From Normal Schools to Exceptional Schools: Historically Black Colleges and Universities’ Reimaging of Excellence in Exclusionary Higher Education Systems

• In Event: Imagining Excellence: Examining, Predicting, and Projecting the Future of Prestige in Higher Education

Abstract

This portion of the panel will engage in the tensions within the landscape and mission enactment of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU). Drawing from examples of HBCU’s work to redefine conceptualizations of prestige amidst pressures from the higher education landscape that antagonize HBCUs, this session will examine these tensions and efforts by HBCUs to underscore their distinct ways of redefining prestige through resistance.

HBCUs have been critical to the social, economic, and civic fabric of the United States. While they represent 3% of the nation’s institutions of Higher Education they are responsible for the development of 50% of all Black lawyers (Ehrenberg, 1996) and 80% of all Black judges (Fletcher & Fletcher, 2020). In the 2021-2022 academic year they trained 16% of all Black Engineers, 17% of all Black female Computer Scientists, and 15% of all Black male Computer Scientists (IPEDS, 2024). According to reports 40% of all Black faculty in Higher Education are graduates of HBCUs (Edwards et al., 2023). HBCUs have been instrumental in reimagining and redefining excellence for Black Americans for over 150 years. Since the first HBCU in 1837, they have sought to disrupt structural white supremacy and challenge the classical concept of prestige in education writ large, but primarily for how Black Americans are perceived. Such intentional activities of HBCUs are as important today as they were in the pre-civil rights era.

Post-civil rights era, the presence of HBCUs in Higher Education is a reminder of the overt and covert segregationist practices and policies intended to delegitimize their continued necessity. Contemporary research identifies not only the inequitable funding to HBCUs to the tune of billions (Adams & Tucker, 2022; Bonessi, 2020; Cox & Wiggins, 2020; VanDyke, 2022; Williams, 2020; Williams & Davis, 2021) but also the restrictive policies set to minimize academic offerings for their students (Bonessi, 2020). For example, in Texas, the two public HBCUs receive $2,500 less per student in state appropriations than the two flagship universities (Williams, 2020) thus decreasing the resources available to educate their students. In Maryland, for decades, state education regulators prohibited “program duplication” at HBCUs at rates higher than their non-HBCU state peers, thereby barring instruction and training in disciplines viewed as more prestigious, while simultaneously minimizing future enrollment for Maryland’s HBCUs. These practices have served as limiting factors to resources which make college matriculation less difficult at HBCUs, and ironically re-defining the prestige of not only getting in, but also “getting through” an HBCU degree program.
This re-appropriated concept of prestige for HBCUs is as important now as it was when post-secondary education was completely inaccessible for Black Americans. HBCUs are depictive as to their potential as access points for Black Americans to Higher Education. Given the historic exclusionary practices in Higher Education and the manner in which the concept of prestige has institutionalized white supremacist structures within it, this session will examine how HBCUs have sought to re-conceptualize prestige through integrated models of service and scholarship and how this serves as a model within higher education.

Author

• Erin Lynch, QEM Network