Although financially ailing Elizabeth City State won’t benefit from the Koch money because the UNCF only supports private HBCUs, both situations focused attention on the plight of numerous Black institutions, especially smaller schools facing dwindling financial resources and enrollment declines.
Last September, the University of North Carolina System reported that Elizabeth City State faced a shortfall of $5 million, and UNC President Tom Ross warned that “hard decisions” were ahead.
At the time, ECSU’s enrollment for the fall 2013 semester was just over 2,400 students, a decline from about 3,300 in 2010.
Then, in May, a provision in the State Senate draft budget proposal called for possibly eliminating “small, unprofitable” institutions, specifically citing ECSU. Within hours, the blowback from Black legislators, alumni and community leaders was so strong that the Senate voted unanimously to drop the provision.
It was just the latest jab in what has become a perennial joust by lawmakers in various states, typically Republicans, recommending closing an HBCU or merging it with another institution. In 2010 then-Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi brought up merging that state’s HBCUs. Swift reaction, involving marches and demonstrations, ensued. When the president of one of the institutions, Jackson State’s Ronald Mason Jr., also proposed a “unification” of the campuses, he quickly became persona non grata and soon thereafter announced his departure.
Despite the uproar in Mississippi, Mason crossed the state line and within months was named president of Louisiana’s historically Black, five-campus Southern University System, where Gov. Bobby Jindal has also made known his preference for mergers and consolidation.
