HBCU’s

Peter Bergman, Teachers College, Columbia University

Can a few text messages, a timely email or a letter increase college enrollment and student achievement? Such “nudges,” designed carefully using behavioral economics, can be effective.

But when do they work – and when not?

Barriers to success

Consider students who have just graduated high school intending to enroll in college. Even among those who have been accepted to college, 15 percent of low-income students do not enroll by the next fall. For the large share who intend to enroll in community colleges, this number can be as high as 40 percent.

There are a number of possible reasons for this attrition: many families overestimate the cost of college because the sticker price of colleges can be much higher than the net price (the sticker price minus the potentially large amount of aid a low-income student could receive); students may struggle with complex financial aid forms; there may be a lack of support to guide them through the application process. So, even when low-income students who are high-achieving do enroll in college, the majority fail to enroll in a college that is comparable to their level of achievement.

Can a few text messages or a timely email overcome these barriers? My research uses behavioral economics to design low-cost, scalable interventions aimed at improving education outcomes. Behavioral economics suggests several important features to make a nudge effective: simplify complex information, make tasks easier to complete and ensure that support is timely.

So, what makes for an effective nudge?

Improving college enrollment

In 2012, researchers Ben Castleman and Lindsay Page sent 10 text messages to nearly 2,000 college-intending students the summer after high school graduation. These messages provided just-in-time reminders on key financial aid, housing and enrollment deadlines from early July to mid August.

Instead of set meetings with counselors, students could reply to messages and receive on-demand support from college guidance counselors to complete key tasks.

In another intervention – the Expanding College Opportunities Project (ECO) – researchers Caroline Hoxby and Sarah Turner worked to help high-achieving, low-income students enroll in colleges on par with their achievement. The intervention arrived to students as a packet in the mail.

The mailer simplified information by providing a list of colleges tailored to each student’s location along with information about net costs, graduation rates, and application deadlines. Moreover, the mailer included easy-to-claim application fee waivers. All these features reduced both the complexity and cost in applying to a wider range of colleges.

In both cases, researchers found that it significantly improved college outcomes. College enrollment went up by 15 percent in the intervention designed to reduce summer melt for community college students. The ECO project increased the likelihood of admission to a selective college by 78 percent.

Getting parents involved

Of course, it’s not just at college enrollment time that nudging can be helpful. Parents also face behavioral barriers while their children are in middle and high school. Many parents underestimate the number of assignments their child has not turned in as well as the number of school days their child has missed. Unfortunately, schools often do a poor job communicating this information to parents in a timely fashion.

I tested an intervention that sent text messages to parents about their child’s missed assignments and grades. The messages were frequent – sent four times more often than report cards – and provided detailed information to parents about their child’s missed assignments and grades. Each message listed page numbers and problems students needed to complete so that parents could track their child’s progress.

Parents responded by communicating with the school more often and motivating their children to do the work: students turned in 25 percent more assignments, which led to significant improvements in grades and evidence of increased math scores.

When there is no impact

While these interventions are promising, there are important caveats.

For instance, our preliminary findings from ongoing research show that information alone may not be enough. We sent emails and letters to more than one hundred thousand college applicants about financial aid and education-related tax benefits. However, we didn’t provide any additional support to help families through the process of claiming these benefits.

In other words, we didn’t provide any support to complete the tasks – no fee waivers, no connection to guidance counselors – just the email and the letter. Without this support to answer questions or help families complete forms to claim the benefits, we found no impact, even when students opened the emails.

More generally, “nudges” often lead to modest impacts and should be considered only a part of the solution. But there’s a dearth of low-cost, scalable interventions in education, and behavioral economics can help.

Identifying the crucial decision points – when applications are due, forms need to be filled out or school choices are made – and supplying the just-in-time support to families is key.

Peter Bergman, Assistant Professor of Economics and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

David H. Feldman, College of William & Mary and Robert B. Archibald, College of William & Mary

On July 6, Hillary Clinton took a half-step toward Bernie Sanders’ free public college tuition plan. She proposed partnering with states to zero out tuition by 2020 for families making US$125,000 or less.

We know that American higher education faces serious long-term problems. However, reducing tuition or college debt to zero isn’t the right way to solve them.

We have been studying America’s higher education system and college costs. Our research tells us that the deep problems in American higher education today aren’t due to the fact that students borrow or pay tuition. It is because the schools serving the bulk of America’s underprivileged students are increasingly resource-starved.

So, what should our candidates be worrying about when it comes to higher education? And what policies might make a dent in our real problems?

Inequality in higher education

Let’s first look at how higher education has been split into separate and unequal worlds.

As researchers Caroline Hoxby and Sarah Turner have shown, students who attend a college ranked “most competitive” by Barron’s, a financial magazine, enjoy $27,000 of instructional spending per student. These include schools such as Yale, Duke, Kenyon and the University of Miami. At a “non-selective” four-year university that number drops to $5,000. This group includes many non-flagship state universities and small liberal arts colleges that accept most applicants.

The divide is further deepened as only a small percentage of low-income students are able to attend top universities. Only four percent of the students who attend the institutions rated as “most competitive” are from the bottom quarter of the socioeconomic status distribution. Students from the bottom half of the income distribution cluster at community colleges and non-selective four-year institutions.

Rising income inequality and declining state support for higher education further risks cementing in place this division between first class and steerage class education.

Rising inequality, declining state support

Consider the following facts: Most of the income growth since 1965 has gone to the richest 20 percent of American households. Since 2000, a household at the bottom fifth has lost $3,200, measured in 2014 dollars, or 13 percent of its income. But America’s richest five percent earns an extra $7,000.

For students from poor and middle-income families, stagnant or declining income is a real barrier to college access unless state or federal subsidies become more liberal.

But most states have cut funding to public universities. Between 2000-01 and 2014-15, annual state spending per full-time student fell by $2,573, measured in 2014 dollars. Over the same time period the annual tuition and fees paid by the average student at a public four-year university have risen by $2,038, also measured in 2014 dollars. Tuition increases have not fully recovered state cuts.

Despite tuition increases, public universities, and especially the less-selective non-flagships that serve the bulk of the population, are increasingly resource-starved.

Our calculations, based on data from the Delta Cost Project,which conducts research on how colleges spend their money, show the following: In 1987, public universities spent 88 cents for every dollar that private nonprofit institutions spent on the wages and salaries that drive instruction. By 1999 the ratio had fallen to 81 cents. And by 2010, it had fallen further, to 73 cents on the dollar.

This has consequences. Economists John Bound, Michael Lovenheim and Sarah Turner have found that falling graduation rates, especially among young men, are concentrated at resource-starved community colleges and less-selective public universities.

These researchers found that increases in the student/faculty ratio were the main culprit in declining graduation rates at public universities. This is driven by lack of resources. At community colleges, weaker student preparation is the problem, and this is a consequence of poverty.

What are candidates saying?

But these are not the issues that worry our candidates most. College debt has grabbed the headlines, so college debt has grabbed their attention.

Donald Trump’s website currently contains nothing about higher education. But his campaign co-chair, Sam Clovis, recently offered the outlines of a Trump position. Among the proposals is that government should get out of the loan business – handing it back to private banks.

What would that mean for high school students, who have no collateral and no credit record? Banks generally will not lend money to 18-year-olds with nebulous plans, absent a guarantee. Clovis suggested the guarantee would come from colleges and universities, who would have to pay for student default. Their “skin” would be in the game.

In fact, Trump’s program would hand private banks a financial windfall, because they would earn the fees and interest, and if a student failed to keep up on payments, someone else would take the hit. In Trump’s world, those would be the schools that currently work with large numbers of “risky” underprivileged students.

Hillary Clinton’s platform contains a $25 billion fund to support private nonprofit colleges that serve underprivileged students. This would be, in our view, a step in the right direction if it could pass through Congress.

What we know about student debt

The substantive proposal in Clinton’s New College Compact is the following:

Every student should have the option to graduate from a public college or university in their state without taking on any student debt.

Our point is there is no good reason why debt should be off the table. Substantial gains go to the students who earn a degree, and reasonable amounts of debt are a good way to finance any long-run investment. Students who borrow near the average levels ($25,000 to $32,000), and who graduate, tend to have little difficulty paying back.

As Sandy Baum of the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, has shown, most of the “extreme” debt is concentrated in two places. The first is graduate students. The returns to their degrees are larger and less uncertain.

A doctor with $160,000 in debt is in much better shape than a dropout who has $14,000 to pay. Most of the dropouts come from under-resourced schools that serve our most at-risk students – this is a problem that worsens inequality.

The second is the for-profit sector. Although for-profits account for only nine percent of degrees awarded, they are responsible for a quarter of the total number of students whose debt exceeds $50,000. For-profits serve a lot of older students and many veterans using GI benefits.

