Black students were consistently excluded from colleges and universities . After the civil war, there were almost no opportunities for African Americans in higher education: “Newly freed slaves were being denied admission to the traditionally white higher educations that had been established at the time” (“The History of HBCUs”). Recognizing the injustices of the system, in 1890 the government decided to fund schools that would be entirely for black students leading to the emergence of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). In 1964, an HBCU was officially defined as “a school of higher learning that was accredited and established before 1964, and whose purpose was the education of African Americans” (“The History of HBCUs”). The purpose of these schools was to combat the inherent biases of the post-secondary education system by providing an alternative opportunity for black students.

Are HBCUS Good or Bad?

Good Because…

• These schools help to combat the inherent biases of the post-secondary education system by providing an alternative opportunity for Black students (“The History of HBCUs”)
• Black Colleges helped to train the nations top Black doctors, lawyers, teachers, and more (“The History of HBCUs”)
• “Even today, HBCUs may be over-performing in producing certain kinds of graduates. Though black schools represent a tiny percentage of American colleges — around 3 percent of schools – they produce 24 percent of black STEM grads and confer almost 35 percent of all bachelor’s degrees earned by black graduates in astronomy, biology, chemistry, math, and physics” (Freemark)

Bad Because…

• Some people believe that having these HBCUs does not allow African American students to rebel against racism (Lockett)
• Instead, it perpetuates a system in which white institutions force them to run away from the problem: “black space can help you cope with racism and other social ills amongst your peers, but they will never protect you from racism, neither in your daily life nor institutionally” (Lockett)
• HBCUs will never eliminate the unfairness of the system, instead they can only deal with some of the consequences

Because of the struggles African-American students and other minorities have faced, some favor enacting affirmative action which is essentially a form of positive discrimination (Yudof and Moran).