Why Self-Service Portals are EdTech’s Next Big Thing

self-service tech portals

College IT departments look to self-service, enterprise management software to keep students connected

Today’s college students show up connected. The average college student brings 5 devices to campus. With 21 million total college students in the U.S., that’s 105 million devices that need internet access on our college campuses alone.

While the added layer of connection is beneficial to everything from communicating with friends to completing tough assignments on time, it takes its toll on technical support services offered by colleges. Information Technology, or IT, departments feel that weight, especially when it comes to campus-provided devices.

The proliferation of devices, and lack of manpower to handle all the maintenance and technical issues that arise, has led to some innovation in the way of self-service portals. The knowledge-based centers connect students, staff and administration when it comes to fixing technical problems, often without the need for IT interaction. When implemented correctly, these self-service portals save a lot of time and frustration for internet users with quick answers and feedback options.

It’s a money saver for colleges too. The average cost of a level 1 tech support call to the paying entity (in this case, we’re talking about colleges) is $22. Self-service portals reduce that cost to just $2 per interaction. (Check out this EdTech infographic for more stats)

Not all questions or requests can be handled without a professional, though. TeamDynamix — a software-as-a-service (SaaS) work management platform created solely for higher education platforms — essentially offers Enterprise Service Management which means it is used by IT, facilities, HR, marketing, residential life, media services and more. The portal connects students with actual people through a workflow — a service that recently tripled the number of departments using it in a year’s time.

At the core, a self-service portal is a knowledge-base with articles supplied by both IT and the user community. By using a crowdsourced approach, iterative feedback and suggestions can easily be shared. A user may rate the article, leave feedback or even contribute content. All of this is reviewed by the IT department and then published. You’ve probably visited an online forum before to find the answer to a fix-it question — whether you are repairing your dryer or smartphone. You might visit 4 or 5 forums until you find a problem similar to yours, though, and it may take even longer to find solutions.

Colleges are looking to companies like TeamDynamix to build self-service platforms that integrate all departments and services that are specific to the college. So the same portal is used for residential life that is used by media services and more. This greatly expands the knowledge base — allowing different departments to connect with each other and help answer each other’s questions.

In addition, if a service request is entered, the workflow can initiate across multiple departments.  For instance, a request for access to the broadcasting studio may be routed to security then to facilities then back to the requester.  By having one portal the school can easily manage requests from a centralized location.

The TeamDynamix portal has about 4 million higher education students serviced by its platform. Across 12 months, the TeamDynamix service portal doubled in terms of traffic, indicating that students are receptive to this type of self-service module. TeamDynamix reports that a key part of the growth is the trend towards knowledge centered support where contributions to the knowledge base are iterative and encompass feedback.

Moving Up in Tech Maturity

As technological advancements continue to snowball, it’s important that college campuses stay ahead of the curve. Technological maturity is not just something flashy to show potential students — it’s a necessity to prepare the next generation of college students for the workforce. Self-service portals are just one way colleges can support the need for tech help and encourage the people who use it to advance their own knowledge of their devices and their capabilities. More specifically, self-service tech portals increase tech maturity on campuses by offering:

  • Remote access for better accessibility to users
  • Knowledge-centered service, which offers feedback and engagement between users. By offering a portal that includes a knowledge base, schools can provide the student body with the opportunity to contribute content and leave feedback.  This “collective wisdom” bolsters the relevance and effectiveness of the information provided thereby driving increased self-service adoption.
  • One location for management of tech issues. When a tech issue goes beyond self-service resolutions, colleges should use a centralized tech support platform that tracks project management and resolution.

College students don’t want to wait for tech answers, and they definitely don’t want to be unable to use their devices. Self-service portals offer a way for them to stay connected while saving colleges and universities manpower and money.

Could a tweet or a text increase college enrollment or student achievement?

Peter Bergman, Teachers College, Columbia University

Can a few text messages, a timely email or a letter increase college enrollment and student achievement? Such “nudges,” designed carefully using behavioral economics, can be effective.

But when do they work – and when not?

Barriers to success

Consider students who have just graduated high school intending to enroll in college. Even among those who have been accepted to college, 15 percent of low-income students do not enroll by the next fall. For the large share who intend to enroll in community colleges, this number can be as high as 40 percent.

There are a number of possible reasons for this attrition: many families overestimate the cost of college because the sticker price of colleges can be much higher than the net price (the sticker price minus the potentially large amount of aid a low-income student could receive); students may struggle with complex financial aid forms; there may be a lack of support to guide them through the application process. So, even when low-income students who are high-achieving do enroll in college, the majority fail to enroll in a college that is comparable to their level of achievement.

Can a few text messages or a timely email overcome these barriers? My research uses behavioral economics to design low-cost, scalable interventions aimed at improving education outcomes. Behavioral economics suggests several important features to make a nudge effective: simplify complex information, make tasks easier to complete and ensure that support is timely.

So, what makes for an effective nudge?

Improving college enrollment

In 2012, researchers Ben Castleman and Lindsay Page sent 10 text messages to nearly 2,000 college-intending students the summer after high school graduation. These messages provided just-in-time reminders on key financial aid, housing and enrollment deadlines from early July to mid August.

Instead of set meetings with counselors, students could reply to messages and receive on-demand support from college guidance counselors to complete key tasks.

In another intervention – the Expanding College Opportunities Project (ECO) – researchers Caroline Hoxby and Sarah Turner worked to help high-achieving, low-income students enroll in colleges on par with their achievement. The intervention arrived to students as a packet in the mail.

What happens when an intervention arrives in a mail? Mail image via www.shutterstock.com

The mailer simplified information by providing a list of colleges tailored to each student’s location along with information about net costs, graduation rates, and application deadlines. Moreover, the mailer included easy-to-claim application fee waivers. All these features reduced both the complexity and cost in applying to a wider range of colleges.

In both cases, researchers found that it significantly improved college outcomes. College enrollment went up by 15 percent in the intervention designed to reduce summer melt for community college students. The ECO project increased the likelihood of admission to a selective college by 78 percent.

Getting parents involved

Of course, it’s not just at college enrollment time that nudging can be helpful. Parents also face behavioral barriers while their children are in middle and high school. Many parents underestimate the number of assignments their child has not turned in as well as the number of school days their child has missed. Unfortunately, schools often do a poor job communicating this information to parents in a timely fashion.

I tested an intervention that sent text messages to parents about their child’s missed assignments and grades. The messages were frequent – sent four times more often than report cards – and provided detailed information to parents about their child’s missed assignments and grades. Each message listed page numbers and problems students needed to complete so that parents could track their child’s progress.

The involvement of parents cam motivate children. More Good Foundation, CC BY-NC

Parents responded by communicating with the school more often and motivating their children to do the work: students turned in 25 percent more assignments, which led to significant improvements in grades and evidence of increased math scores.

When there is no impact

While these interventions are promising, there are important caveats.

For instance, our preliminary findings from ongoing research show that information alone may not be enough. We sent emails and letters to more than one hundred thousand college applicants about financial aid and education-related tax benefits. However, we didn’t provide any additional support to help families through the process of claiming these benefits.

In other words, we didn’t provide any support to complete the tasks – no fee waivers, no connection to guidance counselors – just the email and the letter. Without this support to answer questions or help families complete forms to claim the benefits, we found no impact, even when students opened the emails.

More generally, “nudges” often lead to modest impacts and should be considered only a part of the solution. But there’s a dearth of low-cost, scalable interventions in education, and behavioral economics can help.

Identifying the crucial decision points – when applications are due, forms need to be filled out or school choices are made – and supplying the just-in-time support to families is key.

The Conversation

Peter Bergman, Assistant Professor of Economics and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

How adult learners are not getting 21st-century skills

Iris Feinberg, Georgia State University and Daphne Greenberg, Georgia State University

More and more adults are going back to school to learn new skills. The National Center for Education Statistics data show a 7 percent growth in college enrollment for adults over the age of 24 between 2005 and 2015. This is projected to increase to 12 percent by 2019.

A large percent of these are community college students who are either enrolled in two-year associate’s degree programs or technical education certificates, or are simply taking classes to learn new skills. In spring 2016, over 2.1 million adults over the age of 24 were enrolled in two-year public community colleges. These students represent approximately one-third of all adult students enrolled in colleges.

As researchers studying adult literacy, we have been concerned with the pervasive issues affecting adults with low basic skills. A community college is a great entry point for adult students. And an associate’s degree can be very valuable – both to individuals and the economy.

But an issue we are concerned about is whether community colleges give students the skills they need to succeed in the 21st-century workplace.

Coming back to school

First, let’s look at who are the adult learners and what brings them back to school.

Adult learners could be heading back to school to acquire more complex skills to keep up with the changes in the job market. Most organizations these days are looking for candidates with the capacity to think critically and communicate clearly. They want candidates who are able to solve complex problems.

Community colleges bring a diverse group of students. Maryland GovPics, CC BY

Furthermore, technology-rich environments also require high levels of digital and problem-solving skills.

Research shows that however competent individuals may be as users of technology like email, texting and Facebook, 61 percent of U.S. adults are relatively weak at problem-solving in technology-rich environments. Solving relatively simple problems using digital tools to search, sort, and email information from a spreadsheet, can be challenging for these adults.

So, adult learners often come back to school to build their reading, math and digital literacy skills.

Why community college

Community colleges offer several advantages for adult learners. Students could come from a variety of backgrounds, academic histories and ages.

They could be first-generation college enrollees, displaced from their previous careers, returning veterans or wanting to earn certification in order to ensure job security.

Course schedules at community colleges are flexible. Their tuition is significantly less than four-year colleges. According to the College Board (2015), the average tuition and fees for a community college student was US$3,435, as compared to $9,410 per year for in-state students at a public four-year college.

Barriers to getting digital skills

However, community college students face many barriers when it comes to acquiring digital skills.

Digital skills include being literate in both information and technology skills. Individuals should be able to find information and evaluate it for its reliability. They should also know how to select and use technology like software, platforms, devices and applications.

Many community college students do not have adequate digital skills when entering their program. A 2013 survey showed that 59 percent of adults with a high school diploma or less had low digital skills and 44 percent had medium level digital skills.

This means that many community college students begin at a disadvantage. They are less likely to be ready to use digital technologies. In a digital society, this could limit their success in school, their access to civic and health information, and their participation in the 21st-century workforce.

Another barrier is access. While 68 percent of Americans now own a smartphone, a 2015 Pew Research Center reports that only 47 percent of those with a high school diploma as their highest educational attainment have broadband access.

This, in particular, is a major disadvantage for community college students. Forty-eight percent of community college students are the first in their families to attend college. Half of them come from households where the highest educational attainment is a high school diploma or less.

Furthermore, many community college students may not have a laptop or desktop computer to access technologically heavy educational resources such as video-based materials. These students may lack financial resources to buy up-to-date technology.

Digital skills are important in today’s workplace. Alper Çuğun, CC BY

Most important is community college curricula. Some colleges integrate elements of digital learning through their curricula, and others work with employers to define and teach specific technological skills needed for certifications. However, there is not enough evidence to show that all community colleges address these areas in their curricula.

Consequently, a majority of community college students risk graduating without gaining any digital skills. A recent study of community college students reported that 52 percent of current community college students had never taken a computer class or been specifically instructed in digital skills in a stand-alone class.

21st-century education for a 21st-century economy

In July 2015, President Obama proposed the American Graduation Initiative to invest in community colleges. The Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act, a law enacted in 2010, includes $2 billion to be spent over four years to help community colleges improve and provide career training.

However, we believe that merely investing money in community colleges won’t help American students and workers get the critical thinking skills they need to succeed. What needs to be addressed are issues of access, digital readiness and curriculum.

According to the American Association of Community Colleges,

“If community colleges are to contribute powerfully to meeting the needs of 21st-century students and the 21st-century economy, education leaders must reimagine what these institutions are – and are capable of becoming.”

