In this edited collection, the authors grapple with both the strengths and challenges that HBCUs face as the nation's demographics change, from their place in American society and growing diversity on HBCU campuses to class and elitism issues to study abroad and honors programs.

Despite the declaration that we are living in a “post-racial America,” multiple recent events in which Black lives were prematurely ended have sparked a racial reckoning within the United States. Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are institutions with a long history of addressing racial disparities and injustices whose relevance is being recognized in light of these recent events. It is essential to give voice to those who represent the ongoing challenges, aspirations, and impact of HBCUs in the 21st century in upholding their collective mission to educate students of color who were historically excluded from institutions of higher education. Contributions of Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the 21st Century focuses on the role of HBCUs in contemporary American society as diverse and inclusive environments that continue to positively impact historically excluded students. The voices of faculty, students, and administration are included to highlight the innovations and contributions of HBCUs in the areas of scholarship, teaching, and service. Covering topics such as BlaQ Lives Matter, community activism, and self-advocacy, this premier reference source is a valuable resource for sociologists, higher education administration, graduate programs, faculty and administrators at HBCUs, students and educators of higher education, libraries, government officials, activists, non-profit organizations, researchers, and academicians.

“A book that both taught me so much and also kept me on the edge of my seat. It is an invaluable text from a supremely talented writer.” —Clint Smith, author of How the Word is Passed The definitive history of the pervasiveness of racial inequality in American higher education America’s colleges and universities have a shameful secret: they have never given Black people a fair chance to succeed. From its inception, our higher education system was not built on equality or accessibility, but on educating—and prioritizing—white students. Black students have always been an afterthought. While governments and private donors funnel money into majority white schools, historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), and other institutions that have high enrollments of Black students, are struggling to survive, with state legislatures siphoning away federal funds that are legally owed to these schools. In The State Must Provide, Adam Harris reckons with the history of a higher education system that has systematically excluded Black people from its benefits. Harris weaves through the legal, social, and political obstacles erected to block equitable education in the United States, studying the Black Americans who fought their way to an education, pivotal Supreme Court cases like Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education, and the government’s role in creating and upholding a segregated education system. He explores the role that Civil War–era legislation intended to bring agricultural education to the masses had in creating the HBCUs that have played such a major part in educating Black students when other state and private institutions refused to accept them. The State Must Provide is the definitive chronicle of higher education’s failed attempts at equality and the long road still in front of us to remedy centuries of racial discrimination—and poses a daring solution to help solve the underfunding of HBCUs. Told through a vivid cast of characters, The State Must Provide examines what happened before and after schools were supposedly integrated in the twentieth century, and why higher education remains broken to this day.

This narrative provides a comprehensive history of America's Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). The book concludes that race, the Civil Rights movements, and black and white philanthropy had much affect on the development of these minority institutions. Northern white philanthropy had much to do with the start and maintenance of the nation's HBCUs from 1837 into the 1940s. Even from 1950 to 1970, HBCUs depended upon financial support of philanthropic groups, benevolent societies, and federal and state government agencies, but the survival of HBCUs became dependent mostly on their own creative responses to the changing environment of higher education. America's Historically Black Colleges shows how black colleges began than arduous nineteenth-century journey, providing higher education for former slaves and their African-American descendants-as well as for other students struggling for institutional survival most of the time, but adapted themselves to new missions and adjusted to recent and challenging developments in American higher education, Far from being institutions of higher educators the HBCES have helped to shape our culture and society. Book jacket.

Are colleges and universities in a period of unprecedented disruption? Is a bachelor's degree still worth the investment? Are the humanities coming to an end? What, exactly, is higher education good for? In For the Common Good, Charles Dorn challenges the rhetoric of America's so-called crisis in higher education by investigating two centuries of college and university history. From the community college to the elite research university—in states from California to Maine—Dorn engages a fundamental question confronted by higher education institutions ever since the nation's founding: Do colleges and universities contribute to the common good? Tracking changes in the prevailing social ethos between the late eighteenth and early twenty-first centuries, Dorn illustrates the ways in which civic-mindedness, practicality, commercialism, and affluence influenced higher education's dedication to the public good. Each ethos, long a part of American history and tradition, came to predominate over the others during one of the four chronological periods examined in the book, informing the character of institutional debates and telling the definitive story of its time. For the Common Good demonstrates how two hundred years of political, economic, and social change prompted transformation among colleges and universities—including the establishment of entirely new kinds of institutions—and refashioned higher education in the United States over time in essential and often vibrant ways.

