The Funding Gap: HBCU’s vs White Colleges

COLLEGE LIFESTYLE

There has been a lot of talk about the HBCU community not receiving basic funds for university needs. It is known that HBCU’ s make up 31% of colleges and universities and only produce 30% of black students with bachelor degrees.

Recently a 13-year old federal law suite has finally come to a head settling between four HBCU schools, Morgan State University, Coppin State University, Bowie University and University of Maryland Eastern Shore, granting them $580 million over a 10-year span. These universities were being under cut from funding while programs were being shut down and replaced by universities with white counterparts. The money is supposed to establish new programs and invest in under-enrolled programs at the universities, more scholarships, financial aid programs, new faculty and new training.

With all of these new great ideas, has the question aroused why this “mistake” happened in the first place? And the second question that should be asked is does the settlement between the schools enough money for each school to establish their goals to be able to have fair play with white colleges?

Honestly, I don’t think it is. The amount granted to all the colleges from the court still did not even come close to being equivalent to what our white college and university counterparts are receiving in one donation.

Collectively the four main HBCU schools only received $577 million dollars to split between 4 HBCUs. Now, forgive me sounding “ungrateful” but what in the world are 4 HBCU schools supposed to do with $577 million dollars split over a course of years? Which if I am adding correctly equals an even smaller $144,250,000 for each university to walk away with. Now the fact does stand that this money is supposed to create upgraded resources to less popular major programs to stimulate its growth and also suppose to grant more financial aid to more students.

Now just from a couple google searches I was able to find out that other white school couter-parts humbly receive consecutive donations of over a million dollars all the time, multiple times a year. So, let’s ask the important question, why is there a funding gap when it comes to HBCU schools versus white schools?