Digital literacy is becoming an increasingly important component of a well-rounded education. It is considered by most colleges as essential.

That means community colleges should offer digital literacy courses as well as integrate technology into teaching and classroom or homework activities.

The Conversation

Iris Feinberg, Assistant Director of the Adult Literacy Research Center., Georgia State University and Daphne Greenberg, Distinguished University Professor of Educational Psychology, Georgia State University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Why debt-free college will not solve the real problems in America’s higher education system

David H. Feldman, College of William & Mary and Robert B. Archibald, College of William & Mary

On July 6, Hillary Clinton took a half-step toward Bernie Sanders’ free public college tuition plan. She proposed partnering with states to zero out tuition by 2020 for families making US$125,000 or less.

We know that American higher education faces serious long-term problems. However, reducing tuition or college debt to zero isn’t the right way to solve them.

We have been studying America’s higher education system and college costs. Our research tells us that the deep problems in American higher education today aren’t due to the fact that students borrow or pay tuition. It is because the schools serving the bulk of America’s underprivileged students are increasingly resource-starved.

So, what should our candidates be worrying about when it comes to higher education? And what policies might make a dent in our real problems?

Inequality in higher education

Let’s first look at how higher education has been split into separate and unequal worlds.

As researchers Caroline Hoxby and Sarah Turner have shown, students who attend a college ranked “most competitive” by Barron’s, a financial magazine, enjoy $27,000 of instructional spending per student. These include schools such as Yale, Duke, Kenyon and the University of Miami. At a “non-selective” four-year university that number drops to $5,000. This group includes many non-flagship state universities and small liberal arts colleges that accept most applicants.

The divide is further deepened as only a small percentage of low-income students are able to attend top universities. Only four percent of the students who attend the institutions rated as “most competitive” are from the bottom quarter of the socioeconomic status distribution. Students from the bottom half of the income distribution cluster at community colleges and non-selective four-year institutions.

Rising income inequality and declining state support for higher education further risks cementing in place this division between first class and steerage class education.

Rising inequality, declining state support

Consider the following facts: Most of the income growth since 1965 has gone to the richest 20 percent of American households. Since 2000, a household at the bottom fifth has lost $3,200, measured in 2014 dollars, or 13 percent of its income. But America’s richest five percent earns an extra $7,000.

U.S. household Income from 1967 to 2013. David Feldman, Author provided

For students from poor and middle-income families, stagnant or declining income is a real barrier to college access unless state or federal subsidies become more liberal.

But most states have cut funding to public universities. Between 2000-01 and 2014-15, annual state spending per full-time student fell by $2,573, measured in 2014 dollars. Over the same time period the annual tuition and fees paid by the average student at a public four-year university have risen by $2,038, also measured in 2014 dollars. Tuition increases have not fully recovered state cuts.

Despite tuition increases, public universities, and especially the less-selective non-flagships that serve the bulk of the population, are increasingly resource-starved.

Our calculations, based on data from the Delta Cost Project,which conducts research on how colleges spend their money, show the following: In 1987, public universities spent 88 cents for every dollar that private nonprofit institutions spent on the wages and salaries that drive instruction. By 1999 the ratio had fallen to 81 cents. And by 2010, it had fallen further, to 73 cents on the dollar.

This has consequences. Economists John Bound, Michael Lovenheim and Sarah Turner have found that falling graduation rates, especially among young men, are concentrated at resource-starved community colleges and less-selective public universities.

These researchers found that increases in the student/faculty ratio were the main culprit in declining graduation rates at public universities. This is driven by lack of resources. At community colleges, weaker student preparation is the problem, and this is a consequence of poverty.

What are candidates saying?

But these are not the issues that worry our candidates most. College debt has grabbed the headlines, so college debt has grabbed their attention.

Donald Trump. Joshua Roberts/Reuters

Donald Trump’s website currently contains nothing about higher education. But his campaign co-chair, Sam Clovis, recently offered the outlines of a Trump position. Among the proposals is that government should get out of the loan business – handing it back to private banks.

What would that mean for high school students, who have no collateral and no credit record? Banks generally will not lend money to 18-year-olds with nebulous plans, absent a guarantee. Clovis suggested the guarantee would come from colleges and universities, who would have to pay for student default. Their “skin” would be in the game.

In fact, Trump’s program would hand private banks a financial windfall, because they would earn the fees and interest, and if a student failed to keep up on payments, someone else would take the hit. In Trump’s world, those would be the schools that currently work with large numbers of “risky” underprivileged students.

Hillary Clinton’s platform contains a $25 billion fund to support private nonprofit colleges that serve underprivileged students. This would be, in our view, a step in the right direction if it could pass through Congress.

What we know about student debt

The substantive proposal in Clinton’s New College Compact is the following:

Every student should have the option to graduate from a public college or university in their state without taking on any student debt.

Our point is there is no good reason why debt should be off the table. Substantial gains go to the students who earn a degree, and reasonable amounts of debt are a good way to finance any long-run investment. Students who borrow near the average levels ($25,000 to $32,000), and who graduate, tend to have little difficulty paying back.

A demonstrator holds up a sign to protest student debt. Andrew Burton/Reuters

As Sandy Baum of the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, has shown, most of the “extreme” debt is concentrated in two places. The first is graduate students. The returns to their degrees are larger and less uncertain.

A doctor with $160,000 in debt is in much better shape than a dropout who has $14,000 to pay. Most of the dropouts come from under-resourced schools that serve our most at-risk students – this is a problem that worsens inequality.

The second is the for-profit sector. Although for-profits account for only nine percent of degrees awarded, they are responsible for a quarter of the total number of students whose debt exceeds $50,000. For-profits serve a lot of older students and many veterans using GI benefits.

What needs to change

In our view, two reforms could help break the trend toward inequality in the American higher education system.

The first is related to the federal government’s need-based Pell Grants of up to $5,815 per academic year. Pell Grants, which are awarded to low-income, undergraduate students, do not have to be repaid. So, they reduce the price of a year in college.

Ashland CTC, CC BY-NC-ND

In today’s dollars, the current maximum Pell Grant has slightly less purchasing power than it did in 1978.

Yet the cost of services – which includes everything from restaurant meals and haircuts to dental care and higher education – has risen faster than the inflation rate. As a result, a Pell Grant covers a declining portion of the cost of a year in college. The maximum Pell Grant covered 94 percent of the tuition and fees at a public university in 2000-01. By 2015-16 it covered only 61 percent. Congress could set the Pell maximum simply by tying increases to an index of service prices.

The second reform that we suggest is a federal program to encourage states to raise their own investment in public universities. Former Democratic Senator Tom Harkin proposed giving states a federal grant based on how much funding they provided per student at their own public universities.

In Harkin’s proposal, states would qualify for a grant if they spent at least $2,865 per student annually. States that offered more funding of their own could get a bigger grant per student from the federal government.

The advantage of Harkin’s bill was that it did not propose to micromanage how the grant would be used. States could use it to hold down tuition growth, but they could also use it to improve the quality of the programming to help underprivileged students. Those are the students who currently fail in large numbers at underfunded public institutions.

We believe these two ideas alone could be a down payment on a fairer higher education system. These ideas would help funnel more resources into the colleges and universities that educate the vast majority of America’s at-risk student population.

The Conversation

David H. Feldman, Professor of Economics, College of William & Mary and Robert B. Archibald, Professor of Economics, College of William & Mary

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Why are public colleges and universities enrolling too many out-of-state students?

Brendan Cantwell, Michigan State University

A recent report by the Boston-based Pioneer Institute pointed out how out-of-state enrollments at the University of Massachusetts are limiting opportunities for in-state students.

For the right-leaning Pioneer Institute, UMass is an example of the public sector run amok. But Pioneer is not alone. There are others who have voiced similar concerns. For example, a state audit came out with a scathing criticism of University of California for discriminating against local students. And recent federal data show 43 of the 50 state flagship schools enrolled fewer local students in 2014 than they did a decade earlier.

My experience as a higher education researcher suggests it is important to understand why colleges and universities are enrolling students from out of state. The point being that years of underfunding and the growth of market-based practices such as competition for tuition revenue have created incentives for colleges and universities to enroll nonresidents. The consequence of this has been added financial strain on lower-income students.

When public universities devote fewer resources to lower-income or minority students, that shows an erosion of the very mission for which the state colleges and universities, were founded.

Wooing nonresident students

Data complied by the College Board show the share of out-of-state students at public colleges and universities grew in 38 states between 2002 and 2012.

And it is not just prominent flagship schools that attracted out-of-state students. A study from the New America Foundation, a public policy think tank, found that even regional colleges are wooing nonresident students.

Is it diversity that is getting state universities to enroll nonresident students?Fabrice Florin, CC BY-SA

Clearly, out-of-state students can provide many educational gains: college students benefit when they interact with each other through a process economists call “peer effects,” which include the learning and social development students get from each other. Educational research shows all students gain from a diverse student body. By engaging with peers with different experience and viewpoints, students learn more both in and out of the classroom.

But it may not be the benefits of a diverse student body that are driving public schools to enroll nonresidents.

Going after the money

Nonresident students pay higher tuition at public colleges and universities. In 2013, average in-state tuition at public four-year colleges was US$7,526, but a whopping $17,047 for nonresidents.

Public institutions have been experiencing declining state funding for decades For example, state funds accounted for 52.8 percent of operating expenditures at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1987, but only 16.9 percent by 2012.

It comes as no surprise then that these institutions would look to nonresident students for additional revenue.

Nonresident students bring in much-needed revenue. Dollar image via www.shutterstock.com

A recent study found a strong relationship between state funding and nonresident students enrollment. When states increase funding, public institutions enroll fewer nonresidents.

“Enticing” students

Public colleges and universities were established by the states to educate residents and to improve the lives of people through research and service. However, in recent years, these institutions have become increasingly focused on improving their own bottom line and competing in the marketplace. Recruiting nonresident students who pay high tuition is one way in which public schools compete in markets.

The market for nonresident students can be understood as a form of interstate and international commerce.

Colleges compete to attract wealthy nonresident students by providing “country club” campuses, investing in luxury dorms and other amenities that attract wealthy students.

Who pays the price?

Policymakers in the U.S. have long favored markets in higher education, the idea being that when institutions compete they will offer better-quality and lower-priced education.

The question of quality is difficult to assess, but here is the impact this market-based approach had on price.

Changes to the way higher education was funded in the 1980s and 1990s encouraged colleges to compete for revenue. Aid came to be allocated to students rather than schools and more in the form of loans. Along with this came shrinking of direct funding from the states while increasing funds available through competition.

Over time, competition for revenue helped to drive the price of tuition up. Adjusting for inflation, the average net price for instate tuition at public four-year colleges increased by 170 percent between 1990 to 2015.

Predictably, students and institutions with the fewest resources are left to face the greatest challenges of such a steep hike. In 2008, it took 90 percent of family earnings to cover tuition at a public four-year college for students in the bottom fifth of the income distribution.

Who pays? Tania Liu, CC BY-ND

In this process, institutions that enroll a high proportion of local lower-income students rather than competing for lucrative nonresidents have become most vulnerable.

For example, underfunding has resulted in overcrowded classrooms and crumbling facilities at the City University of New York, where over half of the students come from families with incomes below US$30,000. And this is not the only such example.

A budget impasse in Illinois brought Chicago State University, with a student population that is 69 percent low-income, to the brink of closure.

What is to be done?

The California-based Campaign for College Opportunity, a nonprofit that works to expand college access, suggests capping nonresident enrollment at public colleges and universities. And the plan is gaining traction. Hillary Clinton recently endorsed caps on nonresidents at the University of California.

Setting limitations on nonresident students might seem to be common sense. However, institutional autonomy has been a strength of higher education in the U.S.

Further, my evaluation of the evidence suggests that it is funding cuts and market competition rather than nonresident enrollments per se that have drawn higher education away from its public mission.

