Presidential Hopefuls' Higher Ed Plans May Close HBCUs

Coutesy of The Huffington Post

As Posted ByJarrett L. Carter, HBCUDigest.com

Hillary Clinton today became the latest democratic presidential hopeful to call for increased higher education access through loan or tuition-free governmental funding. From CNN:

"According to outlines of the plan previewed to CNN, the basis of Clinton's college promises include vowing that students will be able to attend in-state public colleges or universities "without ever having to take out a loan for tuition." 

 Clinton will do this, according to the campaign, by incentives to states that agree to provide "no-loan tuition at four-year public colleges and universities." States that agree, under the Clinton plan, will win grants from the federal government."

Everyone should want debt-free education, but no one - especially African-Americans and those living in HBCU communities - should want the plans forwarded by this slate of candidates to be the higher education solution. 

Free tuition to any community college and reduced tuition to public institutions, will expedite the extinction of several HBCUs. Without federal and state investment in public historically black campuses which lack unique programs, modernized facilities and marketing resources, students of all races will flock to larger, more developed predominantly white colleges. 

That’s not opinion - that is fact proven by several lawsuits against state governments for neglecting publicly-owned black colleges.

Between Obama’s $300 million war on black colleges through federal funding cuts and changes to Pell Grant and PLUS Loan eligibility standards, and the calls for free education from Democratic presidential front-runners Hillary Clinton, Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders, there will be no messy discussion of merger or closure for HBCUs. They will just close under their own lack of support from political systems, and rapid decline in appeal to alumni and high school students alike. 

So when Grambling, Southern, Elizabeth City State, Virginia State or some other campuses announce that they will cease operations or merge with another school, many black folks will criticize the lack of giving, or the incompetence of administration of these schools. But those charges will only be a small accessory in the crime against HBCUs, where political forces helped to make HBCUs an inferior choice in an higher education landscape where cost and brand mean everything to corporations and billions of families around the world. 

What these candidates could do, and for which HBCU leaders should individual and collectively lobby, is a funding system where students who attended HBCUs and other minority-serving institutions can attended at a reduced rate or for free, if they meet certain academic and need based standards. 

They could call for military to amend higher education tuition programs through ROTC or post-service to increase opportunities for future and current members of the armed forces to earn degrees at HBCUs. 

What government can do is offer large tax reductions to corporations which build in economically depressed areas, and which donate to HBCUs to support endowment expansion, programmatic development and better social positioning. 

And what HBCU students and alumni, as voters, must do is call for our candidates on both sides of the aisle to specifically address what they can and will do for HBCUs - the institutions which are best equipped to battle short-term and systemic poverty, political disenfranchisement, and social justice issues - all targets for any man or woman who wants to be president of the United States in 2016 and beyond.