What needs to change

In our view, two reforms could help break the trend toward inequality in the American higher education system.

The first is related to the federal government’s need-based Pell Grants of up to $5,815 per academic year. Pell Grants, which are awarded to low-income, undergraduate students, do not have to be repaid. So, they reduce the price of a year in college.

In today’s dollars, the current maximum Pell Grant has slightly less purchasing power than it did in 1978.

Yet the cost of services – which includes everything from restaurant meals and haircuts to dental care and higher education – has risen faster than the inflation rate. As a result, a Pell Grant covers a declining portion of the cost of a year in college. The maximum Pell Grant covered 94 percent of the tuition and fees at a public university in 2000-01. By 2015-16 it covered only 61 percent. Congress could set the Pell maximum simply by tying increases to an index of service prices.

The second reform that we suggest is a federal program to encourage states to raise their own investment in public universities. Former Democratic Senator Tom Harkin proposed giving states a federal grant based on how much funding they provided per student at their own public universities.

In Harkin’s proposal, states would qualify for a grant if they spent at least $2,865 per student annually. States that offered more funding of their own could get a bigger grant per student from the federal government.

The advantage of Harkin’s bill was that it did not propose to micromanage how the grant would be used. States could use it to hold down tuition growth, but they could also use it to improve the quality of the programming to help underprivileged students. Those are the students who currently fail in large numbers at underfunded public institutions.

We believe these two ideas alone could be a down payment on a fairer higher education system. These ideas would help funnel more resources into the colleges and universities that educate the vast majority of America’s at-risk student population.

David H. Feldman, Professor of Economics, College of William & Mary and Robert B. Archibald, Professor of Economics, College of William & Mary

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Brendan Cantwell, Michigan State University

A recent report by the Boston-based Pioneer Institute pointed out how out-of-state enrollments at the University of Massachusetts are limiting opportunities for in-state students.

For the right-leaning Pioneer Institute, UMass is an example of the public sector run amok. But Pioneer is not alone. There are others who have voiced similar concerns. For example, a state audit came out with a scathing criticism of University of California for discriminating against local students. And recent federal data show 43 of the 50 state flagship schools enrolled fewer local students in 2014 than they did a decade earlier.

My experience as a higher education researcher suggests it is important to understand why colleges and universities are enrolling students from out of state. The point being that years of underfunding and the growth of market-based practices such as competition for tuition revenue have created incentives for colleges and universities to enroll nonresidents. The consequence of this has been added financial strain on lower-income students.

When public universities devote fewer resources to lower-income or minority students, that shows an erosion of the very mission for which the state colleges and universities, were founded.

Wooing nonresident students

Data complied by the College Board show the share of out-of-state students at public colleges and universities grew in 38 states between 2002 and 2012.

And it is not just prominent flagship schools that attracted out-of-state students. A study from the New America Foundation, a public policy think tank, found that even regional colleges are wooing nonresident students.

Clearly, out-of-state students can provide many educational gains: college students benefit when they interact with each other through a process economists call “peer effects,” which include the learning and social development students get from each other. Educational research shows all students gain from a diverse student body. By engaging with peers with different experience and viewpoints, students learn more both in and out of the classroom.

But it may not be the benefits of a diverse student body that are driving public schools to enroll nonresidents.

Going after the money

Nonresident students pay higher tuition at public colleges and universities. In 2013, average in-state tuition at public four-year colleges was US$7,526, but a whopping $17,047 for nonresidents.

Public institutions have been experiencing declining state funding for decades For example, state funds accounted for 52.8 percent of operating expenditures at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1987, but only 16.9 percent by 2012.

It comes as no surprise then that these institutions would look to nonresident students for additional revenue.

A recent study found a strong relationship between state funding and nonresident students enrollment. When states increase funding, public institutions enroll fewer nonresidents.

“Enticing” students

Public colleges and universities were established by the states to educate residents and to improve the lives of people through research and service. However, in recent years, these institutions have become increasingly focused on improving their own bottom line and competing in the marketplace. Recruiting nonresident students who pay high tuition is one way in which public schools compete in markets.

The market for nonresident students can be understood as a form of interstate and international commerce.

Colleges compete to attract wealthy nonresident students by providing “country club” campuses, investing in luxury dorms and other amenities that attract wealthy students.

Who pays the price?

Policymakers in the U.S. have long favored markets in higher education, the idea being that when institutions compete they will offer better-quality and lower-priced education.

The question of quality is difficult to assess, but here is the impact this market-based approach had on price.

Changes to the way higher education was funded in the 1980s and 1990s encouraged colleges to compete for revenue. Aid came to be allocated to students rather than schools and more in the form of loans. Along with this came shrinking of direct funding from the states while increasing funds available through competition.

Over time, competition for revenue helped to drive the price of tuition up. Adjusting for inflation, the average net price for instate tuition at public four-year colleges increased by 170 percent between 1990 to 2015.

Predictably, students and institutions with the fewest resources are left to face the greatest challenges of such a steep hike. In 2008, it took 90 percent of family earnings to cover tuition at a public four-year college for students in the bottom fifth of the income distribution.

In this process, institutions that enroll a high proportion of local lower-income students rather than competing for lucrative nonresidents have become most vulnerable.

For example, underfunding has resulted in overcrowded classrooms and crumbling facilities at the City University of New York, where over half of the students come from families with incomes below US$30,000. And this is not the only such example.

A budget impasse in Illinois brought Chicago State University, with a student population that is 69 percent low-income, to the brink of closure.

What is to be done?

The California-based Campaign for College Opportunity, a nonprofit that works to expand college access, suggests capping nonresident enrollment at public colleges and universities. And the plan is gaining traction. Hillary Clinton recently endorsed caps on nonresidents at the University of California.

Setting limitations on nonresident students might seem to be common sense. However, institutional autonomy has been a strength of higher education in the U.S.

Further, my evaluation of the evidence suggests that it is funding cuts and market competition rather than nonresident enrollments per se that have drawn higher education away from its public mission.

Perhaps little can be done in the near term. But over a longer period public reinvestment combined with renewal of the public mission among state intuitions seems a more sustainable path than an arbitrary cap on nonresident enrollments.

Brendan Cantwell, Assistant Professor of Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education, Michigan State University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

If you haven’t been paying much attention to the debate concerning the relevance and effectiveness of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), now is the time to sit up and take notice. If you don’t, there is a chance it could soon be too late. Over the last two decades, we have seen the number of HBCUs in the United States sharply decline.

This greatly concerns me. We need to take a moment to look at why people should pull together, rally around them, and help them make it through turbulent economic times. HBCUs have helped to educate some of the most prominent African American figures in this country’s history, including Jesse Jackson, Samuel L. Jackson, Martin Luther King Jr., Spike Lee, and Thurgood Marshall, among many others.

HBCUs provide cultural benefits, as well as providing an affordable education. This cultural foundation has been important to the African American community for over a century. HBCUs were there, supporting the community and educating many hardworking and productive citizens, long before other colleges would even let them through the door.

If you believe in the benefits of HBCUs, you need to stand up and let your voice be heard, before these important institutions are gone forever.

What’s happening, exactly?

HBCUs are coming under fire for everything from not improving their failing infrastructures to producing lower graduation rates, and more. Let’s take a closer look at some of the issues that HBCUs are currently facing.

Why HBCUs are underfunded—and why this matters

By way of a study published in Newsweek, “fundraising is a major problem for HBCUs.”

The study gives a comparison of the two of the nation’s “richest” schools regarding how they are sectioned. Howard University receives nearly $590 million from the government, which on the surface, seems like a lot of money.

But compared to the funding that Brown University receives, Howard is dwarfed. Brown is on the receiving end of over $3 billion in government funding each year.

Brown has a bustling alumni base that donates generously. Not saying that Howard doesn’t as they certainly have proud alumni. The differences are hard to miss.

Note that the lack of funding goes beyond alumni donations. Until she later amended it, presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton’s education plan would have undermined the funding of some HBCUs and would likely force a few to close.

“Free tuition to any community college and reduced tuition to public institutions, will expedite the extinction of several HBCUs. Without federal and state investment in public historically black campuses which lack unique programs, modernized facilities and marketing resources, students of all races will flock to larger, more developed predominantly white colleges.”

In essence, plans presented by Clinton and other candidates who lean left would take federal and state money used to aid HBCUs and refocus the dollars towards a general fund that will help schools that traditionally serve the general population.

Hypothetically, schools that aren’t necessarily in need of more federal assistance would receive extra dollars, and some HBCUs would be left in the cold.