Perhaps little can be done in the near term. But over a longer period public reinvestment combined with renewal of the public mission among state intuitions seems a more sustainable path than an arbitrary cap on nonresident enrollments.

The Conversation

Brendan Cantwell, Assistant Professor of Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education, Michigan State University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

3 Startling Facts about Ivy League Schools

Ivy League schools are prestigious, with many students vying for acceptance and few actually earning a spot as an attendee. However, their reputation does not reveal the whole picture about these schools. For example, are these schools really worth the hefty price tag? Here are three interesting facts that should get you thinking about Ivy League schools a little differently.

1. Ivies are among the wealthiest schools in the nation. The truth is that attracting the best and brightest to one’s campus is always easier when money flows as freely as spring water.

According to a report by Moody’s Investor Service, Americans colleges and universities are developing a wealth gap problem.

“One third of all assets held by colleges and universities” are with the country’s 10 wealthiest universities.

A few on the list include Harvard, Texas, Stanford, Yale, MIT, and Duke. Of the top ten, three are public universities. The rest are private.

Harvard, perhaps the nation’s most prestigious university, is also the country’s richest. In terms of wealth, Harvard is stout with $42.8 billion. That’s almost $10 billion more than the University of Texas, which comes in second.

The report also states that the country’s richest schools “capture the bulk of charitable gifts flowing to higher education” to the tune of 60 percent.

But one of the more interesting portions of the study lands with how many schools collect their revenue. The collection of tuition and student fees at the country’s top 20 private educational institutions has a median of 15 percent. That number jumps to 46 percent for public colleges.

Moody’s report concludes that because of the recovering economy and stock market, university endowments for the country’s wealthiest schools have aided in their increased wealth.

2. Ivy League schools are not an instant payoff for graduates. For people seeking the cushiest early-career salaries, the Ivy Leagues aren’t paying off instantly.

Princeton, Harvard, Yale and Columbia don’t make it into the top 30 universities for starting salaries. University of Chicago, a tie for fourth, doesn’t make the top 200.

The top three schools? The U.S. Naval Academy, Harvey Mudd and West Point.

The list of schools that prepare students for a career with a high starting salary post-graduation day include many other elite military and tech schools, according to a report by PayScale that surveyed 1.5 million employees with degrees from over 1,000 colleges.

Graduates of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis earn a median annual salary of over $80,000 over their first five years post-graduation, earning the school the top number of surveyed schools.

The PayScale survey tells us that Princeton, the highest performing Ivy League school offers its graduates a median starting salary of $60,000 – earning is the 34th highest in the country.

The nation’s traditionally elite schools distinguish themselves with a salary growth near graduates’ mid-career. Graduates from Ivy League and like schools see their pay jump significantly when they are more than ten years past graduation.

3. Actually, high college tuition may not correlate with high earnings at all. Saving a year’s worth of salary for one year of higher education at Harvard may yield great career results for some but that may not be true for all.

According to U.S. News and World Report, a recent Brookings Study shows that “other schools may either not cost as much and yield a similar salary and success of loan repayment, or they may cost about the same but generate higher earnings potential.”

Harvard is a small sample size and represents a limited portion of the zenith of college costs. But, in essence, the study shows that one may earn just as much for the duration of their career by attending a college with cheaper tuition.

That’s not a knock against Harvard as students, and their parents, are free to choose any school that matches with their educational goals.

This is an alternative that students have always taken. Take Ronald Nelson, a student who was accepted to all eight Ivy League schools.

Instead of choosing a prestigious Ivy League school, and the tuition that came along with it, Nelson went with the University of Alabama.

He said that Alabama “offered him a full scholarship and admittance into their selective honors program.” Nelson also wants to save for medical school and states that going to an Ivy League higher education institution would not allow him that luxury.

Students and parents have to make the decision that’s best for them. Rising costs of higher education will likely force more students to choose cheaper schools over ones with higher tuition rates.

HBCUs at Their Finest

Historically black colleges and universities in the United States were created when African Americans were blocked out of predominantly white institutions. Today’s climate is much different now that black students can attend the schools they were once not allowed to attend. This leaves HBCUs in a unique position.

Does America still need HBCUs?

As college enrollment numbers rise, with Black college students at their highest enrollment levels ever, the role of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, or HBCUs, have come into question. Before 1964, and even as recently as two decades ago, an increase in the number of Black young adults with college aspirations would have been welcome news for HBCUs.

Today, more Black college students do not automatically translate into higher enrollment numbers at HBCUs because the college landscape has changed so drastically since the golden days of these institutions. Diversity recruitment programs on traditional campuses, the ease of online degree programs, and the rising credibility and offerings at community colleges have eclipsed the cornered market that was once enjoyed by HBCUs when it comes to enrolling Black and other minority students.
As a result, it’s been suggested that HBCUs are no longer relevant and their purpose is now outdated and unnecessary for the students who used to depend on their offerings. With respect to the many quality non-HBCU higher education institutions, I’d argue that HBCUs are more relevant than ever and are in many ways, even MORE, necessary than their counterparts.  Here’s why:

HBCUs are still havens for the disadvantaged. The achievement gap in K-12 learning may be narrowing, but it still exists. Even minority students who end up graduating from high school drop out of college at higher rates than their white peers. While all types of colleges are picking up on this weakness and looking for ways to retain students, many HBCUs stand out as examples of how to succeed at having students return after freshman year. A U.S. News ranking lists Spelman College (at 88 percent retention), Morehouse College (82.5 percent), Howard University (82.3 percent), Florida A&M University (79.5 percent) and Winston-Salem State University (78.3 percent) as the top five HBCUs for having students return to campus after freshman year.

As a comparison point, the top 10 predominantly white institutions, or PWIs, had retention rates that ranged from 97.5 to 99 percent – BUT the retention numbers for minority students was lower. The campus culture and student-centric programs at these PWIs are stellar, but it also stands to reason that the students are attending top PWIs, like Brown University and the University of Notre Dame, are predisposed to staying in college anyway – while HBCUs have many more obstacles to overcome when convincing and encouraging their attendees to stay. HBCUs are also proving to be thought leaders when it comes to advancing rights for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender students, with Morehouse College offering its first LGBT course this past spring.

HBCUs are blazing STEM trails. Many HBCUs are powerhouses when it comes to offering strong degree programs in science, technology, engineering, and math. HBCUs are important hubs for developing the greatest STEM minds in the nation, with 65 percent of all Black physicians and half of all Black engineers graduating from HBCUs. The Tuskegee University College of Engineering and Alabama A&M University of College Engineering, Technology, and Physical Sciences are not just top engineering schools among HBCUs – they are among the best in the nation. Spelman College is the second largest school in the nation that sends Black undergraduates on to medical school. Jackson State University receives the highest amount of HBCU federal research funding every year, at $68 million, and is known for its “research intensive” programs.

Claflin University students work alongside the South Carolina Center for Biotechnology and receive hands-on industry training and connections in the field long before graduation. The Xavier University of Louisiana has a consistently top-ranked pharmacy program and is a sought out school for those hoping to advance to medical school. Florida A&M University consistently ranks at the top of all colleges that graduate Black students with doctorates in natural sciences and engineering. In June, Fayetteville State was awarded a $718, 000 government research grant that included plans to oversee STEM instruction to local high school students. The advancements these schools are contributing to STEM fields are not just relevant; they are groundbreaking and an asset to the industries the graduates eventually serve.

They make college more affordable. As college costs climb, HBCUs remain reasonable options for earning college degrees and come with plenty of financial aid options in the form of grants, scholarships, and federal loans. HBCUs like Coahoma Community College in Clarksdale, Mississippi cost as little as $4,940 for in-state students for an entire academic year (before any grants or financial aid) or just under $7,000 for in-state students who choose to live on campus. Even out of state students get a pretty good deal – adding just $1,000 more to that total. Even HBCUs with top billing offer affordable routes for their students, like Howard University in D.C. that saw 52 percent of students in 2012 with their financial needs fully met. The financial assistance programs at HBCUs have an inherent understanding that their students come from a place where college may not be an option without the sound advice and financial assistance – and they step up to meet the needs of those students.

They adequately staff the workforce – and help graduates land jobs. During the latest Recession years, college career centers faced even greater scrutiny when it comes to helping students find jobs when they leave campus. The state of unemployed college graduates reached nearly crisis proportions at one point, with college graduates returning home to live with their parents after receiving a degree. HBCUs stepped up and worked even harder to help their graduates find the work they were qualified to accomplish after graduation. The 2012 HBCU Career Center Survey found that over 90 percent of HBCUs offered career workshops, career counseling, one-on-one resume writing help, one-on-one interview coaching, on-campus job fairs and on-campus interviews from prospective employers. Nearly three-fourths of the HBCUs in the survey said they also offered career development services for alumni. HBCUs are not simply training their students and sending them off blindly into their future careers; these schools are supplying well-equipped, highly-educated workforce members through connection programs that happen long before graduation day.

They remind us that there are still battles to be fought. As much as I’m a proponent of diversity in all of our schools, from pre-K to doctoral programs, there is some solidarity at HBCUs that would be a danger to lose. Despite advancements against discrimination, it is important to remember that the fight for civil rights and equality still rages on – and it extends beyond the Black community. It is vital to remember why HBCUs were developed in the first place and what role they have played in the fight for justice – producing such civil rights trail blazers as Martin Luther King Jr. and Thurgood Marshall. Though the initial mission of HBCUs may have evolved with the times, the reminder that education is an inalienable right for all Americans and those who chose to study from abroad, lives on proudly at HBCUs and will always be a necessary pillar of the U.S. college and university system.

Thankfully, despite the rough climate for HBCUs today, not all HBCUs are taking it lying down. In fact, many of them are thriving even today. Here are some of the many things HBCUs are doing to continue their inspired legacy.

  1. Helping those in need

Many HBCUs demonstrate a commitment to service.

For example, students at Bowie State University, a Historically Black College and University (HBCU), have created an app geared towards aiding the homeless.

According to the school’s website, students “developed an electronic kiosk designed to link people seeking the help of local shelters with up-to-date information about what is available in their community.”

The students presented their idea and model in Washington D.C. at the Capitol Hill Maker Faire, a festival that allows makers who use technology to show off their ideas and models.

The kiosk is made-up of “a mini-computer, wireless internet adapter, and computer monitor.” This way those in need will have the ability to check for resources at local shelters and if those shelters have space available.

This project is targeted to those in need in Prince George County, “the second-most populous county in Maryland.”

While this model was created by students and only presented at the Maker Faire, hopefully, such an innovative idea will receive more attention and possibly implementation statewide.

The idea surrounding the kiosk has the potential to streamline county, state, and federal efforts to help the homeless and those in need of temporary shelter.

This also helps Bowie State in the long-run as the university prides itself on being an educational destination for students interested in pursuing a career in science and technology.

Another school, Grambling State University have started collecting books for a prison near the school during the holiday season in late 2015. The drive has attracted the attention of other HBCUs across the country who have also decided to get involved, resulting in nearly 5,000 books being donated to prisons.

According to knoe.com, students in Grambling State’s psychology and sociology club decided to start collecting books for the correctional facility after seeing the dearth of books in its library.

Knoe.com reports:

“The HBCU Book Challenge began as an effort by Grambling State University’s Psychology and Sociology Club members to bring more reading materials to inmates in Louisiana. After seeing a small prison library with a shortage of books, club members were inspired to organize a book drive last spring that collected 225 books for the inmates at Richwood Correctional Center in Monroe.”

This isn’t the first time Grambling has held the book drive. It was the great results from the first one that made students decide to do it again and give it the official title of HBCU Book Challenge.

Other HBCUs got involved, including Alabama State University, Alcorn State University, and Savannah State University.

All four schools collected almost 5,000 books “for prison libraries in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia.”

The book drop-offs began on December 1st and were distributed throughout the month.

