TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/111191/1111120.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 8.2 KB | 170 lines

                                                                                EDUCATION, Page 81

Are Black Colleges Worth Saving?


The Supreme Court will consider whether the states should pay
publicly funded institutions for the neglect caused by decades
of discrimination

By JULIE JOHNSON/OXFORD


    For the past 120 years, Alcorn State University, situated
on a remote Mississippi campus, has been attended almost
exclusively by blacks. It is typical of the nation's 47
historically black state-run colleges, most of them in the Deep
South, which were founded as the stepchildren of a segregated
public education system. The institutions were eventually touted
as providing "separate but equal" training for blacks excluded
from universities such as Ole Miss. What was missing, mostly,
was equality: the schools were underfunded, understaffed and
ignored, a condition that persists in varying degrees today.

    Now Alcorn State (enrollment: 3,317) is at the center of
a legal struggle that could have the same significance for
public higher education as the hard-fought battles over school
desegregation of the 1950s. A class-action suit was filed in
1975 by a group of students, parents and taxpayers who demanded
that all of Mississippi's black colleges receive more money and
aid to make up for the decades of neglect. The case has finally
made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and arguments will be
heard next week. It marks the first time the Justices will
consider how the widely embraced principles of Brown v. Board
of Education, the landmark decision that desegregated public
elementary and secondary schools, apply to colleges and
universities.

    In addition, the dispute raises a larger philosophical
question: Should separate colleges that serve primarily blacks
be encouraged, or is it better to push for a color-blind system
of public higher education? The Justice Department had planned
to argue that it might be unconstitutional to force states to
bolster black colleges on an explicitly racial basis. But
President Bush has long believed that black colleges play an
important role; he is an honorary chairman of the United Negro
College Fund, which raises money for 41 private institutions,
such as Morehouse and Tuskegee, that are not part of publicly
funded state systems. After heavy lobbying by presidents of
black colleges, Bush personally ordered the Justice Department
to amend its brief so that it supports the role of historically
black colleges, public as well as private.

    The confrontation comes at a time when these institutions
are enjoying renewed popularity. The proportion of blacks going
to college across the U.S. has declined, but public black
colleges saw their enrollment climb 13.2% from 1986 to 1989. The
institutions also award nearly one-third of all undergraduate
degrees granted to the 1.1 million blacks who pursue
postsecondary study.

    Contrary to the national trends, black college enrollment
in Mississippi is declining. The state's three historically
black state-run schools -- Alcorn State, Jackson State and
Mississippi Valley State -- educate the majority of black
residents who go on to college. In 1981 the three schools
graduated 1,353 students, while the predominantly white
universities graduated 584 blacks. By 1990 the number of degrees
granted at black schools had dropped to 935, while predominantly
white schools awarded only 610. Contends Alvin O. Chambliss Jr.,
a Mississippi legal aid lawyer who has shepherded the
plaintiffs' case from its outset: "Our black colleges are dying
on the vine, and it's criminal."

    Mississippi publicly ended college segregation in 1962.
But Chambliss argues that only continued discrimination can
explain why all of the state's formerly whites-only universities
remain more than 80% white, even though about half of
Mississippi's public high school graduates are black. He
contends that the discrimination is bolstered by policies like
Mississippi's reliance on the ACT assessment test as the primary
criteria for admission to colleges. The score requirement set
for admission to Mississippi's onetime white colleges is higher
than at the historically black schools.

    What Chambliss calls the "inherently superior resources
and programs" of the formerly white schools shows up
dramatically in a comparison of Alcorn State and the flagship
agricultural and engineering school, Mississippi State, in
Starkville, 210 miles northeast of Alcorn. Both are land-grant
institutions, and both focus on agricultural and livestock
research.

    The similarities virtually end there. Mississippi State,
with 14,700 students, offers more than 200 undergraduate and
graduate degrees. Its library, with more than 1 million volumes,
is the biggest in the state. Alcorn's academic offerings are
limited almost exclusively to degrees in education and
agriculture. The plaintiffs are demanding an end to the
artificially high entrance barrier at the formerly white
schools. But more important, they want Mississippi to spend
enough money on Alcorn and the other black schools to upgrade
their standards, and to add remedial programs to assist black
students as they enroll at the predominantly white schools.
White Mississippi educators and politicians fear that that
remedy could easily run into tens of millions of dollars. A
favorable ruling would have immediate implications for states
like Alabama and Louisiana. Both face similar litigation, and
have filed briefs in support of their neighbor.

    W. Ray Cleere, Mississippi's higher education
commissioner, concedes that "there are program disparities"
between the black colleges and the predominantly white ones. He
argues they are not attributable to race, but to the "high-cost,
highly prestigious programs" that have traditionally been based
at the larger schools. "All of our colleges," he adds, "are
equitably and consistently underfunded at the same level."
Mississippi argues that there is no need for further remedies
against past bias, beyond aggressive recruitment efforts aimed
at minorities that are already under way at the formerly white
schools.

    There are few precedents to help predict what the Supreme
Court will decide. The Justices ruled 5 to 3 last year, for
example, that municipalities can be compelled to correct
vestiges of prior discrimination. The question is whether
college systems have a similar duty, since students attend them
voluntarily. Justice David Souter was asked in his confirmation
hearings about racial discrimination, and replied that there was
a duty not only to stop it but also to offer redress. Clarence
Thomas, according to individuals familiar with his thinking, is
said to be "pro-black colleges," but in public pronouncements
he has leaned toward the color-blind jurisprudence popular with
conservatives.

    As the situation at Alcorn State illustrates, it is
impossible to have it both ways: seeking a color-blind and
integrated system of state-funded education, while at the same
time preserving a system of black colleges that both the
President and the plaintiffs believe can play a useful role. If
the Supreme Court rules that the states do not need to provide
a remedy, these institutions will wither away. "A defeat will
spell, legally, the beginning of the end for black colleges,"
says Chambliss. "They're hanging by fingernails now."


________________________________________________________________
THE LARGEST HISTORICALLY BLACK PUBLIC COLLEGES

    University                Main Location            Enrollment

    Southern                  Baton Rouge, La.             15,200
    Texas Southern            Houston                      10,160
    Florida A & M             Tallahassee, Fla.             9,200
    Norfolk State             Norfolk, Va.                  8,300
    Tennessee State           Nashville                     7,400
    North Carolina A & T      Greensboro, N.C.              7,040
    Grambling State           Grambling, La.                7,030
    Jackson State             Jackson, Miss.                6,640
    Prairie View A & M        Prairie View, Texas           5,630
    North Carolina Central    Durham, N.C.                  5,320