Another issue that affects the amount of money HBCUs gets? In October of 2011, the U.S. Department of Education adjusted its lending policies for these popular, and in many cases necessary, loans to align more closely with what a traditional bank would require in the way of income and credit worthiness. All colleges took a hit with these changes, but HBCUs lost an estimated $50 million in the first full year these changes took place. For many HBCUs, the college population is made up of first-generation students with parents who often have not set aside the funding for a college education, but want to contribute financially. When PLUS loan eligibility changed, it felt like a blow directed at HBCUs.

And sometimes, the problem is just plain money mismanagement

Take Cheyney University, for example. In 2015, the country’s oldest HBCU owed the federal government nearly $30 million, according to nonprofitquarterly.org.

“[A] review conducted for the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education found that the school may have mismanaged the financial aid it receives from the U.S. Department of Education to assist students and, as a result, may owe the federal government more than $29 million.”

The article goes on to state that the school gave grants and loans to students who weren’t eligible. They also gave out too much money.

News for Cheyney isn’t getting better. The school currently carries a deficit of at least $15 million with an annual budget of $30 million. Paying back $29 million would bring the school to its knees.

Pennsylvania’s Auditor General Eugene DePasquale issued a report on the school’s future last year, and it was rather bleak.

“The size of its debt that is deemed not collectible is growing. The amount of state support it receives is on the decline. And its enrollment has hit a 31-year low.”

The report also noted that just nine percent of students who enroll at Cheyney stay for graduation.

Simply put, Cheyney is in deep trouble

Without serious financial help from alumni, the state, or the federal government, Cheyney’s 177-year history will soon come to a quick close.

All these financial issues cause a ripple effect, which leads to other issues, such as…

School closures. Lately, it seems there are just too many HBCUs in the news for the wrong reason: financial and accreditation woes that threaten, or deliver, closure.

For example, on June 3, 2014, Saint Paul’s College officials announced that it planned to close its doors – at least temporarily. The news followed a proposed merger with Saint Augustine’s University that fell through. After 125 years, the rural school that employs roughly 75 people in the community of Lawrenceville, Virginia had no choice but to close its doors to new students and help current ones find placement elsewhere.

After several years of highly-publicized financial problems, Morris Brown College turned down a bailout from the city of Atlanta in June that would have eliminated its bankruptcy troubles. In August, Morris Brown filed for federal bankruptcy protection to prevent foreclosure. Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed and other city officials were more than a little surprised when the school rejected the $10 million offer that was designed to benefit the city too.  A Morris Brown lawyer said the rejection is due to the school receiving an undisclosed, better offer from somewhere else. For now, though, Morris Brown is still $35 million in over its head, by some accounts.

Mergers. It’s not at all unusual to hear governors and former governors like Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal and Mississippi’s Haley Barbour announce plans to merge HBCUs with each other or other predominantly white institutions in moves that are intended to slash state operating costs.

In less than stunning news, the Georgia Board of Regents has decided to merge Historically Black College (HBCU) Albany State University with Predominately White Institution (PWI) Darton State College.

The new school will boast close to 9,000 students and will retain the name Albany State University.

While the move to combine two state colleges isn’t shocking, it did take some by surprise that the board decided to merge an HBCU and a PWI. In recent years we’ve seen HBCUs merging to keep their cultures intact, but not shutter their doors, but the move in Georgia doesn’t follow that path.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the move was partially made because of declining enrollment at both institutions.

“Both schools have faced enrollment declines in recent years. Albany State’s enrollment has dropped 25 percent in five years; Darton has seen a 14 percent enrollment decline since its peak in 2012.”

The Journal also reports that the school will become Southwest Georgia’s largest college.

Even without the declining enrollment figures, some have concerns that Albany State will lose its culture and identity by merging with a PWI. Hank Huckaby, chancellor of University system of Georgia, says that Albany State’s history and culture will not be compromised due to the merger (but he didn’t give specifics on how that will happen).

This announcement is not the first on merger in the state

A merger between Kennesaw State and Southern Polytechnic State universities was finalized earlier this year. The largest merger between Georgia State University and Georgia Perimeter College is in the works now.

Treating any two HBCUs as institutions that are alike enough to merge without incident is flawed, though. Planning to merge an HBCU with a predominantly white schools is even more off-base. These individual schools have their histories, their student cultures. Perhaps it makes financial sense to merge HBCUs with others similar in size or scope, but it undermines the collective institutions, undercutting their autonomy and what they can offer to potential students.

When students can no longer afford to go to school

And the consequences for lack of financial support HBCUs are receiving continue.

Take the general lack of affordability for students, for example. HBCUs have a legacy of providing affordable education to students. However, with many of the funding issues, HBCUs have been suffering. Lately, it’s harder for these colleges and universities to offer students the financial aid that they once generously provided.

Then, when it turns out that college graduates from HBCUs cannot make a return on their investment, the situation seems even worse.

According to a report, the starting salary for a new college graduate from an HBCU may not be enough to cover student loan debt.

By way of an article on Chron.com, the class of 2015 was projected to have about $35,000 in student loan debt upon graduation. That’s $7,000 more than what the class of 2013 will owe.

Of course, to pay back the loan, students have to have jobs that will afford them that opportunity.

So to look at how debt and income will factor into the financial success that students may have post-graduation, Edsmart.org found that some students who attend HBCU’s may struggle economically. It is a recipe for disaster when students can’t afford college when they start OR afford to pay it back when they graduate.

Not all students from HBCUs suffer this fate, however. The report shows that the average starting salary for new graduates out of Bethune-Cookman University comes in at just $38,700. That’s just $3,000 more than the average debt that students may carry. However, the in-state tuition and fees for BCU is a reasonable $14,410.

It gets even better if students attend Florida A&M University. Tuition for in-state students is just $5,785, $17,725 for out-of-state, and students project to make a little over $42,300 after graduation.

Other schools where students can expect to earn more include Xavier University, Howard University, Hampton University, and Tennessee State University.

While the salaries vary, and so will the debt per student, knowing that your earning potential fresh out of college may hover around $50,000 per year may take the sting away from having to pay the government back for your education.

It’s not just about the money, though…

There are other problems that may keep HBCUs from thriving in today’s world.

And, certainly, although HBCUs have fallen on hard times, they cannot completely play the role of victim, either. I’m a Dean at an HBCU and completely believe in the message – but even I can see that there are things we do collectively that are hurting our student populations and chances for longevity. We need to change that, together, and that starts with recognizing where we have made mistakes.

Slow adaptability. We’ve spent too much time wringing our hands and not enough time looking for solutions. Why were predominantly white institutions better prepared when the PLUS loan changes took place? Could we not have come up with our solutions too? When it comes to online schooling – most HBCUs are just finally implementing full-degree online programs and embracing the idea that our students don’t need to be on a physical campus to benefit. Yes, the campuses of HBCUs are their biggest advantages, steeped in history and a palpable air of shared struggle. This doesn’t mean we should force our students to set foot on our campuses, or not come at all. The inability to move quickly and keep up with the higher education times has hurt HBCUs but hopefully not permanently.

Lack of diversity. HBCUs are getting better at recruiting all students to their campuses and programs, but this is another area where we’ve done too little, too late. HBCUs are no longer the only option for students of color and haven’t been for decades. So why have we spent so little time rebranding ourselves as institutions that welcome all students and help those students succeed? The number of Latino, white and Asian students on HBCU campuses is rising slowly, but relying on our historically largest segment of students (after it became clear they did not need us as much as we needed them) has hurt us.

Lack of stability in administration. Over the past decade, too many HBCU presidents have seemingly disappeared in the middle of the night without explanation. South Carolina State University, for example, has seen 11 different presidents since 1992 but why? Often the answer lies in the fact that a board of trustees clings to the past, or spends too much time micromanaging and not enough looking at the future and big picture of the HBCU landscape. Such instability at the top cannot inspire confidence for faculty or students. To plant roots for the future, there needs to be consistent leadership that aligns with the long-term goals of the HBCU.

Not appreciating students. This may sound petty, but alumni who do not feel that their universities gave them a world-class education, or at the very least an adequate one, are less likely to give back financially. This hurts HBCUs more than PWIs, I think. An essay was written by an HBCU graduate who declined to name her school specifically expressed shock at the under-sophisticated classrooms and technology resources at her HBCU. While she points out the social atmosphere was top-notch and ultimately the reason she stayed until graduation, she says she would rather see her former school be shuttered than donate money to it. This is only one story, of course, but it rings true with other graduates I’ve met and read who believe they received a sub-par educational experience at an HBCU (sometimes on very basic levels) and who have no desire to donate money back. This is no way to maintain long-term student pride or bring in future students.

How can we bring HBCUs back to prominence?

Fortunately, there are many solutions that can help HBCUs rise to prominence once again. But those of us who support the continued existence of HBCUs will need to seek radical solutions so that we can see these institutions thrive again.

