Abstract
The following article considers the missions of public Black colleges and universities, asking whether or not these missions are focused on liberal arts or professional education, or perhaps a hybrid of these foci. More importantly, we will explore the long term impact of these institutional missions on African Americans. Our discussion and examination will be contextualized using historic arguments put forth by African American leaders Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois. These arguments, although often simplified, are highly complex and can offer insight into the purpose of education at public Black colleges and universities in the current day.
True liberal education demands that assumptions be challenged, and ideas be twisted and pulled, and exposed to extremes of opinion. In short, to be educated is to be conscientiously uncomfortable.
—Darryl L. Peterkin40
The curriculum at the typical HBCU…is not liberating in the sense that it does not cultivate an intellectualism that inspires a life of the mind.
—Gregory N. Price34
It may be of no importance to the race to be able to boast today of many times as many “educated” members as it had in 1865. If they are of the wrong kind the increase in numbers will be a disadvantage. The only question which concerns us is whether these ‘educated’ persons are actually equipped to face the ordeal before them or unconsciously contribute to their own undoing by perpetuating the regime of the oppressor.
—Carter G. Woodson52
Black colleges and universities enroll roughly 300,000 African American undergraduates (in addition to other racial and ethnic minorities). This figure accounts for 20 percent of African American students despite these institutions representing only 3 percent of the nation's colleges and universities.Footnote 5 Black colleges and universities have produced countless African American intellectuals, including historian John Hope Franklin (Fisk University), writer Ralph Ellison (Tuskegee University), poet Langston Hughes (Lincoln University), author Toni Morrison (Howard University), and physicist and astronaut Ronald E. McNair (North Carolina A&T University). These individuals, among others, have made important contributions to both the African American community and the nation as a whole, pushing us to think differently and calling into question our assumptions and behaviors. Black colleges and universities have also produced a myriad of professionals who have contributed to society and the economy, including Black Enterprise publisher Earl G. Graves (Morgan State University), legislator Barbara Jordan (Texas Southern University), civil rights attorney and Supreme Court Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall Sr. (Lincoln University and Howard University), news commentator Ed Bradley (Cheyney University), media mogul Oprah Winfrey (Tennessee State University), and businessman Reginald Lewis (Virginia State University).
But do Black colleges and universities today continue to produce students who ask critical questions, challenge the status quo, and move the country and humanity forward? Do Black colleges embody missions aimed at educating students with these goals in mind?
This essay considers the missions of public Black institutions, asking whether or not they are focused on liberal arts or professional education. We also consider the long-term impact of these institutional missions on African Americans and their place in society. We also offer recommendations for the future of public Black colleges and universities in terms of their missions and curricula. Our discussion and examination is contextualized using historic arguments put forth by African American leaders Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois. Despite being offered up for discussion in the early twentieth century, these arguments continue to hold relevance within Black colleges today, and we would argue within higher education as a whole.Footnote 6
Considering the Perspectives of Washington and Du Bois
Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois held philosophical perspectives on Black education that have been misunderstood, twisted, and misrepresented by historians. It has not been until recently that scholars have tried to look at these men individually rather than pitting them against each other.Footnote 7 For our purposes, we will briefly examine each leader's views on African American education within the Black college setting, highlighting the benefits and drawbacks of each perspective.