With the success of this program, it is likely to continue next year and for years after. I love the outreach these students have taken upon themselves, and I hope their acts of generosity improve the educational outlook for the prisoners they’ve gifted.

  1. Taking home lots of awards

In addition to doing good deeds, HBCUs are winning awards for their excellence.

Take Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU) for example. Their president, Elmira Mangum, was awarded HBCU ‘President of the Year’ at the AARP HBCU Awards at Hampton University.

“Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU) President Elmira Mangum, Ph.D., was awarded the prestigious Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) “Female President of the Year” Award presented by the HBCU Digest Friday night at the annual AARP HBCU Awards ceremony at Hampton University,” according to WCTV.tv.

Magnum’s presence has been good for the university. The article further states how well she’s been received and awarded this past year. In addition to receiving this award, she was also honored at the Onyx Awards, named to the USDA Agricultural Policy Advisory Committee (APAC), and was placed on EBONY magazine’s list of 100 powerful people.

In conjunction with Magnum’s good news, FAMU was recently named as the top HBCU in the nation by U.S. News and World Report. That’s a pretty big deal.

For recruiting purposes, this news will surely be used to lure more students to the prestigious university. Hosting a president of the year and laying claim to being the best HBCU in the nation isn’t a bad way to brag on one’s school. The accomplishments of schools like FAMU that attract news attention are good for all HBCUs because they lift the credibility, relevance and overall name recognition of the schools.

FAMU isn’t the only school that is worth recognizing.  

Raising $92 million to improve the University, receiving a $75,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and hosting the South Carolina Collegiate Journalist of the Year are fairly significant achievements all on their own. One university can claim them ALL as its own, though.

Claflin University was named HBCU of the Year by the HBCU Digest Alumni Association.

According to thetandd.com, the school likely got the award mostly for its participation from its alumni, though. The involvement of graduates who are returning their financial and workforce bounty back to their alma mater are boosting the clout of the HBCU.

“The combined success of the campaign and the generosity of Claflin alumni were largely responsible for Claflin winning the HBCU Digest Alumni Association of the Year Award. In 2013, alumni annual giving rose to an all-time high of 52.2 percent, among the best in the nation for all colleges and universities. Claflin continues to be the perennial leader among HBCUs in this category.

Claflin came just $8 million short of the goal for its capital campaign. The school’s board of trustees led a charge to raise $100 million to “build the endowment, strengthen academic programs and enhance facilities.”

Claflin has less than 5,000 students, so successfully raising nearly $100 million to improve the school’s positioning to recruit and make it more viable makes the feat look even better.

Alumni involvement, specifically financially, isn’t likely to tail off anytime soon. That’s good news for any student looking to call Claflin home for the next four years and really for other HBCUs that are hoping to recruit students.

And finally, one other school has a lot to brag about.

Dillard University in Louisiana has always been known as one of the nation’s best HBCUs. The institution for higher education has been nominated for some awards at the HBCU National Media Summit should come as no surprise.

The university’s president, Walter Kimbrough, was up for Male President of the Year, and the school was also nominated for Best Choir and Best Fine Arts Program.

According to The Times-Picayune and NOLA.com, of the HBCUs in Louisiana nominated for awards, Dillard received the most.

In addition to President Kimbrough, choir, and fine arts, Dillard was nominated for “Best Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) program (Physics); Female Faculty of the Year (Kemberley Washington); and Male Alumnus of the Years (Michael Jones, ’82.).”

The awards are scheduled to take place in Virginia on the campus of Hampton University from July 9-11. NOLA.com reports that “proceeds from the ceremony will go the Center for HBCU Media Advocacy, a nonprofit that supports HBCU’s through media exposure and education.”

Other HBCUs from the state (Louisiana) nominated for awards are Xavier and Southern University.

This is great news for Dillard as this will surely shine a bright spotlight on how well the university is doing. Heralded as one of the best liberal arts colleges in the south, it shows through the nominations that Dillard has received. Honors like this come at an important time for HBCUs that are increasingly competing with online degree programs and increasing the quality of community college offerings. Congratulations to Dillard and the other HBCUs nominated.

  1. Creating online courses and tech programs

With many minority students opting for non-traditional routes to obtain their degrees, now is a great time to embrace the online course.

For students who might have to balance work, the demands of daily life, and school, the flexibility online courses offer is a perk. Thankfully, some HBCUs are catching on to this trend.

Let’s look at Florida A & M University. According to HBCUBuzz.com, Florida A&M and the University of Phoenix have partnered to offer online courses for minority students.

“A new research project by Florida A&M University Developmental Research School (FAMU DRS), the Thurgood Marshall Foundation and the University of Phoenix will provide support for the creation of online courses to better-serve minority students.”

HBCUs have tried to offer online courses or full degrees in the past but with little success. This project will tailor its offerings specifically towards African-American, bilingual, and poor students.

“The online curriculum will improve and complement classroom teaching and will focus on math, which states exam results show is the subject FAMU DRS students struggle with the most. The online courses will be accessible through the University of Phoenix’s online platform in the form of learning resources and other materials, workshops and tutoring opportunities.”

So far, FAMU (Florida A&M University) has been the first HBCU to utilize the online offerings that the University of Phoenix offers. Educationnews.org reports that Phoenix “made its online platform available to historically black colleges and universities” in 2014.

The end goal for all involved in the project is to increase the number of minority students, specifically African-American students, who have successfully taken classes online. Moving beyond that, FAMU likely wants to offer an assortment of degrees online.

Then, going beyond online courses, there are initiatives to help students who attend HBCUs to the STEM field. According to the PR News Wire, the Apple HBCU Scholars Program and the Thurgood Marshall College Fund partnered “to create [a] diverse talent pipeline.”

Apple committed $40 million to the project to attract more HBCU students to the tech field. Needless to say, this could be an incredible boost to diversity in tech fields which have been traditionally dominated by white males.

“The multi-year commitment includes funding to build a talent database, internships for high achieving students, exposure to Apple’s campus and work environment, and funding of faculty innovation grants focused on developing successful ways to accelerate HBCU students into the tech field.”
To participate, students must be in their last year of study at an HBCU or PBI (Predominately Black Institution).

“Thirty successful undergraduate student recipients will be awarded sizable scholarships and receive year-long mentorships by Apple employees to include a paid internship at Apple headquarters next summer.”

Apple’s partnership cut to the heart of a well-documented issue: the tech sector and Silicon Valley are lacking melanin.

According to a report by The Washington Post, companies like Facebook and Yahoo are two of the Valley’s worst offenders.

“Yahoo disclosed last week that African Americans made up just 2 percent of its workers, while Hispanics stood at 4 percent. Those revelations came days after Facebook reported that in 2014 it had employed just 81 blacks among its 5,500 U.S. workers.”

By cultivating such a large effort, Apple at least attempted to curb the apparent lack of enthusiasm that some minorities hold towards the tech field.

  1. Prepping students for the workforce

A Gallup-USA Funds Minority College Graduates Report shows that “HBCU graduates are more likely to prosper after graduation than students who graduate from non-HBCUs.”

The news comes as HBCUs are under scrutiny for effectiveness and if black students are better served by attending Predominately White Institutions (PWI).

Some HBCUs are struggling to survive due to debt, but this report shows that the product being produced at America’s predominately black colleges and universities is pretty good. For anyone who has been lauding the relevancy of HBCUs for some time now (like me), this is music to our ears.

The study found that over 50 percent of HBCU graduates who were surveyed viewed their prospects after graduation as positive while just under 30 percent of black graduates from PWIs viewed them as positive.

Again–all good news for soon-to-be graduates and the health of HBCUs. Of course, there is always a ‘but’ when studies are released.

“The report found that four in 10 black HBCU graduates are more likely to thrive financially while fewer than three in 10 black graduates of other schools can say the same.”

That news is likely tied to the overall health of the economy and how graduates may find their place in an ever-changing workforce. I’m also not sure what the definition of “thrive” is in this case. There is a difference, I think, in being comfortable or being affluent.

Overall, though, this news is great for HBCUs and the students who attend them. The report found that graduates from HBCUs are better emotionally, have stronger relationships, and are more goal oriented as well.

  1. Discussing the future

During HBCU Week at the White House in September 2015, education leaders gathered to talk about the future of Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

Vice President Joe Biden spoke to those gathered regarding the role that HBCUs play in America’s economy.

“The people who were once left out have to be brought in. One of the ways to accomplish this is to make sure we have the best-educated, most-skilled workforce in the world.”

Biden also noted that many volunteers from his first campaign for Senate were from Delaware State University, an HBCU he leaned on for support.

In addition to talking about the importance of sustaining HBCUs, Biden spoke of what the Obama administration has done to aid in the financial success of HBCUs, stating that the federal government invests about $1 billion into the collection of colleges each year.

But there is still work to be done regarding the health of many HBCUs. Some are facing financial ruin, and others are teetering on the edge of collapse. This conference will surely help to quell some of those fears as the White House works to reassure leaders that they are there to support and help to ensure that HBCUs are here to stay.

  1. Inspiring support from all over the country

Believe it or not, HBCUs have the support of more than just their students and alumni.

Known for his zeal for supporting Historically Black Colleges and Universities, host of the nationally syndicated “Tom Joyner Morning Show” Tom Joyner gives away scholarships to a high school senior planning to attend an HBCU every year.

Joyner said that because the cost of college isn’t decreasing, he wants to assist a “high school senior with a chance to attend a Black college to pursue their dreams.”

Since its inception in 1998, the Tom Joyner Foundation “has provided scholarships to more than 29,000 students, and, more than $65 million has been raised to support our HBCUs.”

Joyner is not the only one to award money to those who attend HBCUs. Coors Light ended the HBCU (Historically Black College and Universities) classics football season by providing $100,000 in scholarships to HBCUs across the country.

According to lasentinel.net, Coors Light gave scholarships “benefiting juniors and seniors aged 21 and older” who attended HBCUs.

“Supporting higher education and investing in our communities have always been priorities for us as a brand,” said Joe Sargent of the Coors Light multicultural marketing team. “The HBCU Classics are a great way to celebrate the unique culture and experience these institutions offer, and we’re happy to continue supporting higher learning within the African-American community.”

The support that Coors shows for HBCUs isn’t new. Over the past 25 years, Coors has given over $1 million to support higher education over the past seven years. 

Conclusion

The bottom line is that people and corporations from all walks of life, whether they are radio show hosts or former athletes, see the value of HBCUs as a cultural legacy and as a haven for minorities, low-income, and other non-traditional students. HBCUs, in general, are enduring many problems today, but they still manage to rise above it all with their efforts and with the heartfelt support of others.

 

 

What Educators Need to Know About Higher Education Today

As an educator and advocate for better education in the United States, you need to know what’s going on in higher education today. Why? Because—and it’s not an exaggeration to say this—much of what happens on college campuses both reflects and affects the climate of the rest of the country. Read on to find out which big issues are on the mind of college students…and why you should care about these issues.

How to make college worth the investment

  1. Prepare students for the real world.

I’ve covered this extensively on my website: more and more, students do not feel like they are getting their money’s worth from college.

Consider this: almost 90 percent of students in America go to school for better job opportunities.

In a startling new survey conducted by the Higher Education Authority, a significant amount of international college students “feel they are not learning job skills” — which clearly is the point of spending tens of thousands on earning a college degree.

Nearly 28,000 students from Ireland participated in the survey where they were asked about questions geared towards their college experience as well as future career outlook.

While many of students who participated DO feel unprepared, the vast majority state that they “felt they were gaining knowledge and skills that boosted their chances of getting a job.”

The study also reveals how students who major in certain disciplines feel about their job prospects post-graduation.

“In general, scores for “work integrated learning” were lowest among students studying courses in the arts and humanities, which tend to be broader and may not include work placements.”

The study also found that students majoring in business administration and law, services, and “comm. techs” indexed higher scores when it came to career readiness. Each area seemingly has higher job placement than arts and humanities because the positions in those fields are far more static.