One of the most impactful ways we can help HBCUs thrive is by making sure they have the funds to do so. And how might that work? The solution is simple: alumni giving.

HBCU graduates are some of the proudest in the country, often with a stronger sense of social responsibility than their PWI-graduate peers. HBCUs aren’t doing a strong enough job tying that pride back into alumni giving programs. Case in point: Harvard raised a record-breaking $752 million in alumni and other gifts in the fiscal year 2013. At HBCU “Black Ivy League” Spelman College saw just $157.8 million ($20 million from alumni) during its Every Woman Every Campaign in 2013 that was a special, targeted campaign beyond normal annual endeavors.

Perhaps comparing Harvard’s financial gifts to any other school isn’t completely fair, but it does give an idea of what HBCUs are up against in the non-elite college market. If Spelman, considered the “best” HBCU, can only bring in one-fifth of the giving of Harvard in a year when Spelman aggressively went after donations, what does that say for every other HBCU?

An even better question is this: What can HBCU alumni giving campaigns improve upon to bring in more dollars to benefit their current crop of students?

Make college affordable

Even the best college education will come with resentment attached once a student has to start paying back those burdensome loans. HBCUs have a better shot at alumni giving back once a college education is paid off, so why not make that debt burden lighter? HBCUs have some of the best statistics when it comes to financial aid in the form of Pell grants and scholarships, and these institutions should continue to push for the funding to make obtaining a degree affordable – particularly for minority and first-generation college students. More money in these graduates’ pockets will translate into more alumni giving in the early years following graduation.

Personalize giving

I don’t know about you, but getting standard alumni giving form in the mail with a return envelope does not usually inspire me to pull out my checkbook. The same is true of emails without much personality. Instead of just asking for the money, HBCUs need to put faces and causes along with the requests. What are some of the upcoming projects that this money could go towards? Who will receive scholarships from this giving? Even non-glamorous giving campaigns that go towards basic infrastructure have a better shot of meeting goals if alumni are informed of what money is being solicited to do. HBCU alumni who can associate their positive memories with money-making campaigns are more likely to want to be a part of making those things happen.

Get alumni involved before they leave campus

Don’t wait until students are off campus to solicit them for help with facilitating the college experience of the classes who follow them. Cash in on the good feelings that accompany graduation time from both the students earning degrees and their families. Even those who don’t have much may be willing to give a little to keeping the college dream alive for other students who are still trying to accomplish their academic goals. Set up a table outside commencement with giving forms and other alumni information. Have literature that explains to students how alumni giving dollars have facilitated what they’ve enjoyed while on campus. Send out an email blast to soon-to-be graduates inviting them to visit the alumni website, like its Facebook page, and join its official club. Don’t wait to chase alumni down after they’ve left; rope them in before they leave and keep them active in the coming years.

Just as HBCUs have a responsibility to get their student’s workforce-ready, alumni have a responsibility to give back to their institutions. HBCUs need to do a better job of conveying that, though and encouraging former students to step up to the plate.

Another way to build up HBCUs is to embrace diversity and innovation

When HBCUs began popping up in America, they were a necessity to higher educational paths for African American young people. Benefactors like John Rockefeller founded Spelman College in Atlanta (named after his wife, by the way) to give black students shot in a nation still very much in the throes of Jim Crow law domination. Most of the 105 HBCUs were founded in former slave areas that still presented steep challenges for African Americans that aspired to higher education but faced discrimination in dominantly white college settings.

The original intent of HBCUs worked. Some of the nation’s brightest and most influential minds came out of HBCUs. Langston Hughes was a Lincoln University graduate. Martin Luther King Jr. earned his degree from Morehouse College. Talk show queen Oprah Winfrey, education expert Marva Collins and Brown University President Ruth J. Simmons all earned degrees from HBCUs (from Tennessee State University, Clark Atlanta University, and Dillard University, respectively). These powerful pillars of the African American community were able to achieve optimal success in life because of the education they received from HBCUs.

But what about now? With white students quickly becoming one small aspect of on-HBCU settings, do ambitious African American students need an HBCU to achieve success? Perhaps a more poignant question is this: does it help or hinder the African American community when its members attend an HBCU today?

I think the answer is grounded in the particular student’s intent. Young African Americans today do not NEED an HBCU to obtain a general education, but they may find particular programs at individual schools meet their career objectives. Some may even find academic inspiration in the original founding purpose of an HBCU, and that feeling of carrying on tradition may fuel them to graduate, make an impact in the world and give back to their college or university.

The original purpose of HBCUs is no longer the only reason–but that does not mean that these institutions lack other attractive qualities. In fact, many students with white European, Latino or Asian roots are choosing HBCUs because of the strength of the academic programs and lower tuition costs. During the 2011 – 2012 school year, West Virginia State, Kentucky State and Delaware State universities all reported that more than 25 percent of their populations were made up of white Americans. A continued push for diversity on HBCU campuses is the only way these schools can transition from the necessity of the past to the potential of the future. This means implementing more online course options and flexible degree programs so that all students can picture themselves succeeding at an HBCU. Gratitude for the original intent of HBCUs combined with forward educational thinking for students of all heritages will carry HBCUs to the next level of achievement in higher learning circles.

One school that decided to use online course options to strengthen its program is North Carolina Agricultural & Technical. These online programs are geared towards growing the school’s enrollment figures.

According to Insidehighered.com, NC A&T’s online offerings will be cheaper than “face-to-face” courses for in-state students, and they plan to go after students outside of their traditional demographic.

“To help enrollment grow, we have to look at different mechanisms to engage students in general. We can’t solely focus on the traditional 18- to 22-year-old,” said Joe Whitehead, vice president for academic affairs.

By non-traditional students, A&T plans to market the online programs towards adults who work, military members, and “students who left college before they could graduate.”

Another marketing tool the school will use is that A&T is now the nation’s largest Historically Black College and University as it recently surpassed Florida Agricultural & Mechanical University in enrollment.

“Florida A&M’s enrollment has fallen; North Carolina A&T’s has hovered below 11,000 students for nearly a decade. This fall, once again, enrollment sits at 10,875, a slight increase of 141 from the previous year.”

Some HBCUs have attempted to offer online programs in the past but have fallen short. As of 2014, just 33 HBCU’s offered online programs and all aren’t jumping on the bandwagon.

By way of Edcentral.org, Spellman College has no interest in offering online courses now or in the future.

HBCUs are still attempting to navigate the terrain of online education, and are rightfully taking the time to ensure that student success is a top priority before going all in. Still, if HBCUs are places that cater to traditionally disadvantaged students, a move towards online programs seems to be the right direction.

Are HBCUs a lost cause?

In my home state of Mississippi, I grew up attending athletic and cultural functions at Tougaloo College, Alcorn State University, Mississippi Valley State University and Jackson State University. These universities are sources of great pride and a part of the African American intellectual tradition. Now is the time when people who support HBCUs, including advocates, organizations, faculty, students, and alumni, need to rally together to help save this historical piece of African American history. If these groups come together and make their voices heard, we will be able to save these institutions. But make no mistake, if there is no rally, if there is no coming together to let the powers-that-be know that we want them saved, then I predict that they will be gone in 50 or so years. And they will not return. Nobody is going to turn back the hands of time and open another historically black college or university because it wouldn’t be historic. Right now, they are historic, and they need our support and rescue!

Many people are currently asking whether HBCUs are worth saving in the first place. I ask, how can these historical institutions, which represent African American culture, tradition, and struggle for educational equality, not be considered worth saving? If they are not worth saving, then it makes it very difficult to find any other piece of African American heritage that is worth saving. These educational institutions are symbols of our people that must not be ignored.

I urge those who care about these institutions to speak out, show your support, and demand that adequate funding be provided to them so that they can make it through these turbulent economic times. It’s not just about saving a college or university. This is a metaphor for saving ourselves! With proper funding, these schools will thrive, carrying on our culture and traditions as they were meant to do.

As we become more fully entrenched in the 21^st century, the American workplace becomes more diverse. But American colleges and universities still have a way to come before they can fully serve the changing demographics of the American labor market. How do we increase diversity in higher education. Stick around and find out:

• Which schools reflect the diversity of our country and workforce
• What colleges and universities can do to attract talent from all backgrounds
• The shocking truth about diversity on the faculty level in most American colleges

The world we live in now

For many Americans, a shift is well underway.

HBCUs, for example, have served the purpose of adding greater diversity to the workforce by graduating more students of color. Yet, even today, inequalities exist in the workforce, and HBCUs need to prepare their students for this reality. Let’s look into this a little deeper.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities have always been places that encourage greater diversity when it comes to higher education, both on their campuses and in the greater college landscape. From their origins as being the only places people of color could go for a college education to their role today as welcoming all students and instilling cultural awareness, HBCUs stand as models of multicultural learning at its best.

