Dive Brief:
- During a town hall meeting at a Louisiana High School, President Barack Obama responded to a question from an HBCU student with some criticism of graduation rates and debt levels at these schools that set off a frustrated conversation over his administration’s actions toward historically black colleges.
- Inside Higher Ed reports HBCUs are getting nearly $1 billion more per year than when Obama took office, but his administration made it harder to get parent PLUS loans — a move that disproportionately hurt students at HBCUs — and Johnny C. Taylor, president of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, criticized Michelle Obama for largely leaving HBCU students and graduates out of her State of the Union invite list.
- John Silvanus Wilson Jr., president of Morehouse, pointed out the funding increase and said Obama’s response to the student had several important elements, including the fact that HBCUs have a powerful tradition of producing leaders, that successful HBCU graduates can do well in the job market and in life, and that the demographic of students at HBCUs must be considered when judging their graduation rates.
Dive Insight:
Historically black colleges and universities have a larger-than-average population of low-income students, which makes it harder to finance an education and more likely they did not get a strong K-12 education, putting them at risk in college. One major criticism of the Obama administration’s College Scorecard was that it didn’t provide this context in showing the raw data for schools, especially historically black colleges.
As more schools try to recruit talented black students and diversify their own campuses, HBCUs have more competition for the best students. Obama alluded to this issue as a positive, saying it is good that more opportunities have opened up for black students since the founding of many HBCUs.