enosynce is virtuous

Something Museworthy...

...It seems as if traditional HBCU's are expanding


Black colleges diversifying by recruiting more Hispanics
DORIE TURNER
Associated Press
ATLANTA - Squeezed by stiff competition for their traditional students, historically black colleges are making a push to recruit Hispanics.

While the country's Hispanic population is booming, the number of blacks is growing at a much slower rate and other colleges are doing more to attract them. Black colleges that want to shore up enrollment numbers are revising recruitment strategies to include more members of the nation's largest and fastest-growing minority.

The campuses are hiring Hispanic recruiters, distributing brochures featuring Hispanic students, and establishing special scholarships for Hispanics. At the historically black Texas Southern University in Houston, the school has started five Hispanic student organizations, including fraternities and sororities, to help make the campus more inviting.

"I tell them 'There's a place for you and a need for Latinos to be present on (historically black) campuses," said Nelson Santiago, a recruiter for the historically black Howard University in Washington, D.C. A native of Puerto Rico, Santiago talks to students about his experiences as a student at Howard, where he graduated in 2001.

Recruiters like Santiago and from other schools including the all-male Morehouse College in Atlanta are visiting predominantly Hispanic high schools and setting up booths at college fairs geared toward Hispanic students. Morehouse sends recruiters to high schools in south Florida, New York, east Texas and Los Angeles - areas with large Hispanic populations.

"Considering Latinos and African-Americans share a lot of history together that they don't realize, I think it's a good idea," said John Miranda, of Silver Spring, Md., one of 15 Hispanics enrolled at the 2,800-student Morehouse.

Miranda, the 21-year-old son of Brazilian immigrants, said he picked Morehouse because he was offered a full-ride scholarship funded by an Atlanta foundation that promotes the education of Hispanics.

Morehouse's goal is for at least 5 percent of its student body to be made up of Hispanics within five years. If its current overall enrollment holds steady, the school will need 125 more Hispanic students by 2011 to reach that goal.

While the idea has been greeted with open arms by the college's administrators, some students and alumni said they are mixed about actively recruiting Hispanics to historically black colleges.

"I do have concerns," said Earl Nero, a retired Atlanta businessman who graduated from Morehouse in 1974. "Since the college has determined they want to stay the same size they are, that would take away space from qualified African-American students."

But having other minorities attending a historically black college will help them get "a real life view about what black people are all about," Nero added.

Student James Travis, who is black, said having other students of other races on a historically black campus bothers him "a little bit" because it challenges the college's mission.

"It's supposed to maintain the historically black tradition," said the 21-year-old student from the Atlanta suburb of College Park. "I'll have to see how it goes before I see if I want to change the situation or not."

Still, educators say the nation's two largest minority groups are a natural fit on a college campus.

"They are both underserved communities when it comes to higher education," said Michael Lomax, president and CEO of the United Negro College Fund. "We have got to educate them so that we can have a competitive workforce in the 21st century."

The number of Hispanic students attending historically black colleges increased more than 60 percent from 1994 to 2004, while the number of black students grew by 35 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

In the 1990s, Hispanics surpassed blacks as the nation's largest minority. The number of Hispanics in the United States grew by nearly 60 percent that decade, while the number of blacks only grew by about 15 percent.

At the same time, the competition for black students has increased as public colleges nationwide try to improve diversity by recruiting more minorities. Some state higher education systems, especially in the South, also have been forced by federal courts to meet specific black recruitment goals under desegregation lawsuits still lingering from the 1960s.

"All colleges want to have a presence of African-American male students on their campus. It makes the competition very tough," said Sterling Hudson, dean of admissions and records at Morehouse.

Five years ago, Texas Southern hired a Hispanic recruiter and began producing recruitment materials targeting Hispanics. Since then, Hispanic student enrollment has grown from 316 to almost 550. Right now, Hispanics make up about 5 percent of the 11,000-student body.

"We have the advantage as a HBCU to cater to the minority - small classroom, small family-type environment," said Hasan Jamil, assistant vice president for enrollment services.

Howard has about 170 Hispanic out of 11,500 students after several years of focused recruiting. Interim admissions director Linda Sanders-Hawkins said with the country's growing Hispanic population, recruiting is not as tough as it once was.

Miranda, one of only 15 Hispanics at Morehouse, said it has not bothered him being on a majority black campus.

"Since I've been at Morehouse, I've gotten a different perspective on a lot of things," Miranda said, referring to black history. "I learned a lot that was left out of the schooling I got."

ON THE NET

Morehouse College: http://www.morehouse.edu

Texas Southern University: http://www.tsu.edu

Howard University: http://www.howard.edu

United Negro College Fund: http://uncf.org


SOUCE

...there's lots of debate about this one. On one hand, HBCU's are TRADITIONALLY and Historically Black (or, you could argue some of them were built by whites for blacks)..that's all....and in this day and age, it would be unconstitutional to deny someone based on race, so what's the big deal? On another hand, these schools are ACTIVELY recruiting Hispanics, so no doubt, lots of Blacks will have something to say about that. One of my professors (Dr. Akinyele A. Umoja if you wanna google him) taught at Morehouse, and then drifted over to white dominated Georgia State University. According to him, statistics show that Georgia State (my school) has a higher percentage of Black attendance than Morehouse and Spelman combined. Which had some influence on his descision to teach here. Speaking for my self, Georgia State was NOT my first choice. As a matter of fact, it trailed behind Grambling and Clark. G-State offered me a Presidentail Assistance award + HOPE paying for everything + the Pell chipping in (I don't have to pay shit back basically) = a nice amount of change left over to me. If my memory serves me correctly, even Clark's application fees were off the chain. And I was just a po' black girl from Georgia, tryna get up out the hood if you get my drift. I barely hustled $25 dollars to take the SATs one time, let alone $50 and $60 to apply to Clark. And we're not even gonna get on that tuition. Shid. Even with my scholarships, I would've STILL come out the pocket to cover Clark's tuition. So I guess I stayed with G-State.

HBCU needs students, and with cheaper tuition fees bribing students to attend White majority schools, their tuition is gonna keep rising I presume. If these costs are steadily rising, students like myself are less likely to apply. And if people stop applying, the school may no longer exist (see Morris Brown). So they have to recruit someone...right?

*sigh*. I dunno. Another thing I just thought of is how Blacks don't support anything Black. And let me rephrase myself: SOME Blacks. We're taught that anything White is better, and we don't even value our own educational systems. I went to a majority White high school up until my final year. Then I transferred to a Black one, where they were technologically behind, the building was fucked up (freeze in the winter, burn in the Summer), handmedown textbooks (my social studies text didn't even have Clinton in it), and the teacher's barely knew shit. Talk about a downgrade. When you put a black school in a black community and that black community is damn near poor, of course the school is destined to be shitty. Or scratch that, when the community doesn't know how to handle finances (see buying high price-assed tennises, Playstations, but complain like hell at the cost of a computer), the school is destined to be shitty. So, my granny always put it in my head that "those white schools up in Dunwoody and shit" got labtops for every student...blah blah blah". So naturally, you deal with the inside racism at the white schools, and stray from the black ones.

Labels: black folks

posted by ~Kesh @ 8/09/2006 09:21:00 AM