Are HBCUs doing enough to prepare their students for the real workplace, though?

The reason so many college administrators, myself included, stand firmly by the necessity of HBCUs in contemporary college education is this: HBCUs provide a heightened diversity-centric environment that is not able to be duplicated in other settings. This is why these schools are so fantastic. But is all that idealism blindsiding our students later on? Do HBCUS give students a false sense of what to expect in the real workplace? There has to be a blending of what is actually happening in the workplace with what the ideal CAN be with the right people who work for it.

So how can HBCUs promote diversity while still preparing their students for the reality of the American workplace today?

Tell the truth.

Start with the facts of the workplace reality right now, today, this moment. This is so vital to students’ understanding of what they are going to face in the workplace. Yes, diversity is increasing in most fields (thanks in part to better college recruiting and minority programs) but things like the wage gap between minorities (including women) and white men have to be addressed. It’s okay to present these facts and not have a concrete solution in place. It is the responsibility of HBCUs to let their students know what they are up against – and inspire these students to make changes when given the opportunity.

Promote leadership.

Instead of teaching our students how to work for someone else, we should be training them to be leaders. This is true in every field and in every classroom. Have a group of education students? Encourage them to take that next step and become administrators. Students in health care? Set them up to be accepted to medical school. If you have a class of students who are interested in computer science, suggest pairing it with a business or entrepreneurship double major or minor. We should show our students the path to the next level, one step above what they are hoping to achieve, so that they can become the diverse decision-makers of tomorrow’s workplace.

Teach legal rights.

Our students should know what the boundaries are in workplaces when it comes to discrimination and how to recognize unfair treatment. We need to tell them how to report it, file lawsuits and hold their employers (or potential employers) accountable. At the same time, we should be sure our students aren’t wasting too much time in their careers looking for problems. It is important to know when something is unfair, but to put energy into building up careers for their benefit too.

Empower them with knowledge.

As cheesy as it may sound, an education is everything when it comes to breaking through workplace barriers. Minorities and women have to work twice or three times as hard as their peers to earn as much respect and money in the same roles. It’s not fair, but it is a fact – at least at this point in our country’s history as an economic powerhouse. What is learned in classrooms can’t be taken away, or denied. We have to encourage our students to be lifelong learners and love knowledge for the sake of it. That excitement about learning is what will keep them ahead in their fields and help them impart that empowerment to the next generation of students.

There is no way to completely change diversity in the workplace overnight but I truly believe that HBCU graduates have the best shot at improving it significantly. As instructors and administrators, we need to make sure our students are taking the best of diversity practices with them when they leave our campuses, but not entering the American workforce completely blind to its realities. It is our responsibility to teach our students what they can expect, but also how to be the change that they want to see.

But tomorrow will be different…

…And “tomorrow” is happening right before our eyes. The truth is that, while minorities will need to be prepared for a challenging workforce, the American workforce also needs to be prepared for increasing diversity. And that attention to diversity should begin in college, where many students train for their future careers.

Every college or university holds a diverse student population as a value and goal, at least on paper. Institutions of higher education have written ideology that seeks the best and brightest from all backgrounds to attend their classes. Here’s the thing though. Achieving diversity is hard. A balanced campus, either physically or remotely, takes more than words on paper. It takes the conscious, aggressive effort by the decision makers at a college or university to even stand a chance of reaching reality status.

I was recently looking over a list compiled by College Factual of the most diverse college campuses in the U.S. Factors like ethnic, geographic and gender diversity were taken into account to come up with an overall diversity score and ranking. I skimmed through the top 10 overall schools and noticed something interesting: three of them are located in Hawaii. More specifically, all three are located in Honolulu.

• Hawaii Pacific University, ranked #1. This private school has an overall diversity score of 91.4 percent, with ethnic diversity at 92.1.
• Chaminade University of Honolulu, ranked #2. This school has a ranking of 86.3 for overall diversity, with 100 percent ethnic diversity.
• University of Hawaii at Manoa, ranked #4. This public university has an overall diversity ranking of 78.6 percent, with a 93.2 percent male to female ratio (higher by several points over the other two schools on this list).

Now what’s especially important to note on this list is that geographic diversity plays a role in overall score. So this means that the variation of these students does not simply stem from people of Hawaiian descent who go to these schools. There are diverse people from all over the nation and world who grace these campuses. Of course there is a geographic advantage – Hawaii is one of the most beautiful places in the world – but aside from that obvious point, what are these schools doing right to bring in diverse students?

Strong International Programs

Hawaii Pacific University has students from 80 nations that attend, landing it on U.S. News and World Report’s list for universities with the most international students. This is not accidental. The school, and the others on this list, work hard to bring in students from all corners of the world. Strong international programs ensure that an inclusive culture is part of the college experience and the schools with the highest levels of diversity know this and implement it.

Strong Master’s Programs

Another area where these Hawaiian schools excel is in education programs that go beyond basic undergraduate programs. Hawaii Pacific University, for example, is recognized by the Institute for International Education as one of the top thirty most diverse master’s programs in the world.

Strong Connections with the World Economy

These Honolulu-based schools are all located in the Pacific Rim – one of the fastest growing economic regions of the world. These schools do an excellent job of tapping into that through expert faculty, job placement and partnerships with businesses in the region. The University of Hawaii at Manoa’s Shidler College of Business consistently lands on “top” lists, mainly for its connections with other universities and businesses in Asia. The students can also participate in immersive study abroad programs. An understand of what is happening in economies outside the immediate needs of a university not only attracts a more diverse student body, but leads to a wider scope of graduates.

So what can every other college learn from these diverse campuses in Honolulu? The first thing is that diversity should never be limited to the swath of people who live in the geographic area of that school. Yes, colleges (particularly public ones) have a responsibility to educate their immediate populations, but the search for diverse students should always be looked at from a global perspective.

The second takeaway is that more and more students are looking for a higher level of education than an undergraduate degree. There are also many non-traditional students who return to graduate school and need the welcoming atmosphere of a diverse, inclusive campus to feel comfortable.

Finally, if institutions of higher education really want to make a mark on diversity, it’s imperative to find ways to connect all students with the diverse workforce. For some schools, this may mean international connections and for others, it may mean just contacting local businesses and looking for a variety of partnerships. Making the connection between a diverse campus and a diverse workforce is imperative to creating students bodies that are varied, and represent many different cultures, socioeconomic backgrounds, and ethnicities.

More strategies colleges can use to welcome students of diverse backgrounds.

Improving campus diversity is a multi-level effort, and the solutions for doing so are as creative as they are targeted and highly structured. Here are just a few of them:

1. Full-ride scholarships

The cost of going to college can be a deal-breaker. Even with Pell grants, scholarships, and some student loans, the overwhelming ticket price of higher education is a major deterrent. This is especially true for minorities, first generation college students, and those coming from low socio-economic backgrounds. There is both a legitimate concern over what that college degree will cost, as well as a cultural barrier that often tells these students a college education is just not for them (both within their circles, and outside them).

But what if colleges were to take away cost as a factor – completely? Throughout the country there are schools that are combatting low diversity numbers with a novel idea: full-ride scholarships for those who qualify.

Now full-ride scholarships are certainly nothing new. They’ve been given out to promising students, and those in financial need, and athletes for decades. What’s so different about this new slew of full-ride initiatives is that they acknowledge a lack of diversity and are targeting minorities, women and underserved students.

The University of Michigan recently rolled out a full-ride scholarship program that targets students as young as 7^th grade. The Wolverine Pathways initiative seeks to find students of academic promise from racial and socioeconomic disadvantage and give them a chance to earn a full ride to the university by the time they graduate from high school. Students will be paired with tutors and mentors in three academic sessions per year. If they complete the sessions successfully, and are then accepted to the university, they will be given a scholarship for four years.

It’s certainly needed at Michigan, where only 12.8 percent of the 2015 freshman class are minorities. The school saw a dip from the height of its minority representation (which was only 13.8 in 2015) after affirmative action was struck down for college admissions. Since then, the university claims it has looked for ways to boost its diversity – and the Wolverine Pathways program could finally do just that.

Arizona State University also announced a full-ride program for new MBA students in the fall of 2016 that is designed to improve diversity. Based on the student’s residency, the scholarship could be valued as high as $94,000.

But will these and other full-ride programs actually work?

Finances are certainly an obstacle when it comes to creating diverse college campuses but it is not the only issue. College freshman from homes with no college graduates are at a higher risk of dropping out that first year. Students who have never learned basic life skills, including how to budget and pay bills, often get overwhelmed at college and drop out to start earning immediate money instead.