The Irish Times reports that “he survey was developed in response to a key aim of the national strategy for higher education to 2030” which may be to incorporate more of what students want into learning the curriculum.

Compared to students in the United States, the findings are the same. Back in 2010, a study prepared by the York College in Pennsylvania found the same evidence: students in America “seem to be ill prepared for the demands of the workplace.”

Same goes for managers hiring students fresh out of college in America. According to Forbes.com, Harris Interactive found that “fewer than two in five managers believed college graduates were well-equipped for a job in their field of study.”

The study went on to find that many managers feel that new college graduates lack clear writing skills, can’t conduct a meeting, and cannot manage a project.

If anything, this collection of studies abroad and domestically show that a college degree may be tangible and lead to a job post-graduation, but skills learned in college may not help former students keep them.

  1. Think about whether standardized testing is the way to go.

The idea of standardized testing at the college level can be tempting. After all, it can help measure how effective that expensive education is for that student.

However, it gets messy quickly. Think about it. Standardized testing in K-12 education is already a perennial hot button issue. Proponents feel that measuring knowledge in these rigid ways helps lift the entire educational system. Critics say the measurements do nothing but encourage “teach to the test” methods and narrow the scope of what instructors can teach if they want to have acceptable test results. These arguments are nothing new, but they are now seeing a new audience.

What if the same principles of K-12 standardized testing were applied to colleges and universities? Americans spend over $460 billion on higher educational pursuits every year, yet there is no official worldwide system in place to determine whether students are learning what they should, compared to other schools. In June, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development unveiled research on whether a global testing system for college students is possible. The group will continue to review its findings and decide if it wants to push for implementation of the Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes test, abbreviated as AHELO.

Right now the comparison system for colleges and universities lies in the many rankings that are released each year by sources like U.S. News & World Report and hundreds of bloggers who weigh in on the topic. The AHELO would be a “direct evaluation of student performance at the global level…across diverse cultures, languages and different types of institutions.” It would provide institutions feedback meant to help them “foster improvement in student learning outcomes.” In a nutshell, the test would not measure student achievements as much as shine the light on instructors that need some improvement.

To K-12 students, this sounds familiar. To college faculty, the idea is fraught with landmines. How can one test take into account so many variables in higher education across the globe? Would instructors be punished by the institution, or even worse held to some misguided accountability scale by peers, if students did not rank highly enough on an AHELO or some other test? If college is a time for fostering critical thinking skills, would a standardized test take away some of that freedom?

College instructors and administrators are right to have doubts, and particularly before any testing mandates go into effect. Take the classic college entrance exams – the SAT and the ACT. Though research has found little correlation between results on these tests and actual knowledge or intelligence, they are a standard part of college admissions. It is more difficult to reverse a testing mandate than to fight it off at the outset.

It is easy to see why colleges and universities are leery of standardized testing, but K-12 instructors should be too. Presently, K-12 instructors guide students through the formative education years, dealing with standardized tests and other demands of contemporary teaching. Success with those students is ultimately determined by two other numbers: graduation rate and college placement. At that point, a K-12 teacher’s job is done, at least in theory. Adding another layer of teacher testing (cleverly disguised as core knowledge testing) at the college level could have an impact on K-12 instructors too.

If the AHELO is designed to “foster improvement” in the higher education schools that are tested, who is to say that those ideals of improvement will not then be extended to the K-12 schools that came beforehand? A student who demonstrates below-college-level proficiency in language or math would in theory not be the product of college that failed him or her – that student’s incompetency would be a result of a previous school, or schools. Could a global test for college negatively impact the K-12 schools that preceded it?

As with any measurement of teaching and learning, the AHELO and other similar initiatives need scrutiny before becoming global law. I am not sure of the necessity of such a system, and it will take some hard arguing by the other side to convince me otherwise.

  1. Consider unconventional ways to strive for a more—and better educated—population.

Many states are struggling with creating a more educated and prosperous workforce.

Some of them have solutions.

According to the Times Free Press, Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam has a plan that would create independent boards “for the University of Memphis and other four-year universities in the Tennessee Board of Regents system.”

The plan falls under Haslam’s “Drive to 55” goal that would increase the number of adults in Tennessee with “some form of post-high school credential” by 23 percent, to a total of 55 percent.

Just under a third of the state’s adults currently possess a college degree or vocational program certificate.

This move may not impact the University of Tennessee as the governor has yet to state if his new plan will include the University of Tennessee system.

Other portions of Haslam’s plan include the creation of a task force to come up with the best ways to work out the plan details.

Because the governor doesn’t have political or legislative autonomy, his plan will have to be approved by the state legislature when they return for a session in January.

So far, there has been no indication as to how the legislature will vote, but judging by the reaction from some Republican lawmakers, Gov. Haslam’s plan has been met with glee by those on the right side.

This plan is ambitious on the surface but may lack details of what’s needed to push more adults to obtain a post-secondary education. Giving some of the state’s universities its boards and governing power is great and allows for singularity, but it doesn’t show how doing so would push more adults towards a college education.

How to help students feel safe on campus

Just like in the real world, where diverse populations coexist, tensions sometimes arise between different groups. And sometimes, this does not turn out well for students in marginalized groups.

Think about rape and sexual assault, for example. Last year, comedian Bill Cosby made headlines when some decades-old allegations resurfaced. While these allegations are receiving the lion’s share of attention, there is some equally disturbing information from the campus of the University of Virginia about consistent cover-ups regarding allegations of rape from the young women on its campus.

You can read all about these cases in their corresponding news stories from a variety of outlets — but what I don’t see being discussed in depth is the role of colleges in preventing and reporting these incidents. The safety of students is certainly of utmost importance to colleges but to what extent? Where does the responsibility for student safety end — or is it all-encompassing?

And if the answer to that question is that colleges really should shoulder a lot of the responsibility for student safety, especially when it comes to issues of sexual assault, what else can be done to solve this problem? Should there be national standards that colleges and universities pledge to uphold — and then who will reinforce them? President Obama has already called on the young men of the nation to speak up when they see sexual crimes taking place on college campuses. Is that where we should shift our focus?

It’s clear that at least some of the crimes committed against our young adults on campuses where they feel a veil of safety are falling through the cracks. It will take a concerted effort to turn that tide, but so far the solution does not seem obvious.

Speaking of sexual safety, LGBTQ students deal with problems in this arena to an alarming extent.

According to AmericanProgress.org, over 70 percent of LGBTQ students “reported experiencing sexual harassment, compared with 61 percent of non-LGBT students.”

To compound the issue, many college campuses are still in the slow process of growing to become more inclusive regarding the needs of students who identify as LGBTQ.

The report featured on AmericanProgress.org also suggests that some college campuses “may not include certain sexual acts in their definitions of rape” because “the perpetrator is of the same gender as the survivor.”

What an awful feeling knowing that the college that one attends is insensitive to the needs of its students, specifically those within the LGBTQ community.

It’s vital that students have a sense of safety while on campus. It’s supposed to be a place of freedom, a space for creativity, and an educational asylum. When those protections are removed or never placed at all, students are left vulnerable.

LGBTQ students looking for colleges to attend that make safety paramount should look to AffordableCollegesOnline.org‘s new guide, “LGBTQ Resource for College Students.”

The guide features an array of resources for students to utilize, but also offers a way for students to find supportive campuses that are “more welcoming and supportive.”

There are two diversity experts featured in the guide, and both are interviewed on the subject of student safety, recommendations for LGBTQ students, and much more.

In essence, it is a total resource of comfort for LGBTQ students to utilize when looking for the school that closely fits their wants and needs.

Let’s address another way in which students can feel unsafe on campus: unaddressed racial incidents.

A collection of black University of Missouri football players is refusing to practice or play in games until the school’s president Tim Wolfe resigns.

The move comes after Wolfe has been criticized for his handling of several race incidents across campus.

According to uppermichiganssource.com, Wolfe’s decision not to act to correct the racial tension encompassing the campus has forced one student to forge a hunger strike.

“The latest controversy kicked off with Missouri graduate student Jonathan Butler going on a hunger strike Monday. Butler says he’s not happy with Wolfe’s handling of several racial incidents on campus, and will not eat until Wolfe steps down or is fired.”

Some of those incidents include claims of a swastika drawn in human feces “on a college dorm’s brand new white wall” and many black students, including the school’s student association, were “racially abused.”

The school was slow to react, and it has taken the bravery of one graduate student to create a power vacuum.

For the students, head coach Gary Pinkel has tweeted his support of their decision and so has the school’s athletic department.

State lawmakers called for Wolfe to step down and the Missouri Board of Curators.  He ended up doing so in November 2015.

If students feel unsafe on campus due to threats from other students and the school’s leadership have aided in cultivating an unsafe environment, then the first domino of many to fall should likely be the school’s president.

How to Deal With Racial Stereotyping on College Campuses

The past few years have brought the deep-seeded ugliness of racial profiling to the surface. From the shooting death of the unarmed Trayvon Martin in Ferguson, Mo., to the … Whether it is brute force from the very people who commit to protecting citizens or discrimination in everyday life, racial profiling holds back all Americans because it prioritizes fear over the truth.

Racial profiling is even evident in the private sector, with the most recent evidence of this found in a study that found that just before the housing crash in 2008, black families with a combined income of $230,000 annually were just as likely to receive sub-prime loans as white families making just $32,000 annually. It seems that racial profiling trumps actual statistics and documentation of financial stability in minorities.

Racial profiling happens, and it’s dangerous – even on college campuses, which are often advertised as some of the most progressive places in the country. The latest example of this in action took place on one of the largest campuses based on population in the nation: The University of Central Florida. In late April, UCF students received an emergency text notification that there was a “POSSIBLE MIDDLE EASTERN MAN/WOMAN” with a gun in the UCF main campus library. The alert was prompted by a later-unsubstantiated report of a young woman in a headscarf praying and wielding a gun in a common area of the library. Once the relief of no actual threat sunk in, students and faculty started to speak out against the anti-Islamic rhetoric that surrounded the entire scenario.

In a piece for UCF’s daily newspaper The Central Florida Future, Tahoora Ateeq, Pakistani Student Association President, wrote:

“It would have been more beneficial if the UCF alert was sent out with a description of the person’s manner of dress, the person’s shoes, the person’s height or the person’s gender. In the future, I hope that UCF acts more wisely and does not utilize such a vague description that feeds into people’s stereotypes and prejudices.“

UCF’s story isn’t isolated, though. In a 2013 paper in the Association for the Study of Higher Education, Black students reported being treated differently by their professors than their white peers. A particularly disturbing portion of the paper accents an experience by a black female computer science student who said her professor associated her with stereotypical interests and called her “one of you.”

Minorities often feel unfairly profiled and stereotyped outside the classroom as well. In the fall of 2015, a black student at Hinds Community College in Mississippi reported being arrested after a police officer felt his baggy pants violated the college dress code. How can our minority college students be expected to focus on the academics at hand if they are constantly on the defensive against racial profiling and discriminatory policies?

There is a mental toll that goes along with racial profiling on college campuses, too. Black students and other minorities, even white women, often report feeling like they have to “prove themselves” beyond typical college work to somehow show that they deserve their spot – especially at schools with known diversity recruitment programs. This need to always fight back against negative stereotypes hurts students academically, which is understandable considering the energy that should be geared toward actual learning is channeled to being on the defensive. Instead of just being free to focus on their studies, too many students feel the weight of racial and other stereotyping.

So what can college and university campuses do to fight back against racial profiling?

It starts at the top. Administrators need to listen when students report incidents of racial injustice and not look the other way, as a faculty member at Yale suggested when black students were outraged by white peers donning blackface for Halloween. Campus police and security officers must be trained in the best policies for keeping the peace without unjustly profiling the very students they are meant to protect. Faculty members should not only support diversity awareness, but they should BE diverse themselves. Universities must recruit a variety of employees that are from diverse backgrounds at all levels of the organization. The more blended the student and faculty population is on a college campus, the better the chance that racial profiling and other stereotyping will simply not exist. It starts with an awareness, though, and actual policies that boost diversity and speak out against discrimination.

