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Essay on The Present of African Americans in Higher Education and the Role that Historical Black Colleges and Universities Performed
With the new millennium now underway, and with predominately White higher education institutions aggressively recruiting Black students, the question may be asked, "Will HBCUs (historically Black colleges and universities) remain an important part of U.S. higher education in the 21st century?"The major reason Blacks attended Black colleges in earlier years was because, with rare exceptions, they had nowhere else to go. The pendulum has now swung in the opposite direction, and this is no longer true.
This report tries to find out the present situation of African Americans in higher education and the role that historical black colleges and universities performed to enhance their presence in higher education.Over the past two decades, a central theme in American higher education has been "diversity." Most universities and colleges have made genuine efforts to diversify their courses, faculty, and administrative personnel (Lewis, 1971). Despite the obvious political attacks against affirmative action scholarships, symbolized by California's Proposition 209, most colleges have continued efforts to foster outreach to racial minorities and women.
The good news is that many of these reforms are finally producing results, especially in regard to gender diversity. In recent weeks, for example, there was intense media coverage about black public intellectual Cornel West's decision to leave Harvard University for a new appointment at Princeton (Vernon, 1988). One factor in West's decision may have been the extraordinary steps Princeton has taken recently to make its leadership more diverse.
The urban two-year program boasts a large number of African American students - close to 11.5 percent of the college’s nearly 30,000 students are Black. Minority access to local universities was shrinking thanks to the statewide ban on affirmative action in college admissions.As part of the higher education program, college officials began to work out articulation agreements with a number of historically Black colleges.....
