Future of HBCUs Hinges on Ability to Evolve - Higher Education: For more than half a century, historically Black colleges and universities educated thousands of teachers, social workers, ministers, physicians, lawyers, scientists in all fields, aviators and business men and women. Now, the institutions, most of them historically poorly funded, with limited wealthy alumni and limited academic offerings, have to face a new future, one they had once championed to replace the evils of racial segregation.
As previously closed doors across the South opened, HBCUs discovered they had no real plan for maintaining and growing in the post-segregation era.
Today, with as many college-bound Black students headed to majority institutions as HBCUs, many HBCUs are struggling. Thousands of once-captive college-bound students are beyond their competitive reach. Only a handful of HBCUs have successfully navigated the transition, while most have become more marginal than they were during the days of segregation. Most are scrambling to reinvent in order to not only retain their traditional audiences, but to broaden their appeal to other minority and non-minority groups.