How to stay aware of drug use on college campuses

One thing that you might want to be aware of is drug use on college campuses.

While it is nothing new, the drug of choice seems to vary by generation.

A new survey released by the University of Michigan shows that marijuana use with college students is on the rise.

For the first time since 1980, more college students are getting high on a daily basis.

“Daily or near-daily marijuana use was reported by 5.9 percent of college students in 2014 — the highest rate since 1980, the first year that complete data was available in the study. This rate of use is up from 3.5 percent in 2007.”

Even for students who only use it socially or just occasionally, there has been an uptick in the numbers.

“The percent of students using marijuana once or more in the prior 30 days rose from 17 percent in 2006 to 21 percent in 2014.”

Without the study saying it, I’d guess this rise in use is an indicator that marijuana is no longer viewed so negatively and as a dangerous drug.

But if one views this is as bad news, there is a silver lining attached. College students no longer smoke as many cigarettes as they used to. Just 13 percent of college students said that they smoked a cigarette in the last thirty days.

While this information is certainly good to know, it is not necessarily an indicator of bad behavior with college students, if you put the use aside.

If cities continue to decriminalize the use of marijuana, use of the drug is likely to continue to increase on college campuses. How we view and measure the drug’s impact on academia would certainly serve as a fascinating follow-up study down the road.

How to pay faculty what they deserve

A gap of three percent separates the California State faculty and California State officials. At least that’s the number that may end up causing a strike.

According to PE.com, professors and lecturers are asking for a bump in pay, but CSU officials aren’t budging.

It is the fourth time in eight years that Cal State faculty so riled up about salaries that it is threatening an all-out strike. Today the school administrators will vote whether to listen to the demands or risk the faculty refusing to work for wages they feel are too low.

The percentage that’s causing the squabble amounts to $2,900 for a full professor and $1,800 for a lecturer working full-time.

That’s not a lot of money on the front end, but with the size of the school’s faculty, the total comes to around $61 million.

The school is not completely against a raise for faculty members and has offered 2 percent. This is the same raise that other university employees were granted earlier this year.

The vote on whether to strike will take place today. Classes won’t immediately be canceled though. If the faculty union does decide to strike, it won’t take place until the beginning of 2016.

I hope the school and faculty can come to some sort of agreement that means students won’t be impacted negatively. The top-notch professors are the reason Cal State is so sought after so the school should consider that heavily when looking over these salary demands. Talent and expertise should be compensated when possible for the benefit for student retention and success following graduation.

How to Use Income Diversity to Replace Affirmative Action

It’s no secret to anyone who works in higher education that affirmative action programs are in danger. Most recently, the Supreme Court upheld the affirmative action program at the University of Texas after a case filed by Abigail Fisher waffled in lower courts for years. Fisher, a white woman, believes that she was denied admission to the school based on her race and claimed reverse discrimination. While the Supreme Court decided against Fisher’s claims, the issue brought contemporary affirmative action programs to the forefront and got people talking.  Critics of the programs wonder if they are outdated and if they lead to reverse discrimination, as Fisher claimed, in some cases.

It’s important to note however that when affirmative action was outlawed in California in 1998, the number of minority students fell 36 percent at UCLA and 61 percent at UC Berkeley. Furthermore, affirmative action programs are credited with tripling minority applicants to universities in some cases, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. It’s tough to argue with its effectiveness when you see those statistics. California isn’t alone. Other states with affirmative action bans include Florida, Nebraska, Arizona, Washington, Oklahoma, and New Hampshire.

Despite its success, it seems that affirmative action’s positive impact on the college landscape is narrowing. So what can colleges do to still recruit, educate, and graduate a diverse student population if affirmative action programs are fading?

The Case for Income Diversity

Harold O. Levy, executive director of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, writes for The Hill that the best way to keep diverse populations on campuses is to put income diversity programs in place. Minority groups are still at an income disadvantage when compared to white peers, so admission policies that take income into account and attempt to distribute those student openings among varying income levels. Levy cites the national poverty rates as proof that these programs would work: for white Americans, the poverty rate was 10 percent in 2013, compared to 26 percent for African-Americans and 24 percent of Hispanic Americans. Simply putting wording in place that reserves space for students based on their income levels has the potential to keep minority students in place.

I think the income diversity programs make a lot of sense. The whole point of affirmative action in the first place is to give traditionally disadvantaged students a shot at a college education. If that’s truly the goal, then students who come from low socioeconomic backgrounds, including white students, have a better shot at college placement under an income diversity program. A College Board/National Journal Next America Poll tells us that students who have parents who went to college are more likely to go themselves than their peers. We also know via U.S. Census Data that those parents make nearly $1 million more than their non-college peers. So the students who come from lower socioeconomic situations are not just at a cost disadvantage. From a mental perspective, it is more of a stretch that these students will go to college in the first place.

Which leads me to the next immediate thought I had after reading Levy’s piece: how can we make income diversity programs work? It’s one thing to put the wheels in motion with policy; it’s a totally different thing to make it successful. Along with important policy, colleges that are truly serious about income diversity must recruit those students smartly and have support programs in place that help them get to graduation. Recruitment should start early, even at middle school, before students have a chance at envisioning their lives without college. Get them excited as preteens about their futures with a college degree and let them know about income diversity initiatives.

My second point is equally important. As I mentioned above, first-generation college students face different challenges than their counterparts, and it’s important to guide them a little more closely to their degrees. If you’re going to actively recruit students who are economically disadvantaged, and may even be working their way through school, you have to implement programs that support them in those unchartered waters. It’s not enough to admit students from disadvantaged homes – colleges also have the responsibility to graduate them.

Income diversity initiatives have the potential to further diversify college campuses and give more students the opportunity at higher education. With the right implementation, they could finally close the achievement gap at the college level – but first universities have to get on board with the movement.

Why we need to pay attention to what’s happening on college campuses

College campuses often represent our larger society—in distinct, striking, and unusual ways. We know that today, racism, homophobia, and marijuana are hot-button issues in the national news.  As educators, it’s often useful to know how to navigate how college students and faculty tend to handle these issues. As you know, their reactions often influence higher education policy and the state of education in the US.

Are HBCUs Under Attack? How Historically Black Colleges and Universities Can Stay Afloat in Today’s Landscape

If you haven’t been paying much attention to the debate concerning the relevance and effectiveness of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), now is the time to sit up and take notice. If you don’t, there is a chance it could soon be too late. Over the last two decades, we have seen the number of HBCUs in the United States sharply decline.

This greatly concerns me. We need to take a moment to look at why people should pull together, rally around them, and help them make it through turbulent economic times. HBCUs have helped to educate some of the most prominent African American figures in this country’s history, including Jesse Jackson, Samuel L. Jackson, Martin Luther King Jr., Spike Lee, and Thurgood Marshall, among many others.

HBCUs provide cultural benefits, as well as providing an affordable education. This cultural foundation has been important to the African American community for over a century. HBCUs were there, supporting the community and educating many hardworking and productive citizens, long before other colleges would even let them through the door.

If you believe in the benefits of HBCUs, you need to stand up and let your voice be heard, before these important institutions are gone forever.

What’s happening, exactly?

HBCUs are coming under fire for everything from not improving their failing infrastructures to producing lower graduation rates, and more. Let’s take a closer look at some of the issues that HBCUs are currently facing.

Why HBCUs are underfunded—and why this matters

By way of a study published in Newsweek, “fundraising is a major problem for HBCUs.”

The study gives a comparison of the two of the nation’s “richest” schools regarding how they are sectioned. Howard University receives nearly $590 million from the government, which on the surface, seems like a lot of money.

But compared to the funding that Brown University receives, Howard is dwarfed. Brown is on the receiving end of over $3 billion in government funding each year.

Brown has a bustling alumni base that donates generously. Not saying that Howard doesn’t as they certainly have proud alumni. The differences are hard to miss.

Note that the lack of funding goes beyond alumni donations. Until she later amended it, presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton’s education plan would have undermined the funding of some HBCUs and would likely force a few to close.

“Free tuition to any community college and reduced tuition to public institutions, will expedite the extinction of several HBCUs. Without federal and state investment in public historically black campuses which lack unique programs, modernized facilities and marketing resources, students of all races will flock to larger, more developed predominantly white colleges.”

In essence, plans presented by Clinton and other candidates who lean left would take federal and state money used to aid HBCUs and refocus the dollars towards a general fund that will help schools that traditionally serve the general population.

Hypothetically, schools that aren’t necessarily in need of more federal assistance would receive extra dollars, and some HBCUs would be left in the cold.

Another issue that affects the amount of money HBCUs gets? In October of 2011, the U.S. Department of Education adjusted its lending policies for these popular, and in many cases necessary, loans to align more closely with what a traditional bank would require in the way of income and credit worthiness. All colleges took a hit with these changes, but HBCUs lost an estimated $50 million in the first full year these changes took place. For many HBCUs, the college population is made up of first-generation students with parents who often have not set aside the funding for a college education, but want to contribute financially. When PLUS loan eligibility changed, it felt like a blow directed at HBCUs.

And sometimes, the problem is just plain money mismanagement

Take Cheyney University, for example. In 2015, the country’s oldest HBCU owed the federal government nearly $30 million, according to nonprofitquarterly.org.

“[A] review conducted for the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education found that the school may have mismanaged the financial aid it receives from the U.S. Department of Education to assist students and, as a result, may owe the federal government more than $29 million.”

The article goes on to state that the school gave grants and loans to students who weren’t eligible. They also gave out too much money.

News for Cheyney isn’t getting better. The school currently carries a deficit of at least $15 million with an annual budget of $30 million. Paying back $29 million would bring the school to its knees.

Pennsylvania’s Auditor General Eugene DePasquale issued a report on the school’s future last year, and it was rather bleak.

“The size of its debt that is deemed not collectible is growing. The amount of state support it receives is on the decline. And its enrollment has hit a 31-year low.”

The report also noted that just nine percent of students who enroll at Cheyney stay for graduation.

Simply put, Cheyney is in deep trouble

Without serious financial help from alumni, the state, or the federal government, Cheyney’s 177-year history will soon come to a quick close.

All these financial issues cause a ripple effect, which leads to other issues, such as…

School closures. Lately, it seems there are just too many HBCUs in the news for the wrong reason: financial and accreditation woes that threaten, or deliver, closure.

For example, on June 3, 2014, Saint Paul’s College officials announced that it planned to close its doors – at least temporarily. The news followed a proposed merger with Saint Augustine’s University that fell through. After 125 years, the rural school that employs roughly 75 people in the community of Lawrenceville, Virginia had no choice but to close its doors to new students and help current ones find placement elsewhere.

After several years of highly-publicized financial problems, Morris Brown College turned down a bailout from the city of Atlanta in June that would have eliminated its bankruptcy troubles. In August, Morris Brown filed for federal bankruptcy protection to prevent foreclosure. Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed and other city officials were more than a little surprised when the school rejected the $10 million offer that was designed to benefit the city too.  A Morris Brown lawyer said the rejection is due to the school receiving an undisclosed, better offer from somewhere else. For now, though, Morris Brown is still $35 million in over its head, by some accounts.

Mergers. It’s not at all unusual to hear governors and former governors like Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal and Mississippi’s Haley Barbour announce plans to merge HBCUs with each other or other predominantly white institutions in moves that are intended to slash state operating costs.

In less than stunning news, the Georgia Board of Regents has decided to merge Historically Black College (HBCU) Albany State University with Predominately White Institution (PWI) Darton State College.

The new school will boast close to 9,000 students and will retain the name Albany State University.

While the move to combine two state colleges isn’t shocking, it did take some by surprise that the board decided to merge an HBCU and a PWI. In recent years we’ve seen HBCUs merging to keep their cultures intact, but not shutter their doors, but the move in Georgia doesn’t follow that path.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the move was partially made because of declining enrollment at both institutions.