Then there is the whole idea of young people being handed something they don’t truly understand the value of – and squandering it. It’s usually a decade or more later when college dropouts of all races and backgrounds look back and realize that they probably should’ve stayed in school. That’s around the time their college-educated peers are finally paying off those student loans, advancing in their careers, and finally cashing in on the quality of life that a college education provides. It’s very difficult to explain to an 18 or 19-year-old student the total value of a college education, both in the immediate and over the long term. Not having to pay for that value could translate into students who do not respect that education the way they should. This is not a point specific to minorities, but to young people in general.

So how can colleges and universities bring in diverse students, retain them, and graduate them debt-free?

It starts with the teaching and mentorship structure, like the one Michigan has in place, but needs to continue to college campuses. Students who we know are statistically more likely to drop out need hands-on guidance counselors, and mentors, and professors who work hard to keep them engaged and learning. There needs to be retention programs in place that actively check in on progress and don’t simply offer an open-door policy. All of this is vital if colleges are serious about having a diverse student population that succeeds on its grounds.

For programs like the one at Arizona State, it also means more targeted recruitment. If you say you are lowering financial barriers in order to bring in a more diverse student group, then you must find that student group and offer them spots. That takes a lot of dedication but is well worth it.

The bottom line is this: Simply giving students free access to a college degree is not enough for those students to succeed. Colleges and universities offering these types of programs need to recognize how the financial constraints of college are simply one issue on the road to attaining a degree. Academic support, mentorship, cultural inclusion and so many other factors must also play a role in these incentives for them to truly be successful at boosting campus and workplace diversity.

2. With athletes

And not in the way you might think, either.

This isn’t about getting more athletes on college campuses, though.

Think of what having strong minority role models can do for students. Successful people who look like the students a particular college or university is trying to graduate, and who come from a similar background, can leave a lasting impression and inspire students to similar heights.

One particular group of minority mentors that I feel should be getting even more involved in the minority recruiting and mentorship process is student athletes. Whether still athletes at the school, or alumni, this particular subset of minority mentors should play an important role in graduating other traditionally disadvantaged students.

Maurice Clarett as mentor

Maurice Clarett, an Ohio State University alum, is a college-athlete-turned-minority-mentor. The former college running back has taken on a new role as both a cautionary tale, and inspiration, to other young people. If his name sounds familiar, it is because his claim to fame was not just on the football field or as a national champion in the sport. Clarett served four years in prison for aggravated robbery and carrying a concealed weapon. It was behind bars that he started reading up on personal development and ways to grow beyond a delinquent and even ways to rise above his association with being a football star.

Today he talks with other college athletes about things like personal responsibility and being accountable for actions, no matter what their upbringing. Clarett has visited athletes at Alabama, Notre dame, Tennessee and Mississippi State. He recently spoke with the national champion Florida State football team and acknowledged that many minority college athletes come from home environments that leave them “undeveloped” and without the skills needed to function successfully in life. Taking advantage of the resources available on college campuses and determining to be better than life’s circumstances are two lessons that Clarett tries to pass along to the people he mentors.

A story like Clarett’s is so much more powerful than the seemingly-empty warnings from adults on college campuses, many of whom look nothing like the students they are trying to influence and have no shared life experiences. By finding ways to tap into the stories of athletes, colleges can give their students a more impactful way of committing to success.

Mirroring smart mentorship

Traditionally getting into college on an athletic scholarship has been a way that minorities have been able to break onto college campuses, particularly if they came from educational environments that simply did not offer the same resources as advantaged peers. I’d argue that getting these athletes to graduation day is simply not enough; a whole other realm of life skills is needed to ensure that they are successful long after their athletic playing days have passed. When the cheers die down and the attention turns to the more practical things in life, these student athletes need ground to stand on. Pairing them up with mentors, or at the very least bringing in former athletes to share their after-college success stories, is a great way to inspire greatness that lasts a lifetime.

Leadership. Teamwork. Hard work. Earning a “win.” Losing gracefully. All of these are lessons that college athletes know in the context of their respective sports. Translating that to life beyond college can be challenging but can be made much easier with the help of mentors that have a common understanding with the students they address. Schools should make this as much a priority as recruiting minority students to sports and academic programs. Colleges and universities have a responsibility to their students to prepare them for all aspects of life and proper mentorship can be a necessary building block in that process.

3. Without athletes

We’ve all heard the fairytale stories before: a minority kid from a tough neighborhood gets a shot at a college career because he or she is recruited for a particular sport. Not only do these athletes get to show off their physical talent, but they get a college degree and a more promising future in the process.

Listen, I’m all for athletes landing athletic scholarships if it means that more minority students earn a college degree. But I also know that stories like these, while intentionally heartwarming and media friendly, do not represent the vast majority of minorities with college aspirations. Athletes get a lot of the attention, but if colleges and universities are truly committed to diverse populations of students then they need to put the steps in place to make it easier for all minorities to earn a college degree.

A few of the areas where I think universities could improve on minority programs and recruitment include:

Arts recruiting.

Just as scouts go out and recruit the best basketball or football players for teams, the same should happen with minority students who show promise in the arts. Theater, musical performance, sculpting, painting, film studies and even creative writing – minority students who have talent in these areas should be given attention and invited to college programs. Why arts programs over more practical careers in STEM or healthcare? Minority students with arts passions often feel forced to abandon them in favor of immediate jobs or things that are simply not their passions. Arts careers are considered “silly” for white peers, but almost irresponsible for minority students. This should change and colleges should take the lead on it.

Mentorship programs.

There are some minority students who come from a home where one or both parents are college graduates but those odds are lower than their white peers. All first-generation college students face different challenges and expectations than those for whom college acceptance, success and graduation has always been expected. During the recruiting process, colleges should tout their mentorships programs and make sure minority and first-generation students are aware of the support they will receive when they decide to attend. As much as possible, these mentorship programs should work on matching students based on race, gender and career industry – though aligning all of that is admittedly difficult. Using the same mentor for several students is an option. Particularly in the case of minority students, mentors are generally overjoyed to be able to help a young person succeed. Colleges just need to be asking for that help and then expressing that it exists to their potential minority students.

Creative financial aid.

College is expensive and for students who have to pay for it on their own while supporting themselves, it can be overwhelming. There are no shortage of loans that students can take out to help finance their college careers, but saddling them with debt before they even set foot in the work world can be a recipe for disaster. Colleges that truly want a diverse population of students who succeed after graduation should look into adding more minority scholarships. The “pay it forward” college payment system that is implemented in certain states like Oregon should be considered for wider adoption, especially when it comes to attracting minority and first-generation students to college campuses. College does not need to be completely free in order for more minorities to attend and graduate. It does need to be affordable, though, and that takes some thinking out the normal financial aid box.

Athletes who earn college degrees are certainly inspirational but they are only a small portion of the minorities who want the type of education a college or university can provide. If we really want equality on our college campuses then it will take more than touting the success of our minority football, basketball and track stars. We need to find ways to translate that same success across interests and disciplines, and to give those students the support they need to truly succeed. Part of that process is to make college more affordable for all students. Another piece of that puzzle is targeting areas that are often overshadowed by athletics, like the arts. By understanding the true picture of what potential minority college students are like, colleges and universities can get more of them on campus or enrolling online.

4. With heavy-duty recruitment efforts

Recruitment strategies have become more important than ever.

Why? Recently, Michigan banned affirmative action for admittance to public universities and the U.S. Supreme Court may rule on it on a federal level soon. The process that was created during the height of the Civil Rights movement in America may soon be officially considered outdated, and even unfair, by the higher judicial powers.

With affirmative action on its way out, what can colleges do to ensure their campuses still have enough variety in race, ethnicity, gender and socioeconomic backgrounds?

Targeted high school recruiting.
The demographics of high schools are readily available, along with the socioeconomic status of them. Colleges that are serious about recruiting a diverse population should target schools with students in the particular demographic they would like to see more of on their campuses. This will not automatically translate into more of those students, but it will mean more consideration from these high schoolers of the colleges that seem to want to help them succeed the most.

Non-traditional student programs.
Many young people who cannot afford college tuition directly after high school end up in the workforce, often in a job that is not their passion or one that does not highlight their talents. By the time these students consider going to college, life has usually taken over in the form of rent, medical and other family expenses. Though colleges are starting to warm up to these adult, “non-traditional” students, there is still much more room for improvement. Launching full-fledged college recruiting programs for non-traditional students will bring in more talent to the college, and will also bring in more diversity in the students who take courses and graduate from there.

Legacy entry.
By giving preference or priority spots to legacy students, colleges can ensure spots for minority students without the use of affirmative action. Of course no student should be allowed entry to a particular college or university without putting in the actual time and work required of other students. But if all things are considered equal when it comes to academic records, using legacy priority could give minority students the leg up to land that college entry spot.

