Institutions Seek to Address Basic Needs Insecurity Among HBCU Students

The Hope Center for College, Community, and JusticeHistorically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have grappled for decades with state and federal underfunding while educating many low-income students of color. But the pandemic has disproportionately hit the very communities they often serve.

To experts and HBCU leaders, a new survey’s findings highlight the need for more support to students as well as institutions to help them. In its latest report, The Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization at Temple University, found that two-thirds of HBCU students in Fall 2020 had experienced basic needs insecurity.

With a 8.3% response rate, about 5,000 students at 14 public and private HBCUs participated in the survey. Nearly one-fifth of students reported they had been homeless in the past year. About 46% of respondents said they had experienced food insecurity in the past 30 days.

“These numbers speak to something far greater than an HBCU problem or an African-American problem,” wrote Dr. Michael J. Sorrell, president of Paul Quinn College, a private HBCU in Texas, in response to the survey’s findings. “These numbers speak to an American problem. One which, if allowed to go unchecked, will compromise the future of too many talented citizens.”

Dr. Krystal Williams, an assistant professor at the University of Georgia’s Louise McBee Institute of Higher Education, agreed with the urgency.

“I think this speaks to the need for continued support for students from under-resourced communities, a demographic that HBCUs disproportionately serve,” said Williams, who added that such support for students depends as well on supporting the institutions in that work. “It also points to the need to rethink different approaches to addressing the unique needs of that demographic, especially in an environment where COVID-19 looks like it will be with us for awhile.”

In response to its findings, The Hope Center partnered with the Center for the Study of HBCUs at Virginia Union University (VUU) to launch an initiative called #RealCollegeHBCU that aims to build capacity at 10 HBCUs, including six historically Black community colleges. Over the next six months, each college will get training in strategies to help ensure students’ basic needs are being met.