S P O N S O R E D B Y :
Black Colleges Struggle to Keep Students
By The Associated Press
September 29, 2006
When Jessica Page visited
Hampton University in March, she considered the trip a formality. She
had already made up her mind to attend the school, considered by many a jewel
among the nation's historically black institutions. Then she saw the
campus.
The dorms weren't as sleek as she had pictured.
Buildings seemed antiquated. Was this "The Real HU" she had heard
about?
"I wasn't impressed," said Page, who later enrolled
at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. "Hampton was my No. 1 choice—until I
visited."
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Page is part of a steady trickle of talented young
blacks slipping away from the nation's most prestigious black
colleges.
Experts say aging campuses are one reason. But
other reasons cited include increasing competition from predominantly white
schools that are trying to become more diverse; changes in black students'
desires; and the greater opportunities available to them in a society more
integrated than that of their parents.
The exodus has left some black schools struggling
to market themselves to youngsters who do not feel as duty-bound to attend black
colleges as their parents did.
"The issue for black colleges is not, in my view,
that there are not enough students to go around," said Michael Lomax, president
of the United Negro College Fund. Instead, "students have a lot more choices and
those students are being careful and more selective than ever
before."
There are 103 historically black colleges and
universities across the nation. Clustered mostly in the South, they were largely
funded during the Reconstruction by wealthy whites as an alternative to
universities that had shut out blacks.
For generations, these schools were valued by
blacks for their unique campus traditions, their family-like environment and
their skill at grooming the nation's black intellectual
elite.
But the attraction appears to be
waning.
Total U.S. college enrollment of black men and women ages 18
to 24 has increased from 15 percent in 1970 to roughly 25 percent in 2003. The
number of black students enrolling in historically black schools has slowly
increased too, from 190,305 in 1976 to more than 230,000 in
2001.
But the percentage of black college students
choosing a black school has been slipping, from 18.4 percent in 1976 to 12.9
percent in 2001, according to the U.S. Education Department's most recent
figures.
Twenty-six of 87 black schools profiled by the
department recorded enrollment declines between 1995 and
2004.
Experts say one explanation is that predominantly
white—and often elite—colleges and universities have been working hard to
attract and keep black students.
At Virginia, for instance, incoming black students are paired
with black upperclassmen who can give them guidance. Last year, the school
expanded a financial-aid program. And when black students enroll, they are
presented a stole of bright African cloth in a ceremony called the "Donning of
the Kente." (AP)
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