The Best HBCU

Last update: Friday 2/26/16

There is no such thing as "the best HBCU, the second best HBCU, the third best HBCU, etc"; nor is there such a thing as "the best predominantly White institution (PWI) of higher learning, second best, third best, etc. " Annual "rankings" of colleges and universities are nothing more than mildly entertaining bits of gossip whose primary function is to promote the sales of the magazines in which they appear. They should never be taken seriously.

Why Are HBCUs Still Needed? -- Part I

A. Context

We are now 55 years from the Supreme Court’s 1954 desegregation decision and 45 years from the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965. As a result of these judicial/legislative landmarks that outlawed de jure segregation and undermined the persistence of de facto segregation, the vast majority of African American students no longer attend HBCUs. So it is fair to ask: why does America still need colleges and universities that continue to have enrollments that are mostly Black, even if this racial imbalance is maintained voluntarily?

Cyberinfrastructure -- the Digital Divide, Part 2?

Over the course of the last five or six years, the National Science Foundation has synthesized a coherent vision of some the most important emerging developments in science and technology, developments that it is prepared to support as part of its mandate to promote scientific and engineering initiatives that will help the U.S. maintain its position of global leadership. Recalling that the great industrial economies of the past were based on infrastructures that included roads, water, sewer, power grids, telephone systems, etc, NSF views the underpinnings of the emerging knowledge economies as "cyberinfrastructures." NSF's "Cyberinfrastructure Vision for 21st Century Discovery", March 2007, presents its most recent comprehensive description of its vision.

Reading NSF's documents leaves the Editor with a queasy feeling of "deja-vu all over again". Way back in the early 1990's when Vice President Gore was crisscrossing the country waving his arms about the coming "Information Superhighway", the nation's most prominent universities invested heavily in the acquisition of Internet connections, computer labs, LANs, routers, courseware, and most significantly, upgrading the IT skills of their faculties, staffs, and students; unfortunately, HBCUs were slow to get started.

By the end of the 1990's, the so-called "Digital Divide" had become the latest manifestation of economic disadvantage for African Americans and other minorities. HBCUS then made heroic efforts to catch up, creating impressive Websites that proclaimed their acquisition of computer labs, courseware, and Internet savvy. But they failed to realize that technology is primarily about people. Hence they failed to make comparable investments in upgrading the IT skills of their faculty, staff, and students.

So here comes another information revolution. Will HBCUs again be slow to get started? Will they again fail to recognize that new hardware and software and network gear are not enough, that people are the most critical components of the emerging cyberinfrastructure, that HBCUs must also make substantial investments in providing new IT skill sets for their faculty, staff, and students?