Targeted marketing campaigns.
If a college knows that it needs to improve the number of Latino students on campus, then a marketing campaign that appeals to those students needs to be developed. This includes visuals that show students like the ones being recruited, along with other cultural and language specifications. Traditional brochures and mailers should be secondary to social media campaigns that target students where they are already consuming content.

Since its inception, affirmative action as it relates to college admittance and graduation numbers for minorities and women has had a strong showing. If that tool is taken away from the college entry process, schools should modify the same concepts to other programs taking place in order to continue recruiting the most diverse college population possible. Without some forethought when it comes to what sorts of students need to be represented, colleges risk a student body that is not actually representative of the greater community. If that happens, all of the triumphs of affirmative action will be lost.

5. By reaching future students when they’re still young

Colleges are realizing that if minorities, first-generation students, and other pupils who are considered at-risk are target demographics for their upcoming graduating classes, then recruitment needs to start early. Think middle school, or even earlier. Waiting until junior or senior year of high school presents the risk that the students have already ruled out the possibility of college. Guiding younger students through what it takes to get into college, from grade expectations to community service requirements, ensures that more of the students who give up on college before they have even tried get a real shot at going, and graduating.

Recently 80 colleges and universities announced a new way to accept future students that strays from more mainstream admittance policies of the last few decades. Public schools like Purdue University and the University of Michigan, private schools like University of Chicago and Amherst College, and every Ivy League school are the founding members of the Coalition for Access, Affordability and Success. This group plans to allow portfolio systems for admittance to their schools.

The basic premise is this:  Starting freshman year, high school students can upload work and answer other prompts to prepare them for college admittance later on. Students could opt to share information, like completed projects or grades on report cards, with the colleges and gain some feedback during the high school process that will help them land a spot at a university after graduation.

Instead of using the Common Application, a watered-down non-customized but widely used process form, these 80 schools would also allow this comprehensive approach. It’s expected that many more schools will also want to join this coalition, but they must meet specific criteria.

Public colleges can join the coalition if they “provide sufficient financial aid” to those who need it within their respective states. Private colleges can join if they can prove their commitment to providing adequate financial aid to every domestic student. Colleges that have “gapping” problems (where they admit students that cannot afford the school, and give them no path for financial aid) will not be permitted to join the coalition. All schools, public or private, must have a six-year federal graduation rate of 70 percent.

How the new system benefits minorities

Perhaps the best part of this new approach to college admittance is the opportunity for college preparation long before senior year. For students from middle class and upper class families, thinking about colleges usually begins a few years early and happens in the way of picking classes and activities intended to pad a future application. Students from these families often go on college visits as well and meet with university guidance counselors – all coordinated by parents.

In homes where both parents work a lot to earn a living wage, or one parent is absent, it is a challenge just to get kids out the door and on the way to high school. Meticulously looking over next-semester class selections and carving out the time and money to make college visits is simply not an option for these families. In best case scenarios, an involved high school guidance counselor can step up to fill this gap – but too many bright students do not get the chance to go to college because they simply don’t know how to get there (or afford it). This coalition system adds in an extra support “staff” that not only gets kids interested in college early on, but guides them in the right steps to take to get into a program that makes the most sense for them.

This system for college admittance also follows a customized approach to developing student populations. An example given in a Business Insider article on the coalition said that instead of submitting the standard 500-word essay, students could submit something from their portfolio. This speaks more to the person submitting the application, and less to the formulaic ways that schools say “yes” or “no” to the people who want to attend them.

For minorities this means an admittance advantage, even if a particular student is not a strong writer or does not have someone looking over his or her shoulder and offering help with the application. The work that a student is most proud of, or that best represents the field he or she wants to go into, can shine on the application.

The needs-based component of this system will also benefit minority students, who traditionally have had a harder time paying for college. The schools who commit to help all students afford and pay for college, and who succeed in helping them graduate, can be part of this coalition. Predatory college programs that do not take the socioeconomic status of their students into account will be excluded – and therefore be required to offer the basic admittance application that has been in existence for the past few decades.

6. By supporting students

For all of the strides college recruiting programs have made, there is still an overarching theme that recruiting new students is an isolated process. Get the kids on campus, then move on to the next batch. In reality, recruiting should be a very small part of a larger strategy that not only brings students of varied backgrounds to campus, but sustains them until graduation. Some schools are improving in this regard, but there’s still a lot of work needed to flip this mentality from one of solitude to solidarity with other student help groups.

Some schools are working on this. The University of Connecticut and Ithaca College made headlines in 2015 when they added a new position to their executive suite: Chief Diversity Officer. While universities have long had diversity task forces and even full-time staff members who work to improve diversity on campus, the move to add such a prominent position is promising.

As more colleges follow suit, the position needs to be more than a figurehead. An editorial for UConn’s The Daily Campus sums it up by saying:

“The hope is that these recommendations hit their mark and help increase diversity in both the student body and faculty. The effort the administration is employing is seen and appreciated. The expectation now is that these efforts are fruitful, and bring meaningful change.”

Another example of an initiative that serves students and promotes diversity is the idea of the Hispanic Serving Institutions.

Before I explain what those are, consider this. Hispanic Americans with dreams of a college degree face different challenges than their white, and even black, peers. For those who hold English as a second language, there are some inherent communication obstacles. For those who are first-generation Americans (or first-generation college students, or both), extra guidance is needed to keep them from feeling overwhelmed by the college journey. Every college student faces obstacles but the challenges in front of Hispanic ones are unique, and growing in importance.

Some colleges and universities have recognized these specific struggles of Hispanic students and found ways to address them. These Hispanic Serving Institutions (or HSIs) don’t just have the rhetoric in place; to qualify for this distinction, a college must consistently have a 25 percent Hispanic student population. These schools must also be non-profit and offer at least two-year degree programs. In other words, HSIs must actually work to serve the Hispanic students they recruit, and not prey upon them.

As HSIs grow in number (in 2013, there were 431), it’s important for all college educators to realize the effect these schools will have on everyone else and why we should embrace Hispanic-friendly college policies.

Hispanic higher education impacts us all.
The U.S. Census reports that by 2060, the number of Hispanic Americans will reach 31 percent of the general population. That’s nearly a third of Americans who will work, study, spend money and live within our borders. Earning a college education for Hispanic students will in turn raise the quality of life for the rest of us, too. On a global scale, America could take a big hit in advancements and innovations if one-third of its population was not educated on a higher level (or even one-tenth of it). The colleges and universities that will succeed in recruiting and graduating large numbers of Hispanic students are the ones that recognize the extreme importance of doing such a thing. This is a not a charity case or a trend in college education. Creating pathways for Hispanic students to go to college and earn their degrees is SMART for the country as a whole.

We can learn, too.
When approaching the best ways to serve and educate Hispanic college students, it’s important to avoid an assimilation stance. Yes, there is a lot these students can learn from our traditional college canon, but there is so much we can learn from them too. This is true for Hispanic students as well as faculty members. As a greater college community, we should recognize that from an educational standpoint, increasing the number of Hispanic students who study on our campuses and graduate with our degrees will expand our own knowledge base too. We shouldn’t only accept Hispanic students but should encourage their viewpoints and allow those to influence our policies and the things we teach.

Change starts on college campuses.
Traditionally, colleges have been recognized as progressive places. Even if the administration of a particular school isn’t forward-thinking, the students usually are. I write a lot about the progressive changes that need to be made on college campuses but not because I think they are failing. I think college campuses hold the most potential of any type of entity to stimulate positive change. That potential is what pushes me to speak out when I think we could be doing more – as administrators, as faculty members, as students.

That is especially true when it comes to turning our campuses into Hispanic Serving Institutions. Critics can argue all they want for assimilation and shout for Hispanic children to “learn English” but the truth is that we all lose a little with that mentality. Colleges are the jumping off points. The policies we put in place and the students who we graduate matter to the rest of the country. We are being watched, if subconsciously, to see how situations ideally should be approached. If we truly want to embrace Hispanic culture as a major part of our American story, present and future, it needs to start in our colleges and universities.

Now, here are a couple of other things to think about when it comes to student body retention.

Many are turning to technology to anticipate problems and reach out to students at risk for dropping out long before they do. Virginia Commonwealth University is one example of a school reaching out to a tech consulting firm to learn more about its students and help struggling students before they withdraw.

Data is used for so many aspects of college life – expect to see more schools tapping it to recruit and maintain diverse student bodies.

Finally, the need for an affordable college education is mentioned so often that it seems that we are all becoming desensitized to it. The reality is that having affordable college, not just providing loans to students, will go a long way towards helping close the achievement gap. Initiatives like providing the first two years of community college for free to qualifying students, and even student loan forgiveness programs for high-demand jobs, are a few ways that the dream of a college degree can become more accessible to minority, first-generation and other at-risk students.

