Like the thousands of freshmen converging on college campuses across the nation, hundreds of college administrators who hope to shepherd those and other students’ college pursuits are more than anxious about the months ahead.
While some students may be perplexed over choosing one course or major over another and many are wondering how to raise the money needed to finish school, college and university leaders are wrestling more than ever with increasingly pressing challenges on a broad range of fronts that are likely to frame their future for years to come.
HBCUs are no exception. They are facing increasing pressure to reinvent themselves to stay alive and relevant as more and more Black students choose to attend majority institutions and private, for profit colleges.
Higher education administrators are getting strong signals from traditional funding sources — from state treasuries to wealthy benefactors — that the recent steady reduction in their support of most public HBCUs and many private ones is likely to continue for some time.
Meanwhile, HBCUs are encountering heightened pressure to recruit and retain more academically qualified students as possible vehicles for improving their graduation rates. The impetus is not just the historically low graduation rates at HBCUs, but in recent years, the appearance of impressive results at online colleges serving as an example.
Schools are also engaging in sweeping self-studies, resulting in massive overhaul agendas. For example, many traditional academic programs are being replaced by a near stampede to focus on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) programs, in hopes that they will draw more money to the school. Institutions are dropping decades-old practices that gave administrators more latitude in admitting promising students who could not meet standard admissions requirements and those who may have been short of funds at the start of the school year but who enrolled with a promise to pay when sufficient funds were in hand.