“Both schools have faced enrollment declines in recent years. Albany State’s enrollment has dropped 25 percent in five years; Darton has seen a 14 percent enrollment decline since its peak in 2012.”

The Journal also reports that the school will become Southwest Georgia’s largest college.

Even without the declining enrollment figures, some have concerns that Albany State will lose its culture and identity by merging with a PWI. Hank Huckaby, chancellor of University system of Georgia, says that Albany State’s history and culture will not be compromised due to the merger (but he didn’t give specifics on how that will happen).

This announcement is not the first on merger in the state

A merger between Kennesaw State and Southern Polytechnic State universities was finalized earlier this year. The largest merger between Georgia State University and Georgia Perimeter College is in the works now.

Treating any two HBCUs as institutions that are alike enough to merge without incident is flawed, though. Planning to merge an HBCU with a predominantly white schools is even more off-base. These individual schools have their histories, their student cultures. Perhaps it makes financial sense to merge HBCUs with others similar in size or scope, but it undermines the collective institutions, undercutting their autonomy and what they can offer to potential students.

When students can no longer afford to go to school

And the consequences for lack of financial support HBCUs are receiving continue.

Take the general lack of affordability for students, for example. HBCUs have a legacy of providing affordable education to students. However, with many of the funding issues, HBCUs have been suffering. Lately, it’s harder for these colleges and universities to offer students the financial aid that they once generously provided.

Then, when it turns out that college graduates from HBCUs cannot make a return on their investment, the situation seems even worse.

According to a report, the starting salary for a new college graduate from an HBCU may not be enough to cover student loan debt.

By way of an article on Chron.com, the class of 2015 was projected to have about $35,000 in student loan debt upon graduation. That’s $7,000 more than what the class of 2013 will owe.

Of course, to pay back the loan, students have to have jobs that will afford them that opportunity.

So to look at how debt and income will factor into the financial success that students may have post-graduation, Edsmart.org found that some students who attend HBCU’s may struggle economically. It is a recipe for disaster when students can’t afford college when they start OR afford to pay it back when they graduate.

Not all students from HBCUs suffer this fate, however. The report shows that the average starting salary for new graduates out of Bethune-Cookman University comes in at just $38,700. That’s just $3,000 more than the average debt that students may carry. However, the in-state tuition and fees for BCU is a reasonable $14,410.

It gets even better if students attend Florida A&M University. Tuition for in-state students is just $5,785, $17,725 for out-of-state, and students project to make a little over $42,300 after graduation.

Other schools where students can expect to earn more include Xavier University, Howard University, Hampton University, and Tennessee State University.

While the salaries vary, and so will the debt per student, knowing that your earning potential fresh out of college may hover around $50,000 per year may take the sting away from having to pay the government back for your education.

It’s not just about the money, though…

There are other problems that may keep HBCUs from thriving in today’s world.

And, certainly, although HBCUs have fallen on hard times, they cannot completely play the role of victim, either. I’m a Dean at an HBCU and completely believe in the message – but even I can see that there are things we do collectively that are hurting our student populations and chances for longevity. We need to change that, together, and that starts with recognizing where we have made mistakes.

Slow adaptability. We’ve spent too much time wringing our hands and not enough time looking for solutions. Why were predominantly white institutions better prepared when the PLUS loan changes took place? Could we not have come up with our solutions too? When it comes to online schooling – most HBCUs are just finally implementing full-degree online programs and embracing the idea that our students don’t need to be on a physical campus to benefit. Yes, the campuses of HBCUs are their biggest advantages, steeped in history and a palpable air of shared struggle. This doesn’t mean we should force our students to set foot on our campuses, or not come at all. The inability to move quickly and keep up with the higher education times has hurt HBCUs but hopefully not permanently.

Lack of diversity. HBCUs are getting better at recruiting all students to their campuses and programs, but this is another area where we’ve done too little, too late. HBCUs are no longer the only option for students of color and haven’t been for decades. So why have we spent so little time rebranding ourselves as institutions that welcome all students and help those students succeed? The number of Latino, white and Asian students on HBCU campuses is rising slowly, but relying on our historically largest segment of students (after it became clear they did not need us as much as we needed them) has hurt us.

Lack of stability in administration. Over the past decade, too many HBCU presidents have seemingly disappeared in the middle of the night without explanation. South Carolina State University, for example, has seen 11 different presidents since 1992 but why? Often the answer lies in the fact that a board of trustees clings to the past, or spends too much time micromanaging and not enough looking at the future and big picture of the HBCU landscape. Such instability at the top cannot inspire confidence for faculty or students. To plant roots for the future, there needs to be consistent leadership that aligns with the long-term goals of the HBCU.

Not appreciating students. This may sound petty, but alumni who do not feel that their universities gave them a world-class education, or at the very least an adequate one, are less likely to give back financially. This hurts HBCUs more than PWIs, I think. An essay was written by an HBCU graduate who declined to name her school specifically expressed shock at the under-sophisticated classrooms and technology resources at her HBCU. While she points out the social atmosphere was top-notch and ultimately the reason she stayed until graduation, she says she would rather see her former school be shuttered than donate money to it. This is only one story, of course, but it rings true with other graduates I’ve met and read who believe they received a sub-par educational experience at an HBCU (sometimes on very basic levels) and who have no desire to donate money back. This is no way to maintain long-term student pride or bring in future students.

How can we bring HBCUs back to prominence?

Fortunately, there are many solutions that can help HBCUs rise to prominence once again. But those of us who support the continued existence of HBCUs will need to seek radical solutions so that we can see these institutions thrive again.

One of the most impactful ways we can help HBCUs thrive is by making sure they have the funds to do so. And how might that work? The solution is simple: alumni giving.

HBCU graduates are some of the proudest in the country, often with a stronger sense of social responsibility than their PWI-graduate peers. HBCUs aren’t doing a strong enough job tying that pride back into alumni giving programs. Case in point: Harvard raised a record-breaking $752 million in alumni and other gifts in the fiscal year 2013. At HBCU “Black Ivy League” Spelman College saw just $157.8 million ($20 million from alumni) during its Every Woman Every Campaign in 2013 that was a special, targeted campaign beyond normal annual endeavors.

Perhaps comparing Harvard’s financial gifts to any other school isn’t completely fair, but it does give an idea of what HBCUs are up against in the non-elite college market. If Spelman, considered the “best” HBCU, can only bring in one-fifth of the giving of Harvard in a year when Spelman aggressively went after donations, what does that say for every other HBCU?

An even better question is this: What can HBCU alumni giving campaigns improve upon to bring in more dollars to benefit their current crop of students?

Make college affordable

Even the best college education will come with resentment attached once a student has to start paying back those burdensome loans. HBCUs have a better shot at alumni giving back once a college education is paid off, so why not make that debt burden lighter? HBCUs have some of the best statistics when it comes to financial aid in the form of Pell grants and scholarships, and these institutions should continue to push for the funding to make obtaining a degree affordable – particularly for minority and first-generation college students. More money in these graduates’ pockets will translate into more alumni giving in the early years following graduation.

Personalize giving

I don’t know about you, but getting standard alumni giving form in the mail with a return envelope does not usually inspire me to pull out my checkbook. The same is true of emails without much personality. Instead of just asking for the money, HBCUs need to put faces and causes along with the requests. What are some of the upcoming projects that this money could go towards? Who will receive scholarships from this giving? Even non-glamorous giving campaigns that go towards basic infrastructure have a better shot of meeting goals if alumni are informed of what money is being solicited to do. HBCU alumni who can associate their positive memories with money-making campaigns are more likely to want to be a part of making those things happen.

Get alumni involved before they leave campus

Don’t wait until students are off campus to solicit them for help with facilitating the college experience of the classes who follow them. Cash in on the good feelings that accompany graduation time from both the students earning degrees and their families. Even those who don’t have much may be willing to give a little to keeping the college dream alive for other students who are still trying to accomplish their academic goals. Set up a table outside commencement with giving forms and other alumni information. Have literature that explains to students how alumni giving dollars have facilitated what they’ve enjoyed while on campus. Send out an email blast to soon-to-be graduates inviting them to visit the alumni website, like its Facebook page, and join its official club. Don’t wait to chase alumni down after they’ve left; rope them in before they leave and keep them active in the coming years.

Just as HBCUs have a responsibility to get their student’s workforce-ready, alumni have a responsibility to give back to their institutions. HBCUs need to do a better job of conveying that, though and encouraging former students to step up to the plate.

Another way to build up HBCUs is to embrace diversity and innovation

When HBCUs began popping up in America, they were a necessity to higher educational paths for African American young people. Benefactors like John Rockefeller founded Spelman College in Atlanta (named after his wife, by the way) to give black students shot in a nation still very much in the throes of Jim Crow law domination. Most of the 105 HBCUs were founded in former slave areas that still presented steep challenges for African Americans that aspired to higher education but faced discrimination in dominantly white college settings.

The original intent of HBCUs worked. Some of the nation’s brightest and most influential minds came out of HBCUs. Langston Hughes was a Lincoln University graduate. Martin Luther King Jr. earned his degree from Morehouse College. Talk show queen Oprah Winfrey, education expert Marva Collins and Brown University President Ruth J. Simmons all earned degrees from HBCUs (from Tennessee State University, Clark Atlanta University, and Dillard University, respectively). These powerful pillars of the African American community were able to achieve optimal success in life because of the education they received from HBCUs.

But what about now? With white students quickly becoming one small aspect of on-HBCU settings, do ambitious African American students need an HBCU to achieve success? Perhaps a more poignant question is this: does it help or hinder the African American community when its members attend an HBCU today?

I think the answer is grounded in the particular student’s intent. Young African Americans today do not NEED an HBCU to obtain a general education, but they may find particular programs at individual schools meet their career objectives. Some may even find academic inspiration in the original founding purpose of an HBCU, and that feeling of carrying on tradition may fuel them to graduate, make an impact in the world and give back to their college or university.

The original purpose of HBCUs is no longer the only reason–but that does not mean that these institutions lack other attractive qualities. In fact, many students with white European, Latino or Asian roots are choosing HBCUs because of the strength of the academic programs and lower tuition costs. During the 2011 – 2012 school year, West Virginia State, Kentucky State and Delaware State universities all reported that more than 25 percent of their populations were made up of white Americans. A continued push for diversity on HBCU campuses is the only way these schools can transition from the necessity of the past to the potential of the future. This means implementing more online course options and flexible degree programs so that all students can picture themselves succeeding at an HBCU. Gratitude for the original intent of HBCUs combined with forward educational thinking for students of all heritages will carry HBCUs to the next level of achievement in higher learning circles.

One school that decided to use online course options to strengthen its program is North Carolina Agricultural & Technical. These online programs are geared towards growing the school’s enrollment figures.

According to Insidehighered.com, NC A&T’s online offerings will be cheaper than “face-to-face” courses for in-state students, and they plan to go after students outside of their traditional demographic.

“To help enrollment grow, we have to look at different mechanisms to engage students in general. We can’t solely focus on the traditional 18- to 22-year-old,” said Joe Whitehead, vice president for academic affairs.

By non-traditional students, A&T plans to market the online programs towards adults who work, military members, and “students who left college before they could graduate.”

Another marketing tool the school will use is that A&T is now the nation’s largest Historically Black College and University as it recently surpassed Florida Agricultural & Mechanical University in enrollment.

“Florida A&M’s enrollment has fallen; North Carolina A&T’s has hovered below 11,000 students for nearly a decade. This fall, once again, enrollment sits at 10,875, a slight increase of 141 from the previous year.”

Some HBCUs have attempted to offer online programs in the past but have fallen short. As of 2014, just 33 HBCU’s offered online programs and all aren’t jumping on the bandwagon.

By way of Edcentral.org, Spellman College has no interest in offering online courses now or in the future.

