HBCU Reconstruction

HBCUs are getting more attention lately, with President Obama recently appointing a commission to work on what some call "HBCU Reconstruction." This excerpt from an article in The Presidency, by Charlie Nelms, chancellor of North Carolina Central University is a brief refresher on HBCUs, MSIs, and so forth. You'll need a subscription to get deeper into the article.

To be classified as an MSI, the student body representation of Hispanic, African-American, American Indian/Alaskan native, or Asian/Pacific Islander, students must be at least 25 percent. In less than 5 percent of cases, MSIs present with no dominant ethnic representation but report a minority enrollment of 50 percent or greater. MSIs account for approximately one-third of all colleges and universities—a total of 1,254 institutions in 2004—but they enroll nearly 60 percent, or 3 million, of America’s minority students.

Two types of MSIs are precluded from growing by federal legislation.3 These are the historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), constrained by definition as those colleges established prior to 1964 for the purpose of educating African Americans; and tribal colleges and universities. They account for 5 percent and 1 percent of total minority enrollment, respectively.

Given that, the growth of MSIs primarily is caused by the expansion of institutions serving blacks outside of the HBCUs and those serving Hispanic students.4 The number of black-serving, non-HBCUs more than doubled and the number of Hispanic-serving colleges and universities increased more than six-fold from 1984 to 2004.

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Regional SCUP Events! Enjoy the F2F company of your colleagues and peers at one of three SCUP regional conferences this spring:

• March 14–16: Baltimore, MD
• March 24–26: Cambridge, MA
• April 5–7, San Diego, CA