Separate But Better

The ignored stepchildren of American higher education are the nation's 105 black colleges. Long isolated by segregation, they have been almost as poorly served by integration. As predominantly white institutions have opened their doors to Negroes, many of the black schools' most promising applicants have been lured away. Major institutions have also undercut those schools by snapping up top black teachers and administrators. As first steps toward reversing this downward trend, the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education last week recommended that black colleges should remain black, upgrade their courses, and double their enrollment, perhaps as soon as 1980.

The reason is the pragmatic need to find more school space for Negro students. Despite the intensive efforts of white colleges and universities to increase their registration of blacks, less than one-fourth of 1970's qualified Negro high school graduates are attending college. By 1980, the commission believes, the number of blacks enrolled in college will rise from 492,000 to 1,100,000--and major integrated institutions will obviously not be able to take all of them. Although the Negro schools should not exclude whites--most of them, in fact, do have at least a few enrolled now--they will remain, in the commission's view, an "invaluable resource" for accommodating the pent-up black demand for higher education.

The commission also pointed out that the black colleges will have to improve notably in quality. Most of them are separate but unequal: only two schools have Ph.D. programs (Atlanta and Howard universities) and many are little more than teachers' colleges. The commission urged the black colleges to approach both the competition and the standards of "mainstream" schools by expanding the best of their black studies programs and adding courses leading to careers in business, accounting, computers and engineering. "Perhaps ten or twelve" of the smaller colleges, the commission said, should consider relocating or merging with larger institutions. To ease the shortage of black scholars, the Carnegie panel proposed that white colleges should loan faculty members on a part-time basis.

The basic need of the black colleges--as, indeed, of all schools--is more money. The commission recommended a tripling of federal aid, to $360 million per year. But the schools also require a lot more help from the private sector. Last year the Nixon Administration responded to the pleas of black-college presidents by increasing federal aid to Negro schools by $30 million, much of it on a matching-grant basis. So far, most of the colleges have been unable to raise the additional capital from private donations, and thus have had to let their federal funds go by the board.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.