HBCUs are still attempting to navigate the terrain of online education, and are rightfully taking the time to ensure that student success is a top priority before going all in. Still, if HBCUs are places that cater to traditionally disadvantaged students, a move towards online programs seems to be the right direction.

Are HBCUs a lost cause?

In my home state of Mississippi, I grew up attending athletic and cultural functions at Tougaloo College, Alcorn State University, Mississippi Valley State University and Jackson State University. These universities are sources of great pride and a part of the African American intellectual tradition. Now is the time when people who support HBCUs, including advocates, organizations, faculty, students, and alumni, need to rally together to help save this historical piece of African American history. If these groups come together and make their voices heard, we will be able to save these institutions. But make no mistake, if there is no rally, if there is no coming together to let the powers-that-be know that we want them saved, then I predict that they will be gone in 50 or so years. And they will not return. Nobody is going to turn back the hands of time and open another historically black college or university because it wouldn’t be historic. Right now, they are historic, and they need our support and rescue!

Many people are currently asking whether HBCUs are worth saving in the first place. I ask, how can these historical institutions, which represent African American culture, tradition, and struggle for educational equality, not be considered worth saving? If they are not worth saving, then it makes it very difficult to find any other piece of African American heritage that is worth saving. These educational institutions are symbols of our people that must not be ignored.

I urge those who care about these institutions to speak out, show your support, and demand that adequate funding be provided to them so that they can make it through these turbulent economic times. It’s not just about saving a college or university. This is a metaphor for saving ourselves! With proper funding, these schools will thrive, carrying on our culture and traditions as they were meant to do.

The HBCU Advantage, Part I: A Lesson in Thriving While in Dire Financial Straits

Today, most Historically Black Colleges and Universities fight financial ruin as they struggle to find their new position in today’s integrated world. Getting the funds to not only survive, but blossom, is an exercise in creativity—and HBCUs are up to the challenge. Want to know how? This chapter covers some of their latest undertakings.

Why HBCUs love donations (hint: it’s not the money)

Stephen A. Smith, best known for his work on the ESPN show “First Take,” plans to give $250,000 to his alma mater, Winston-Salem University. According to Journalnow.com, Smith is dedicated to aiding the school he loves.

Smith made the announcement during a fundraiser for Winston-Salem where he pledged to give $50,000 per year for the next five years to the school.

While speaking, Smith said that HBCUs need assistance and that he and other alumni should step up to the plate to help the schools thrive.

“A lot of HBCUs are hurting financially, but I’m here to tell you they are needed in a big way.”

Smith was a big hit at breakfast, and his announcement regarding his generous donation came as a shock to the university. Smith did not mention it ahead of his speech, apparently, and so the sounds of shock in the room were genuine. Elwood Robinson, the school’s chancellor, was left speechless because he was unaware that Smith planned to give so much back to the school at one time.

“But to do what he did and back it up like that and it’s just tremendous. It just speaks of the commitment he has to this university, and it goes back to what Big House Gaines taught so many of his players and students, and that’s to give back,” said Robinson.

Big House Gaines was Smith’s basketball coach when he attended Winston-Salem, and because of Smith’s generosity towards his former school, he was inducted into the Big House Gaines Hall of Fame.

I think what Smith did is admirable and will hopefully set the stage for other HBCU alumni to donate to the schools that helped them reach success. With so much competition for education available, it’s important that HBCUs are supported both in spirit and in tangible funds by the people they have graduated.

It’s not just alumni donations that are welcome. Donations from outside organizations seem to be popular as well.

One church was certainly generous with its gifts

Many students headed to Historically Black Colleges and Universities this fall received fantastic going away presents from Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia. It gave away more than $2 million in scholarships to high school students on their way to HBCUs later this year.

The event held at T.C. Williams High School, the school made famous by the movie Remember the Titans starring Denzel Washington, hosted the 14th annual HBCU College Festival where more than 3,000 students, parents, and volunteers attended.

More than 60 HBCUs were represented at the festival, and many students attained full ride scholarships to an HBCU.

Over $40,000 in application fees were waived, and in addition to the full scholarships given, close to 170 students received merit scholarships on site.

With over 5,000 students registered to attend, the event was the largest in the festival’s history. While students from Virginia were there, others came from areas such as Florida, New York, Illinois, and other places.

It was, to say the least, a resounding success. The event showed why HBCUs are so important and how the community may come together for a great cause.

Some students who received scholarships and money for college at the event may have received a once in a lifetime opportunity as the cost of college tuition, and fees continue to rise.

State legislators have cut into budgets for higher education, and Congress has attempted to curtail the available dollars for Pell Grants.

But the great news for students who may see a bleak future due to current events is that we still have organizations and churches that are willing to provide support for students who need it, and for those who deserve it.

Next year’s festival is likely to be just as successful, and with more than $2 million given out in scholarship money this year, hopefully, more is handed out in 2017.

Let’s look at another donation given to support HBCU excellence

Duke Energy is putting its financial support behind Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

By way of Prnewswire.com, the energy giant gave a grant of $35,000 to the North Carolina organization The Institute to supports its new HBCU Leadership Exchange.

A non-profit that supports business diversity, The Institute will soon launch the HBCU Leadership Exchange to help support and forge relationships between corporations and students enrolled at HBCUs in North Carolina.

In short, The Institute’s new program will look to connect students at HBCUs with jobs in corporate America. It’s not a bad program to build as diversity within the corporate field–specifically technology–is always a hot button topic.

The Institute has a track record of aiding minority business development as the group offers services to assist the growth of small businesses. As The Institute has been around for more than three decades, the HBCU Leadership Exchange is starting off with strong backing.

Also–Duke Energy gives close to $30 million in grants each year in areas such as education, economic development, the environment, and much more.

But this new program has potential to serve a grand number of black students. While the grant from Duke Energy isn’t substantial, it at least gives The Institute a portion of the starting funds needed to help launch the program.

With no reason to believe that the exchange will not have success, Duke Energy will likely to continue to provide financial support that will only grow in the future.

As mentioned previously, the goal of this new exchange is to foster relationships between corporations and HBCU students.

Students who are looking for jobs in a specific area will likely be paired with mentors or given the opportunity to meet and greet leaders from certain industries.

With growth and limitless potential on the horizon, students at HBCUs in North Carolina should be excited about this new venture.

Here’s something interesting about the nature of these donations: they’re not just about helping the schools stay afloat. A lot of money goes to help students go to school, preparing the next generation of students for the workforce. Notice also the donation to The Institute, where the eventual goal is better-represented leadership in corporate America. The money that is being used to further HBCU causes is an investment in tomorrow, rather than a means to survive today. There’s something admirable about this.

Is the government finally on board? Government support increases

In recent years, it seems like HBCUs have been dwindling into obscurity. They have been fighting potential obsolescence as more black students choose to attend predominantly white universities. To stick around, they have needed to rebrand themselves or establish the kind of reputation that keeps students dying to attend.  Unfortunately, many schools have been unable to do this and have faced de-funding and closing.

But it seems as if recently, the government is realizing just how important these institutions are.

For example, to advance the goals of HBCUs, North Carolina Congresswoman Alma Adams has introduced the HBCU Innovation Fund Act. The bill would create a fund that would make the availability of $250 million in grants open to Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

To improve viability, student achievement, rates of graduation, enrollment figures, and more, the accessibility of grant money to HBCUs would help to push them towards modernization.

As HBCUs continue to receive press regarding how some schools are doing financially, and if segregation regarding offered programs occurs, it is refreshing to see that all HBCUs may receive a boost if this bill passes.

The legislation, H.R. 4857, was lauded by the United Negro College Fund as innovative and has over 15 co-sponsors in Congress.

If the bill passes, it will open HBCUs up to more than just money and opportunity. Grant money would be used to help remodel certain courses and create new programs. As with the new Queer and Cultural Studies program being offered at Bowie State University, more programs of this nature may be cultivated through HBCUs if H.R. 4857 is passed.

There will be more opportunities for inclusion and recruitment, and retention efforts will certainly increase.

Some HBCUs struggle to maintain strong enrollment numbers, particularly in a culture where online learning often replace on-campus initiatives. This bill would hopefully help many HBCUs create stronger programs to go after more students.

But more than anything, this legislation would make HBCUs more competitive in an educational environment that has changed. Some schools have failed to keep up, through no fault of its own, and some are beginning to fall behind.

Stemming that tide and keeping HBCUs around so that more students of color are served, and the cultural importance of each school is maintained, an HBCU fund for innovation and is needed and welcomed.

It may be a while before the HBCU Innovation Fund Act makes its way into law. Fortunately, there will also be more immediate funds available for HBCUs over the next fiscal year.

According to Salisburypost.com, funding for the federal program that provides financial assistance for HBCUs will increase nearly $400 million. That’s good news for some of the country’s oldest universities and trailblazers for providing a college education for everyone.

“The omnibus spending bill provides a $22 million increase for the Title III Strengthening Historically Black Colleges and Universities program administered by the U.S. Department of Education, providing the largest funding boost for the program in six years. As a result, total program funding will increase to $387 million in Fiscal Year 2016.”

The new money included in the spending bill will continue to help some of these schools recruit new students, replenish endowments, and perhaps most important, buy cutting-edge technology.

United Negro College Fund CEO Dr. Michael Lomax believes that this funding will work towards making HBCUs more attractive to new students and said as much in the Salisburypost.com article. I share Dr. Lomax’s belief that HBCUs need to be protected as part of the important college landscape in America.

For the past couple of years, the HBCU category of schools has been under increased scrutiny due to financial reasons and because some schools have been forced to close. There has also been some criticism that the very roles HBCUs were created to take on are not as relevant in today’s diverse college population. I’d argue that the first problem can see potential improvement with federal funding and a bigger cash influx from alumni, private donors, and business partnerships. I’d also argue that though the primary role of HBCUs has evolved, they are more relevant than ever and we should continue to support them.

While increased funding will not cure each and every problem that HBCUs have, it will alleviate some of the financial pressure that some schools face – so I think this funding is a step in the right direction.

Creative ways HBCUs are generating revenue

Many institutions of higher education are looking to carve new avenues to create revenue.

Howard University is no exception—except that it has stumbled across something old to inject new money into the university.

Jair Lynch Real Estate has entered into a deal with Howard University to develop Meridian Hill dormitory into luxury rentals available to the general public.

The move will ease some of the financial pain the school has felt over the years. An idea first pitched by Howard President Wayne Frederick a couple of years ago; the school finally pulled the trigger on the deal this month.

According to Washingtonpost.com, Howard will still own the property and required Jair Lynch to pay an upfront fee of $22 million for the rights to redevelop the property.

Over the past few years, Howard’s financial health has come into question as the school’s credit has been downgraded twice and the school’s staff has been reorganized or cut.

To contend with those issues, Frederick identified the school’s real estate as a way to drive new income. Valued at over $1.5 billion, Howard has a lot to review regarding what it may sell or lease.

But Frederick and school officials aren’t ready to sell off everything. Taking their time to evaluate what’s in the school’s best interest, they don’t seem to be in a rush.

Every move hasn’t been met with open arms. The school has decided to enter into an FCC auction for its airwaves that may bring in upwards of $461 million. That would mean that Howard would rid itself of WHUT-TV; a sale that is sure to upset alumni and students.

The decision to enter into the auction isn’t final as the school has until March to decide if it still wants to participate. Howard may decide to opt-out as there is no guarantee that it will receive a value of $461 million for its airwaves.

I applaud Howard’s decision to tap the resources it already has to stabilize revenue, and it will be fascinating to see what sort of interest is sparked for the luxury apartments.

Conclusion

Overall, it’s great to see how much support HBCUs are getting, and how much effort the colleges themselves are putting into being their best yet. While it’s true that we are in challenging times for HBCUs, the moves HBCUs and their supporters are making will ensure that these challenges are merely growing pains, rather than the end of the road.