fact hindered efforts toward social and economic equality with whites.
Another issue was whether vocational training or a more classically “intellectual” education would best serve the interests of African Americans. Booker T. Washington, an exemplary supporter of vocational training, founded the Tuskegee Institute (1881; now Tuskegee University), which emphasized agricultural and industrial education. Like the Hampton Normal and Industrial Institute (1868; now Hampton University), Tuskegee served as a model for several subsequent HBCUs that organized under an 1890 amendment to the Land-Grant College Act of 1862 that promoted the creation of African American land-grant colleges. The most prominent exponent of an intellectual approach was the Harvard University-trained sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois, who argued for the necessity of cultivating a “talented tenth” of well-educated community leaders. Even as this debate continued, the institutionalization of racial segregation both within and outside the South made it even more difficult for black students to study anywhere other than in HBCUs until the desegregation efforts of the mid-20th century.
In the early 21st century there were more than 100 HBCUs in the United States, predominantly in the South. While some were two-year schools, many offered four years of study. Some maintained a vocational focus, while others had developed into major research institutions. Also, while several HBCUs continued to have predominantly African American student bodies, others no longer did.
The U.S. Department of Education lists 4,298 degree granting post-secondary institutions in the United States. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), there were a total of 1,626 public colleges, 1,687 private nonprofit colleges and 985 for-profit colleges in Fall 2017. HBCUs represent 2.3% of this total, with 101 institutions. The only other ethnic-specific minority serving institutions, Native American/tribal institutions, of which NCES lists 17, represent .395% of the post-secondary institutions in the U.S. HBCUs established in the late 1800s originally provided limited education and training options for students of African descent, either free-born or emancipated slaves. Many focused on teaching, theology, and industrial arts to provide an educational foundation to support economic independence and self-sustainability. Since that time, HBCUs have developed programs, majors, course offerings that now shape how HBCUs are defined. Most of these institutions (59%) offer only undergraduate degrees and 41% offers graduate degrees, with 28% awarding doctoral degrees.
It is important to mention that HBCUs have also survived historical challenges: Jim Crow, inadequate funding, deferred maintenance and accreditation issues. In addition to these endemic issues, new circumstances threaten the persistence of these institutions. The relevancy of the HBCU has become an argument in political, social and academic arenas. Many believe that the HBCU is a prehistoric bastion of the era of segregation. Others argue that the HBCU is a vital part of still educating the underserved. These arguments reflect two educational philosophies that date back to the 19th century, articulated by Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois. Washington, born into slavery in Virginia, advocated for educating former slaves in industrial and agricultural skills, as well as in teaching. While he attended Hampton Institute himself, where he studied industrial education. He founded the Tuskegee Normal and Agricultural Institute in rural Alabama, to educate former slaves in practical skills with which they could earn a living. DuBois, born free in Massachusetts, attended Fisk Institute and earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University. DuBois believed that 10% of Blacks could be educated at elite institutions, as he had been, to lead the African-American community. While these two philosophies are not mutually exclusive, they continue to undergird today’s higher educational patterns between African-American students who focus on primarily white institutions (PWIs), or those who attend HBCUs. Nevertheless, as highlighted below, HBCUs’ record is to train African-American community leaders. Indeed, in his 2012 Ford Foundation White Paper, Former MIT Provost Prof. Phillip L. Clay revealed that HBCU students are the next generation of community leaders, stating that HBCU students “place a higher value on community service, community leadership and civic and political engagement” than did their peers in non-HBCU institutions.