The world is not an equal place. There are high- and low-income countries and high- and low-income households. For each group, there are differential educational opportunities, leading to differential educational outcomes and differential labor market opportunities. This pattern often reproduces the privileges and inequalities of groups in a society. This book explores this differentiation in education from a social justice lens. Comparing the United States and South Africa, this book analyzes each country’s developmental thinking on education, from human capital and human rights approaches, in both primary and higher education. The enclosed contributions draw from different disciplines including legal studies, sociology, psychology, computer science and public policy.

Winner of the Wesley-Logan Prize in African Diaspora History from the American Historical Association and the Benjamin Hooks National Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work on the American Civil Rights Movement and Its Legacy.

In this previously untold story of African American self-education, Heather Andrea Williams moves across time to examine African Americans' relationship to literacy during slavery, during the Civil War, and in the first decades of freedom. Self-Taught traces the historical antecedents to freedpeople's intense desire to become literate and demonstrates how the visions of enslaved African Americans emerged into plans and action once slavery ended. Enslaved people, Williams contends, placed great value in the practical power of literacy, whether it was to enable them to read the Bible for themselves or to keep informed of the abolition movement and later the progress of the Civil War. Some slaves devised creative and subversive means to acquire literacy, and when slavery ended, they became the first teachers of other freedpeople. Soon overwhelmed by the demands for education, they called on northern missionaries to come to their aid. Williams argues that by teaching, building schools, supporting teachers, resisting violence, and claiming education as a civil right, African Americans transformed the face of education in the South to the great benefit of both black and white southerners.

As higher educational learning enters a new age, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are seeking innovative ways to establish strategies to compete with other academic institutions. As establishments that have played a pivotal role in transforming the landscape of higher education, HBCUs are facing rapid transformation and various obstacles leading to questions regarding to the cost, quality, and sustainability of these institutions. Examining Student Retention and Engagement Strategies at Historically Black Colleges and Universities is a pivotal reference source that provides vital research on the role of HBCUs in today’s higher education and the various research methods addressing student retention rates, success levels, and engagement. While highlighting topics such as enrollment management, student engagement, and online learning, this publication explores successful engagement strategies that promote educational quality and equality, as well as the methods of social integration and involvement for students. This book is ideally designed for researchers, academicians, scholars, educational administrators, policymakers, graduate students, and curriculum designers.

As the educational landscape of America continues to evolve and diversify, college faculty and administrators must be cutting edge in their approaches to create a variety of educational experiences with a greater level of multicultural cognizance. Unlike in previous generations, higher education in the 21st Century is no longer a luxury reserved for the elite and wealthy, but is an increasing necessity for access to labor markets. Community colleges and universities are working hard to respond to the demands of the labor market, by attempting to provide skills for jobs that may not yet exist. Colleges and universities should aim to make all of their students feel welcome and a part of the campus being committed to celebrating differences. Additionally, filling faculty seats with varied races, cultures, perspectives and identities will aid in providing mentors and role models everyone can relate to. These are some of the vital steps toward building a campus community that helps students develop a sense of belonging that allows them to persist and thrive in college. The scholarship in this volume illustrates the state of multicultural education on college and university campuses. The authors bridge foundational knowledge with contemporary understandings; making the work both accessible for novices and beneficial for the authorities on multicultural education. This volume provides thoughtful discourse on issues ranging from the racial and ethnic diversity of the student and faculty bodies, and important topics like disability issues, to different educational contexts such as community colleges, HBCUs and HSI institutions.