Black students account for 80 percent of Chicago State University’s enrollment, and many of them are financially needy and the first in their families to go to college. But as great as Chicago State’s needs are, the university remains ineligible -- to the frustration of its leaders -- for federal money set aside for the nation’s 105 historically black colleges.
“We share the same issues educating minorities as historically black colleges do,” says Elnora D. Daniel, Chicago State’s president, so the institution and those like it should be eligible for the same funds. Some historically black institutions enroll smaller proportions of black students than Chicago State.
Ms. Daniel and the leaders of nine other colleges with predominantly black student bodies would benefit from a proposed change in the Higher Education Act that would allow them to compete for grants now available exclusively to historically black colleges for such endeavors as developing curricula, renovating facilities, and building endowments.
Congress created Title III in the Higher Education Act in 1965 to help colleges that serve large numbers of disadvantaged students improve their infrastructures and beef up their endowments. This year historically black colleges and universities received $240.5-million from a section in Title III, which was added in 1986, that sets aside money specifically for those institutions.
The predominantly black colleges have found a champion in Rep. Major R. Owens, a Democrat from New York. He has introduced legislation to make institutions with at least 1,000 students, at least 51 percent of whom are black, eligible for that federal money. City University of New York’s Medgar Evers College, in Mr. Owens’s district, is one of the 10 colleges that would benefit from that change.
Mr. Owens says he simply wants to help black students, but he has met resistance from historically black colleges.
Leaders of those colleges -- and lobbyists from the United Negro College Fund and the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education who represent them -- worry that the program could be undermined if it were expanded to include institutions with large black enrollments.
They also question whether such a change could stand up to a legal challenge in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2003 decisions in two cases involving admissions to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. In those rulings, the court held that colleges could give some consideration to applicants’ race for the sake of promoting educational diversity, but only if they treated the applicants as individuals and did not automatically give some a substantial edge based on their race.
When historically black colleges gained their own program under Title III, legislators were careful to define them based on their historic mission of educating minority students -- not on their number or percentage of black students. Many of the colleges, founded after the Civil War to educate freed slaves, faced discrimination from the government and were the only colleges available to black students. The institutions’ history has earned them special consideration, supporters of the colleges say.
Michael L. Lomax, president and chief executive of the United Negro College Fund, says the institutions that benefit from the Title III program share a common mission and history, which is not shared by the predominantly black institutions. Many of those colleges began as white colleges and have seen an increase in minority students more recently. Although his organization supports expanding opportunity to students at predominantly black colleges, he says changing the Title III program is not the appropriate means to secure additional money. Expanding the section of the law that deals with historically black colleges, he says, “takes a pie and slices it up smaller.”
Walter D. Broadnax, president of Clark Atlanta University, agrees, saying that predominantly black institutions should be helped in some other section of the Higher Education Act and not “on the backs of HBCU’s.”
Standing Firm
Several presidents of historically black colleges have approached Mr. Owens to offer alternatives like creating another section of the act that would specifically provide aid to predominantly black colleges. But the legislator has not been receptive, as he does not believe Republican Congressional leaders would agree to such a program.
Mr. Owens also discounts fears that including race would make the provision unconstitutional. He notes that other parts of Title III set aside money for colleges that serve specific ethnic groups, such as American Indians and Native Hawaiians.
He adds that the goal of the Title III program was always to help more black students. By making these new colleges eligible, he says, more students will benefit from the provision.
Edison O. Jackson, president of Medgar Evers College, agrees: “Whether or not we are in Alabama, New York City, or Georgia the challenges are the same.”
Mr. Owens argues that concerns that the change would divide the same pot of money among more colleges are not legitimate, because the institutions that would become eligible would replace 10 historically black colleges that have closed, merged with other institutions, or lost accreditation, barring them from receiving Title III funds. People with such fears misunderstand how Congress works, Mr. Owens says.
Expanding the program would increase its political base, he says, by adding more legislators with constituents who qualify for the funds. Most of the colleges that would benefit from the change are located in northern urban centers, unlike historically black institutions, most of which are found in the South.
Mr. Owens has received the backing of some groups that serve minority students. Dwayne Ashley, president of the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund, which provides scholarships to students at both historically and predominantly black institutions, wrote a letter urging lawmakers to support the proposal, stating that replacing “ineligible or terminated schools with a number of remarkable traditionally black institutions including Medgar Evers and Chicago State” was the right thing to do.
With UNCF and Nafeo putting up such a vigorous fight, Mr. Owens faces an uphill battle. He has already lost the first round. In July the House education committee rejected his proposal to attach the measure to a bill to renew the Higher Education Act.
But Mr. Owens says he is not giving up. He will now try to build support for his proposal in the Senate. Ultimately, he says, “I’ll let public opinion be the judge.”
http://chronicle.com Section: Government & Politics Volume 52, Issue 6, Page A28