As two campus communities in Louisiana wait to see what will come of a proposal to merge the University of New Orleans and the historically Black Southern University of New Orleans, higher education leaders around the country are looking on with interest. Proposals in Mississippi and other states — or even hints at such proposals — have been met with such vociferous opposition that proponents have backed off.
Not so with Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who has persisted to the point of appointing an African-American to the Board of Regents to blunt criticism that the board’s lack of diversity delegitimizes a board-approved proposal study. The study, which is due next week, has been the target of a recent lawsuit by Southern University System students challenging the board’s racial composition. A Baton Rouge, La. judge has recently rescinded an injunction blocking the study, but the matter is expected to be appealed.
Although merger opposition remains strong in the Louisiana case, voices of support for some forms of mergers or other cost-cutting joint operations in other states are cautiously emerging within the Black higher education community.
Dr. Lezli Baskerville, president and CEO of the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education, contends that merger proposals involving an HBCU and predominantly White institution “usually mean the HBCU will be submerged, not merged, into the White institution.” However, she says she supports collaborative ventures, particularly in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines.
“Several HBCU/non-HBCU partnerships are having great success,” Baskerville wrote in a 2010 statement supporting a National Science Foundation proposal to broaden participation of undergraduate STEM programs.
“The dual degree partnership between Clark Atlanta University, Spelman College and Morehouse College with the Georgia Institute of Technology is just one of many examples of such partnerships,” she wrote. “The Virginia-Nebraska Alliance is another unique partnership between unlikely cohorts to address the national need to diversify the health care and research workforce.” The Alliance involves five HBCUs in Virginia, the University of Nebraska Medical Center and several other institutions.
Baskerville was part of the 2009 Louisiana Postsecondary Education Review Commission, convened by Jindal to examine ways of increasing excellence and cutting costs in the state’s higher education system. She says that group “expressly rejected” the option of merging SUNO and UNO for a number of reasons. Chief among those reasons was “the important role that SUNO is playing in meeting the education needs of mostly adult, first-generation students of fewer financial means.”