In the early part of the twentieth century, Booker T. Washington was the most influential and celebrated African American in the United States.Footnote 8 As such, his educational philosophy permeated the curricula of Black colleges for nearly twenty years, even after his death in 1915.Footnote 9 Washington believed wholeheartedly in the dignity of labor, the ethics of hard work, and the idea that “success came from rising up from the bottom according to firm guidelines.”Footnote 10 He instilled in the students at Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (later named Tuskegee Institute and then Tuskegee University), where he served as principal, a firm commitment to morality. According to Michael Bieze, “Writers on industrial education often fail to note that Washington's version of the curriculum was founded upon Christian morality and character education, not simply developing manual skills.”Footnote 11 Washington aimed to ensure that African Americans were self-sufficient, and as such, trained them in the industrial arts.Footnote 12 Critics of Washington contend that the Black leaders' educational philosophy was misguided, prepared African Americans for jobs that were not available to them, and appeased white industrial philanthropists rather than serving the needs of Blacks.Footnote 13
Washington's philosophy on education changed from his early days at Tuskegee to his tenure as principal of the Institute. In 1893, twelve years after the founding of Tuskegee, Washington's education philosophy was rooted in the work of General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, principal of Hampton Institute, which focused primarily on labor and morality.Footnote 14 Working with the “head, heart, and hand” was paramount in his early philosophy of education.Footnote 15 However, fifteen years later and closer to the end of his tenure at Tuskegee, Washington's theories had changed. He eventually adopted a position that combined the two traditions—practical and liberal arts. In Bieze's words, “academic theory at Tuskegee was advanced not as an end but to provide concepts that would then be applied in real life situations in the various trades.” Speaking of his approach to education, Washington said, “so that, having learned practical and theoretical house-building at Tuskegee, they would be able to go out and build for themselves decent homes, and teach our people how to do the same thing.”Footnote 16 While its worldly focus—house building—was quite different from that of Du Bois, it sounded a similar note in one respect: that one group of African Americans ought to be educated as leaders, to uplift the race.
Du Bois, in his own words, “believed in the higher education of a Talented Tenth who through their knowledge of modern culture could guide the American Negro to a higher civilization.”Footnote 17 He “knew that without this the Negro would have to accept white leadership, and that such leadership could not always be trusted to guide this group into self-realization and to its highest cultural possibilities.” According to Derrick P. Alridge, “The belief that Du Bois was diametrically opposed to vocational/industrial education during the early 1900s is not entirely correct, although it has been widely asserted. While Du Bois favored classical education over vocational/industrial education as a means of social uplift, he did not categorically deny the importance of vocational/industrial education for the classically trained Negro.”Footnote 18 Du Bois “believed that we should seek to educate a mass of [Negroes] in the three R's and the technique…and duty of good work.” But, he also thought that the “race must have thinkers and leaders” who possess a liberal arts education.Footnote 19 In essence, Du Bois wanted to create an intellectual elite to lead the race as a whole toward self-determination. He sought to have Black colleges produce a “broadly educated black person who would, in service to his or her people, and to humanity, wage an expanded, uncompromising struggle against injustice, exploitation, and domination.”Footnote 20 That said, Du Bois also stressed, “After we have sent our most promising to college, then not only the rest, but the college men too, need training in technical school for the actual technique.”Footnote 21
According to Alridge, Du Bois also believed in a concept of communal education where “Negroes take advantage of the Jim Crow system already set up in the South and use segregated communities to maintain and further develop control over their social, economic, and political situation.”Footnote 22 In essence, Du Bois wanted Blacks to build and nurture their communities while maintaining intellectual control in order to advance their circumstance in life.
Whatever the philosophical disagreements may have been between Washington and Du Bois, the two educational giants did share a goal of educating African Americans and uplifting their race. Their perspectives ask us to consider, what type of education is best for African Americans? A liberal education? A more vocationally oriented professional education? A combination of both? Subsequently, what is lost when a liberal arts education is sacrificed? And, how are the nation's public historically Black colleges and universities contributing to the education of African Americans? Even today, there are Black colleges that lean more toward an industrial curriculum, others a liberal arts curriculum. These choices are linked to political positions. For example, those institutions with more conservative presidents tend to lean toward a more industrial or practical curricula, whereas those institutions with more liberal presidents tend to embrace curricula more focused on the liberal arts.Footnote 23
The Treatment of the Curriculum at Black Colleges in the Literature
Within the literature pertaining to Black colleges, there is very little discussion of mission or curricula beyond that of the early debates of Washington and Du Bois. Nevertheless, a few scholars have focused on the liberal arts and vocational environments at these institutions and their merits, while others have examined individual disciplines.Footnote 24
According to scholar E. P. Davis, who conducted research on liberal arts curricula within the Black college setting in the early 1930s, a Black college should “contribute to the welfare of humanity in the conservation of the benefits of the past and in the enrichment of the present and future. It should furnish criteria for the judgment of values. It should furnish background for a catholic interpretation of human and social problems. It should prepare for adequate living. It should not apologize for these aims.”Footnote 25
According to Davis's research, by the early 1930s, most liberal arts–based Black colleges had expanded their curricula by including an emphasis on the practical. He also noted that those Black colleges with a vocational emphasis, such as Tuskegee and Hampton, “added cultural courses to their program of studies.”Footnote 26 Most Black colleges saw the merits of each type of curriculum and adjusted their missions.