Beware of those schools trying to capitalize on a trend

Turn on your television to any local station during daytime hours, and you’re sure to see a handful of commercials touting the amazing benefits of enrolling in for-profit colleges. These idyllic spots highlight flexible classes, accelerated programs, online classes available from the comfort of home, and more. Usually the information about the particular college is delivered by a once-uneducated person turned career success – often a working dad, or single mom, whose kids are clearly proud of what the parent has accomplished. Obtaining a college education, particularly from the school mentioned, looks so easy to do.

While the description above may seem like the stuff of marketing clichés, it’s a tactic that has worked for many for-profit colleges. Targeting minorities and other non-traditional college students through commercials like these has been the bread-and-butter of for-profit schools for at least the past two decades and those tactics are just now starting to see some legal pushback.

To be clear, not all for-profit colleges are created equal. There are some that boast high graduation rates and seem to have student success at the heart of their endeavors. The very fact that these colleges exist have actually progressed the entire university system in the U.S. by pushing innovative programs, like online degrees, and showing that there truly is a large market for non-traditional college students.

Let’s not kid ourselves though. The non-profit college push is a very thinly-veiled attempt to enroll a volatile market – often the most eligible for federal loan and grant assistance.

The financial facts speak for themselves:

• As of 2014, for-profit colleges served just 13 percent of total higher education students but received 31 percent of federal student loans due to the minority, at-risk and low-income statuses of their students. Former veterans cashing in GI Bills also attend for-profit schools at higher rates than traditional colleges.
• The same report from the U.S. Department of Education reports that half of all students who default on their loans attend a for-profit college.

Which leads to the unavoidable question: Have non-profit colleges preyed upon at-risk students for the sake of making a quick buck?

One of the reasons for-profit schools have seen such a surge in enrollment in the past two decades can really be pinned on the smart marketing of two words: flexibility and acceleration. For students who simply did not have the funds, nor desire to incur college debt, right after high school, for-profit schools have stepped up as a second chance, of sorts. These colleges are places where non-traditional students can continue to work and take flexible courses, many or all of which are online. Most for-profit schools also offer a faster route to degree attainment, which peaks the interest of students who don’t want to dedicate years of their lives to college aspirations but are looking for a way to advance their careers. The University of Phoenix, perhaps the most recognizable name in for-profit online colleges, recently announced a new initiative to count other course work and work experience towards degree attainment. This initiative, and others like it, is designed to recruit students who don’t want to start from square one and don’t have the time to commit to a traditional college experience.

So what is wrong with either of these options? Nothing, in theory. Flexibility and accelerated degrees are a good fit for many students who otherwise could not chase any sort of college degree. Where many non-profits fail their students, however, is in charging astronomical rates and not offering enough support to keep students enrolled until graduation. In essence, these schools market well enough to get the students enrolled in courses but don’t do enough to guide them to their degrees. All the flexibility in the world can’t help a student understand a difficult concept, or learn better time/study management skills. Accelerated programs without mentorship options run the risk of burning students out, especially if they have no inspiration or focus.

It’s clear that the recent outcry for accountability for non-profit colleges is long overdue. Students deserve better than what they’ve been served by these institutions, and quite frankly, so does the entire American population. It’s time for these schools to deliver on their promise of career success for those who enroll – and that starts with student support that extends beyond recruitment.

Don’t forget about diversity at the faculty level, too

Each year, colleges and universities pay professional search firms millions of dollars to find qualified candidates for vacant positions. Having the best and brightest on their staffs is important for student recruitment, growth and accolades. Recruiting the strongest faculty team possible is a vital goal of every college and university, as it should be.

Where these colleges and search firms miss the mark, however, is finding viable candidates from diverse populations. Need proof of this? Take a look at these stats:

• The breakdown of racial representation at U.S. colleges according to the National Center for Education Statistics paints a bleak picture. There are 1 million white faculty members, less than 100,000 black faculty members, 86,000 Asian faculty members, and less than 60,000 Hispanic faculty members at institutions of higher education in America.
• That same report finds that just 12 percent of full-time faculty members at U.S. colleges are minorities and only one-third of full-time professors are women.
• In fields like mathematics, physics and computer science, minorities represent barely 2 percent of total faculty.

Furthermore, the lack of diversity in college faculty is not merely because all the professors are white and of European descent (though that number is high). A recent report from Mother Jones found that:

At some schools, like Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan, and Princeton, there are more foreign teachers than Hispanic and black teachers combined.

So we are hiring diverse faculty members on a global stage, but not a national one. There are an estimated 41.7 Black Americans, and an estimated 54 million Hispanic ones, according to the 2010 U.S. Census numbers. That comes out to about 13.2 percent and 17 percent of the total U.S. population, respectively. To put this in perspective, there are student protests going on at Michigan public universities, demanding that 10 percent of faculty members be African American. When you take urban areas like Detroit (where 84.3 percent of the population is Black) into account, asking for 10 percent is a drop in the bucket – yet students are rallying to get the support to make it happen.

When you look at numbers like this, it’s tough to get all warm and fuzzy inside about diverse faculty at U.S. colleges and universities. Are schools even serious about hiring diverse individuals? Or is all this talk of having various populations just a horse and pony show?

I’ve written before about how truly instrumental a diverse faculty is to creating a diverse student population. It takes focus and hard work, though. That starts with the decision-makers and search committees on college campuses.

So what can universities do to take the ideology of diverse faculty and make it a reality?

Money Talks

Anyone who has worked on a college campus knows that it takes a lot of money to make things happen. It takes money to conduct research, to run departments, to have the right resources in the classroom, and to do anything, really. The same is true of developing a truly diverse faculty body. Instead of throwing money at outside hiring firms, some universities like Vanderbilt University are giving it to their departments. Financial incentives make it more attractive for departments to look for diverse faculty members to fill positions. Adding a financial component makes hiring diverse faculty members actionable. Is this the best way to attract diverse candidates? Probably not. But it is certainly effective.

Vanderbilt isn’t the only university throwing money at this problem either.  Brown University, for example, has announced that it is dedicating $100 million to look into diversity and race issues on its campus in the next decade. The faculty at the Providence campus is overwhelmingly white and male.

Targeting with Purpose

The University of Virginia approaches diverse faculty hiring from a few angles. The first is by establishing associate deans assigned to diversity within schools and programs. It is quite literally the job of these decision makers to recruit and hire diverse employees for the university. UVA also requires any members of faculty search committees to attend diversity training sessions. There are other universities like Westchester and Harvard that have established similar procedures that empower school employees to expand and maintain diversity in the ranks. A college should never assume that every hiring manager understands what is expected in the way of diversity; it must be expressly outlined and then decision makers must be trained.

Lewis & Clark College in Oregon planned a diversity forum after a Rwandan student reported being assaulted because of his skin color. The school’s president Barry Glasner has also said an action plan is being put in place to improve diversity in faculty and students, as well as race relations at the school.

The University of Connecticut hired a Chief Diversity Officer who works towards improving the diversity of the student population AND of faculty and staff. UConn’s president Susan Herbst has said publicly that she was disappointed in the lack of diverse faculty members when she first arrived on campus four years ago and that UConn is severely lacking in an area where it really should shine. The trend of hiring Chief Diversity Officers is a positive one, as long as these executives are really empowered to make changes.

Recruiting Smartly

It is not enough for a college or university to be located in a diverse area; these schools must also aggressively recruit their target population, within and outside the community. This includes students, of course, and long before they are filling out college applications. When it comes to faculty, universities should have a targeted message for candidates who are minorities. This should include the reasons why that particular school is a good fit for minority faculty members – and if that school is still working to balance its diversity, that should be mentioned. If a college or university is located in a multi-cultural or urban area, that should be part of the pitch. If not, colleges should find other ways to make themselves attractive to minority candidates.

Mentoring to Tenure

After the initial hire, minorities should be encouraged to stay on campus through tenure goals. Minorities need mentorship to make this happen though, and colleges need to have minority and women tenure-track programs. By immediately letting those goals be known to the new minority hires, there is a higher chance for retention and for those diverse faculty members to end up mentoring some new hires of their own.

In the end, more minorities on college faculty only serves the benefit of everyone. It gives minority students realistic role models and gives non-minority students the chance to work with professors who may not look like them. Even the colleges themselves benefit from the added life experiences these minority faculty members bring to the table. In order to tap into the potential of a truly diverse, truly experience-rich college experience, we need to pay just as much attention to the variety in our faculty as we do to our students.

Overall, it’s becoming clear to just about everyone how important it is to prepare our workforce for the diversity of our country, and to support ALL Americans in becoming prepared for the ever-increasing demands of the workforce. It’s time to make some changes to our colleges and universities, and turn them into training hubs that benefit everyone. Once we figure out how to serve our population, we can see the kind of prosperity that even this wealthy country has never seen before.