A. Traditional Roles of HBCUs
In its comprehensive response to the question "Why
are HBCUs important?", the Website
of the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) notes that:
"HBCUs graduate far more than their share of
African American professionals. While the 105 HBCUs represent just
3% of the nation’s institutions of higher learning, they graduate
nearly one-quarter of African Americans who earn undergraduate degrees.
Put another way, HBCUs graduate 75% more of their African American
students than other schools do."
This statement is illustrated by the data in:
As the reader will see upon clicking this link, the
table shows the number of Bachelors degrees awarded to African-Americans
by the fifty accredited U.S. colleges and universities that awarded
the most Bachelors degrees to African-Americans in all fields in the
2003/2004 academic year. Twelve out of the top fifteen institutions
were HBCUs.
B. Emerging Roles of For-Profit Institutions
Unfortunately, job markets in the current millennium
do not place equal value on all fields of study. Accordingly the DLL
examined the distribution of degrees awarded at the bachelors level
in two of the most information-technology intensive fields of study:
business and computers.
They were selected because many potential partners in the for-profit
sector advertise extensive course offerings in these fields. The number
of bachelors degrees awarded in 2003/2004 to African-American business
majors is shown in:
- Table
A2 -- Bachelors Degrees in Business
As the reader will see upon clicking this URL, only
two of the top 15 schools (FAMU and Howard) are HBCUs, and two of
the top fifteen are for-profit institutions (Strayer University and
Monroe College). Indeed the top two for-profit operations
produced almost as many graduates (531) as the top two HBCUs (581).
Overall, however, UNCF's assertion is still supported by this data
because the thirteen HBCUs in the top 50 produced 2283 of the 8989
graduates from all 50 institutions, i.e., 25 percent.
This situation is somewhat different for bachelors
in computer-related fields, as shown in:
- Table
A3 -- Bachelors Degrees in Computers/Information Systems
Table A3 shows that the for-profit institutions rack
up five out of the top six positions. The top five
for-profits graduated more than twice as many African-Americans (842)
in these critical fields as did all of the top five HBCUs (384). Indeed
the thirteen for-profits that appear on this top 50 list graduated
more African-Americans (1115) than all of the twenty-one HBCUs (996
on this top 50 list. In other words, the for-profit institutions produced
38 percent of the total (2919) number of African-American graduates
produced by the top 50 colleges and universities -- a result that will probably surprise most of the readers of this report.
Moving up to the Masters degrees, we find only two
HBCUs (Prairie View and FAMU) in the top 15 for all degrees awarded
in 2003/2004, but three for-profits score at this level (Phoenix,
Strayer, and DeVry), as shown in:
The ten HBCUs on the top 50 list produced a total
of 2625 graduates, which is only 16 percent of the 16133 African-American
graduates produced by all 50 schools on the list. This indicates that
HBCUs play a less significant role at the Masters level than at the
Bachelors level. Indeed, when we focus on the business
Masters, the union card of America's corporate managers, the data
in the next table not only confirms relatively lower contributions
from HBCUs, it also shows that for-profit institutions are, again,
producing a surprisingly high percentage of the nation's African-American
graduates:
There are seven for-profits in the top 50, but only
three HBCUs. Furthermore, the for-profits produced more than four
times as many African-American business graduates (1471) as the HBCUs
(341). Overall the for-profits produced 23 percent of the total (6334).
In other words, the much publicized MBA degree that superstar basketball
player Shaquille
O'Neal received from the University of Phoenix in 2005 (one year
later) was just the glittering tip of a very broad iceberg. Similar
results are observed for computer-related Masters degrees, as shown
in:
- Table
B3 -- Masters Degrees in Computers/Information Systems
The seven for-profits on this list produced 2.6 times
as many graduates as the five HBCUs. Overall the for-profits accounted
for 21 percent of the graduates produced by all of the schools on
this list.
Summarizing these tables, it can be said that in business
and in computer-related studies at both the Bachelors and Masters
levels, a number of for-profit institutions have taken on roles traditionally
associated with HBCUs as the producers of disproportionately large
percentages of African-American graduates. |