By: Donald V. Watkins
Copyrighted and Published on December 1, 2024
An Editorial Opinion
State-supported historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) were created as a legal remedy in states that did not admit Black students to historically White colleges and universities (HWCUs) after the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified on July 28, 1868.
Prior to ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, slaves of African descent were deemed to be “chattel property.” In 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court declared in Dred Scott v. Sandford that Blacks, whether enslaved or freed, had no rights that White men were bound to respect,
Upon ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, Blacks gained American citizenship, including the right to a public education in "separate but equal" schools.
After state-supported HBCUs were created for college-bound “Negroes,” they never received per student funding on par with their state-supported HWCU peer institutions (absent a court order). The “equal funding" aspect of the “separate but equal” doctrine enunciated in Supreme Court’s Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) case was willfully ignored by states throughout old Confederate states for over 100 years. The reason was simple -- White-controlled state legislatures saw no value of any kind in investing in HBCUs.
In the early 1980s, three state-supported HBCUs – Alabama State University (ASU), Alabama A&M University (AAMU), and Tennessee State University (TSU) -- sued their respective state governments for the equitable funding and expanded academic offerings that had been denied to them for over a century. These lawsuits were litigated for about 25 years and resulted in equitable funding for a brief period of time, the established of state-funded endowment funds, and new academic program offerings at each HBCU.
Upon the expiration of court-ordered equitable funding, Alabama and Tennessee promptly resumed their longtime pattern and practice of underfunding state-supported HBCUs.
On September 18, 2023, the U.S. Departments of Education and Agriculture declared that 16 land-grant HBCUs, including AAMU, were systematically underfunded during the past 30 years by a total of $13 billion. None of these 16 underfunded HBCUs attempted to collect its respective amount of the equitable funding money. Instead, the presidents of these HBCUs sought and received pay hikes, contract extensions, and/or "golden parachutes" for themselves.
A Fundamental Change on the Higher Education Landscape
On November 5, 2024, Donald J. Trump was elected president of the United States. Cutting waste in government and eliminating the U.S. Department of Education are two cornerstones of the incoming Trump administration.
A South African-born billionaire and "First Buddy" Elon Musk leads Trump’s initiative to eliminate wasteful government spending and promote government efficiency.
Trump and Musk are idolized in “Red states” where nearly all state-supported, undergraduate baccalaureate-granting, HBCUs are located.
As such, state-supported four-year HBCUs are at-risk of being dismantled due to this fundamental change in the political and higher education landscape. Now, the expenditure of billions of tax dollars on HBCUs (and similarly situated HWCUs) must be justified on a cost-efficiency basis at the federal and state government levels.
Under this analysis, the legal and financial justifications for the continued existence of state-supported HBCUs (and HWCUs with the same performance ratings) may no longer exist. This is true for several reasons.
First, Black college-bound students can now attend any college or university that their high school GPA and college admission test scores qualify them for. Those who fall short on the required academic credentials may gain admission through the athletic portal, if they excel in sports. Others can be admitted to community colleges and technical schools of their choice.
Furthermore, the federal court orders that directly benefitted and protected ASU, AAMU, and TSU expired many years ago.
Second, four-year graduation rates at state-supported HBCUs have been abysmal. The graduation rates at these HBCUs range from 20% to 30% each year. The four-year graduation rates at most HWCUs range from 60% to 80%.
The extremely low four-year graduation rates at state-supported HBCUs may be viewed by "Red state" legislatures as a poor return on the tens of billions of tax dollars invested annually in these institutions.
Third, despite a sea of opportunities to excel in a capitalistic society that creates emerging technologies and fuels global commerce, no state-supported HBCU in America has taken the initiative to become No. 1 in the world in any of the thousands of opportunity zones that feed this rapidly developing commercial growth. Instead, state-supported HBCUs appear to be hopelessly trapped in a “victim” mentality that keeps them on their knees begging for charity dollars and increased annual state appropriations.
Furthermore, state-supported HBCUs have placed little focus on potential revenues derived from dominance in sponsored research projects, proprietary patents that are capable of worldwide commercial application, and the surging cache of domestic and international licensing rights.
Epilogue
Without a legal justification for their continued existence and without carving out an earned place in global commerce, I expect state-supported HBCUs in the Old South will be dismantled in the near future much like Black high schools were dismantled during the desegregation of public schools in the 1960s and 70s.
From what I have observed, none of the state-supported HBCUs today has the will, courage, and/or ability to fight the dismantlement agenda described in this article. In 2023, one of them -- AAMU -- signed on to Donald Trump’s Project 2025 agenda without any pushback from the state's Black community.
Finally, prestigious private HBCUs will likely benefit from the dismantlement of state-supported HBCUs. Institutions like Tuskegee University, Morehouse College, Spelman College, Howard University, and Hampton Institute are among those private HBCUs that are expected to grow and thrive on the new higher education landscape.
Attendance at K-12 public schools is free and compulsory. Prior to "freedom of choice" and "school vouchers," children were assigned to their respective schools.
There is no right to a higher education in any state because attendance at a college or university is neither free nor compulsory. See, Alabama State Teachers Association v. Alabama Public School & College Authority, 289 F. Supp. 784 (M.D. Ala. 1968). Students choose which, if any, institution they will attend. In making that choice they face the full range of diversity in goals, facilities, equipment, course offerings, teacher training and salaries, and living arrangements.
Once state-supported HWCUs opened their doors to Black college-bound students, the legal justification for state supported HBCUs ceased to exist. At…
This is an uncomfortable subject, but at least we know what's on the horizon. Affirmative action is gone. DEI is gone. The Voting Rights Act has been gutted. State-supported HBCUs are the next ones up on the chopping block.