HBCU Rankings

The Dark Side of HBCU Rankings

Every year, news publications produce rankings of America’s colleges and universities. And supporters of historically black colleges and universities particularly enjoy this annual review, not just for bragging rights on the worth of their schools, but for the national display of productivity and excellence in comparison to some of the nation’s most commercially-recognizable academic destinations.

But what these news outlets omit from these reports is far more meaningful and pertinent to the college experience, and for HBCUs, the data that isn’t seen perpetuates a true story being left untold. The HBCU legacy of providing access to the disenfranchised and achieving in the face of institutionalized depravity is one deserving of far more than rankings, but recourse from these same outlets.

There is a unique frailty to these rankings, a frailty that many college and university presidents at predominantly white institutions have long seethed about, and some at HBCUs have outright lamented. Publications like U.S. News & World Report and the Princeton Review use public opinion and hard numbers to sort the viability of schools, and freely admit that they are just mechanical foundations to aid the college selection process for parents and future students.

But they leave out the economic, social and cultural factors that would incline a poll taker or a reviewer of institutional data to mark HBCUs on the lower scale of capability. The U.S. News & World Report’s methodology for HBCUs includes the following quality indicators to construct an institutional rank:

• Peer assessment
• Retention
• Faculty resources
• Student selectivity
• Financial resources
• Alumni giving rate

Peer assessment, while a tangible measure to gauge public opinion, should never be used to account for an institution’s viability. There is no scientific way to account for negative or positive bias for or against one institution or another. That peer assessment accounts for 25 percent of a survey’s final score gives the message that popularity is the primary indicator of what makes a quality school.

Retention is perhaps the most dangerous measure for HBCUs, because it does not account for the mission-based efforts of these schools to provide opportunity to student populations most unprepared to enter the college setting. HBCUs cater to many first-generation college students with little-to-no direction on financial aid preparation or study skills. Many students come with zero financial or emotional support from family, and bring the baggage of loyalty to these family structures with them to the campus. Countless students, who work to finance school, are unable to balance professional and scholastic obligations.

And some are just lazy. But whatever the circumstances, HBCU have higher academic casualties than other institutions because they take the chance, regardless of student background or state of maturity. Retention rates cannot be measured and assessed without acknowledging the mission of all HBCUs, and how this mission impacts student selectivity and admission.

Additionally, it’s laughable for any HBCU to be ranked on faculty and financial resources. Federal offices have been established to monitor HBCUs and their treatment by state and federal government. Programs at HBCUs have been duplicated and eliminated by the encroachment of municipal and political motivations to diminish the autonomy of black colleges. Lawsuits have been filed and won, miles have been walked in protest over inadequate funding, and students and faculty have done more to produce the great minds of our time with little more than inadequate technology, dilapidated facilities, and a dream to do the ancestors proud.

When you account for academic programs offered at PWIs with low numbers of minority enrollment and little motivation to diversify, when you consider that many smaller HBCUs across the south are still charged with producing tomorrow’s teachers, nurses, ministers and agricultural leaders and little else in the professional disciplines, there is little wonder why alumni giving provides barely a drop in the ocean of financial need for HBCUs. And this isn’t to factor in the bitterness felt by HBCU alumni, who longed for sweet cultural enrichment and growth at an HBCU, but also found the sour grapes resulting from systematic discrimination at the highest levels.

They found disgruntled, overworked employees. Dormitories and classrooms unfit for learning, let alone inspiration. They found too few resources to ensure campus safety, and not enough programs to facilitate political and social development.

And they still find the same even to this day. And we wonder why graduates either hesitate or refuse to give back.

This isn’t to make excuses for what HBCUs do haphazardly and, in many cases, outright wrong. There are numerous strides to be made in customer service, creative marketing, integrity of leadership and alumni responsibility. And it’s up to every HBCU to look within itself and recognize the immediacy of making such a change, or to face certain extinction.

But to rank and review HBCUs on measurements without cultural consideration is not only journalistically irresponsible, but dishonest to the sensibilities of those who hold these rankings in high regard. Few may know of the constant hardships faced by HBCUs on a daily basis, but the surreptitious chiding of our institutions cloaked by the publishing of half-hearted rankings does little more than add another obstacle to every institution’s growing list of the same.