Panel: HBCUs Determined To Keep Pace With 21st Century
WASHINGTON--Historically Black colleges and universities will meet the challenges of the 21st century, which include retaining young Black men, evolving to meet the modern workforce and continuing to reinforce moral and community values, said panelists Thursday at a summit of HBCUs held here.
"I think we in education have been very protective of our turf...We've been reluctant to change," declared Frank Matthews, editor of Black Issues In Higher Education magazine. He was a panelist at the summit of the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education, the national organization of America’s 118 HBCUs.
The panel, called "What It Means To Be Educated In The 21st Century," included James Renick, chancellor of North Carolina A&T State University; William B. Harvey, vice president of the American Council on Education; Arden Bement Jr., director of the National Science Foundation; Thelma Thompson, president of the University of Maryland Eastern Shore and Jim Clinton, executive director of the Southern Growth Policies Board.
Bement named the American classroom as the only institution that hasn't changed in a century. But, as he Thompson and others pointed out, that the world around them is--and doing so rapidly. Thompson said an educated person is now defined as a person who now must teach him or herself skills.
Clinton said his definition of being prepared was seeing where shifts in employment were coming—for example, with the rapid growth of health care and computer-related jobs. "I think it means that you understand that you can never know enough," he asserted, calling for colleges to constantly re-create themselves.
Thompson said her HBCU saw those shifts, and kept their academic programs in hospitality, construction and aeronautics.
Matthews lamented that a current challenge is the retention of its male students. He quoted the statistic--one not disputed by the HBCU officials present--that 80 percent of Black males who attend HBCUs drop out at some point. He labeled Black education as being "in crisis."
HBCUs must continue to meet a variety of the needs of its student patrons, said Portia Shields, outgoing president of Albany State University and chair of the conference. For example, her campus requires community service and time abroad. "We need to make sure that when we say it's (our campus experience) is different, we're not blowing smoke," she declared.
Shields' value-added emphasis on reinforcing traditional moral values was echoed by many panelists. Harvey, for example, said the future Black scientists and engineers HBCUs must create must not only be technically proficient, but filled with empathy and community commitment.
"The purpose of education is not just about what benefits them, but what benefits all of us," he declared.
Renick said HBCUs have--and still do--show its students what to value. It counters today's televised images of Black men and women and fights what he called the Black communities mortgaging "of our future to images in the media."
Thompson said she grows tired of the question whether HBCUs will be needed in the future, as if the reasons they were created in the first place have suddenly become irrelevant. "Nobody asks if we still need religious (educational) institutions and military (educational) institutions," she argued.
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Posted By: Will Moss
Wednesday, April 27th 2005 at 4:42AM
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