Howard University Fighting To Make A Comeback

          Howard University has in the past been ranked as one of the nation's best and most prestigious colleges in America, at times even considered to be the top HBCU in the nation.  Located in Washington D.C., this historically black private university was established shortly after the Civil War in 1867.  It has been a significant institution in our nation's history especially with the role it played during the Civil Rights Movement.  It is also recognized for its outstanding School of Medicine and School of Law.  

          More recently, however, it has come to public attention that the university has taken a downward turn.  With the dramatic and sudden resignation of its president, Sidney A. Ribeau, many worry that the university's struggles are perhaps more serious than were previously thought.  Interestingly enough, since Ribeau's presidency began in August 2008, Howard began to fall from its high rankings in the lists of Best Colleges in U.S. News.  In 2008, it had been consistently higher up amongst the top 100.  In 2010, it fell to 96th, and now in the 2014 edition in the "National Universities" category, it has been ranked at No. 142 from being 120 in 2013.  So the question is, what went wrong to make its rankings drop so drastically?  While many may blame Ribeau's legislation, there are many factors which have contributed to its decline.  According to Robert Morse, these changes have been accredited to lowered graduation and retention rates, fall in graduation rate performance, faculty resources, student selectivity, and academic peer assessment. It has declined in most of the major academic categories which go into consideration in university rankings.  But a major issue is that since it is indeed a private university, which is the norm for historically black colleges and universities, it has a smaller endowment with fewer wealthy alumni to be making substantial donations, and many of the students do not have the financial backing to afford 4 years at a decently pricey institution that cannot offer ample financial assistance with its lack of surplus resources.  

          Naturally, they have made cuts in costs to be able to reduce the tuition to help bring enrollment rates back up, but according to columnist Megan McArdle, there may be other underlying issues.  While her presentation is a bit shaky and not very clear to the point, she makes an interesting suggestion that the racism could be playing a role in the university's recent downfall.  Obviously, historically black institutions have the long-standing tradition of fighting against racism and training their students to be able to make changes in society and inspire movements of people to fight for their beliefs.  But I am struggling to see how racism could have direct effect on the financial struggles of a once very highly ranked university.  If this were true, I would expect to see similar stories relating to other specific universities.  But maybe that is the issue is that it is overlooked.  There will always be strive to compete with other universities and remain "relevant" and prestigious, but are there ways that our society may be holding back the potentially even more so augmented success of these universities? 

Sources:

http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/college-rankings-blog/2013/10/07/why-howard-university-fell-in-the-best-colleges-rankings

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-04/racism-continues-to-hurt-historically-black-colleges.html

http://www.howard.edu/

http://hbcudigest.com/fear-of-an-average-howard-university/