HBCUs make up only 3% of all colleges and universities in the United States, yet they produce 20% of our nation’s Black college graduates, a quarter of this country’s Black STEM graduates, half of all Black attorneys and 80% of Black judges. Black colleges and universities, which have too often been underfunded at a federal level and overlooked by the general public, are at long last beginning to get their dues. It’s time to share their value and uniqueness with the wider world. We need to move beyond the traditional — and in many ways tiresome — deficit-based understanding of HBCUs and toward an asset-based view of their innate strengths and potential.
