By STEVEN GRAY
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Despite facing financial odds, black colleges offer ways for students to become job creators.
Sometime in the early '80s, before I turned 10, my grandmother told me: "You should go to Howard." In our family, Howard University was this revered place, partly because one of my uncles had been a quarterback there in the late '70s. But I dismissed the idea, almost as fiercely as I resisted football, having grown up in mostly private, predominately white schools where everyone, it seemed, aimed for the Ivy League. By the mid-'90s, my parents made clear: "If we're paying for college, you're going to a black school."
Maybe it was something they'd heard in my voice. Or my preference for Madonna, Michael Jackson and Depeche Mode. Or my rejection of the black Pentecostal church they'd started attending. Here's what they were really saying: "Our middle-class kid is confused and needs to figure out he's black." So, reluctantly, I went to Howard.
Historically black colleges and universities, or HBCUs, are on the brain partly because two weeks ago, there was a White House conference on how the schools can be entrepreneurial hubs. It's an important conversation that reflects the country's startup economy: Some schools are, smartly, launching programs to train not only the next generation of employees but independent job creators. The conference was notable for its venue, and President Barack Obama himself has said this about HBCUs: "It's because of these schools that the black middle class is filled with black doctors, lawyers and engineers. It's because of these schools that one of every two wide-eyed freshmen is the first in his or her family to go to college." Still, I left the White House thinking not only about entrepreneurship but also the question of HBCU relevance.
It might seem like a strange question. But consider that budget pressures are forcing state legislatures and the federal government to reconsider financial support for HBCUs. The schools are turning to private financial sources and recruiting nonblack students. The number of black students in college is growing, and nearly 80 percent of them attend non-HBCUs. That should be viewed as a measure of social progress, a reflection of greater access to choice often driven by predominately white schools' rich endowments. Still, HBCUs produce about 40 percent of America's black science graduates and a significant share of its doctors, judges and business owners.
Can HBCUs become entrepreneurial talent hotbeds? It's worth taking a look at the all-female Bennett College in North Carolina, where its president, the economist Julianne Malveaux, has claimed many of her students will work for themselves at some point in their lives.
Four years ago, Bennett opened the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, which now directs about 30 students through an entrepreneurship minor in courses such as accounting, marketing and finding government contracting opportunities. One student proposed turning half of Bennett's vacant greenhouse into a farm. The first vegetables will be ready to hit the market soon. At a moment when the country's competitiveness depends on an educated, innovative and diverse workforce, entrepreneurship is one additional area in which HBCUs can prepare students to excel and ultimately continue to be relevant institutions of learning for new generations.
Steven Gray is a contributing editor to The Root.
This article was published on page D3 of the Sunday, May 13, 2012 edition of The Columbia Daily Tribune.
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Posted By: How May I Help You NC
Friday, May 18th 2012 at 9:53AM
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