John W. Davis conducted research during the same year that E. P. Davis did on Black land-grant colleges. These institutions, at their founding, were dedicated to “instruction in agriculture, the mechanic arts, the English language, and the various branches of mathematical, physical, natural, and economic science, with special reference to their applications in the industries of life.”Footnote 27 Black land-grant colleges, which numbered seventeen as a result of funding through the Morrill Act of 1890, were similar in focus to their white counterparts. According to Davis, many African Americans were not easily convinced that vocational and practical education was in their best interest. He attributed this hesitancy to the stories of forced labor with which the grandchildren of slaves were all too familiar, noting that slavery added an indignity to labor. Davis also noted that the students at the early Black land grant colleges were “imbued with the idea that a collegiate education consisted of cultural instruction as embodied in the liberal arts and sciences and thus developed a prejudice against the practical type of agricultural and mechanical-arts education which was the principal objective of the curricula of the newly established college.”Footnote 28 Perhaps these African American students were keenly aware of the curriculum debates that took place earlier and as such questioned the motives behind a vocational or practical education. Historical evidence shows that students protested against repressive forms of curricula and autocratic leadership of the early Black colleges.Footnote 29 Based on his research, John W. Davis concluded that African Americans would find themselves on firmer economic footing if they pursued practical education instead of the liberal arts, noting that economic stability would lead to the independence of the Black race. He was convinced that practical education could be pursued “without vocationally warping the minds of students.”Footnote 30
Writing a decade after Davis in 1946, scholars Walter G. Daniel and Robert P. Daniel suggested a combination of practical and liberal arts education for Black college students. In doing so, they considered the context and situation for African Americans during the mid-twentieth century. Specifically, they argued, curriculum “must prepare the student for both the adjustment to a world which restricts his movements due to his race and color and the participation in the struggle for and enjoyment of the real freedom and equality yet to be attained.”Footnote 31
Researcher Charles C. Verharen proposed a curriculum for Black colleges in 1993, focusing on infusing the liberal arts with the practical. He laid out three goals for his curriculum: to introduce in provocative ways the intractable problems whose solutions form part of the raison d'être of the university; to show students in dramatic ways the relation of theory and practice; and to allow students to make informed choices about their majors and careers.Footnote 32 Through his proposed curriculum, Verharen aimed to have Black college students not only ask questions, challenge assumptions, and experience a liberating education, but also adopt a community-oriented approach that enabled them to see how their education and knowledge was “vital not only to their own interests but also to those of the communities” from whence they came and will settle.Footnote 33
Unlike most scholars writing about Black college curricula, economist Gregory N. Price urges us to consider what is sacrificed as Black colleges place an emphasis on the vocational or professional over a liberal arts focus. He notes,
A Black America without a sufficient stock of intellectual capital supplied by HBCUs would not be ideal, even if the trade-off is for a wealthy and solid black middle class of professionals earning six figure household incomes. The basic questions that present themselves to a presumptively free society such as ours are very demanding questions. Resolving these questions requires engaged minds, minds that for the right reasons are not likely to be found among an HBCU-trained black professional class that has been fed a heavy curriculum diet of accounting, marketing, sales, and capital budgeting.Footnote 34
Price argues that “a coercive vocationalist curriculum can result in the best and brightest of our students being driven away from say Molecular Biology and perhaps discovering a cure for AIDS, and steered into vocations such as Marketing where they learn to write proposals for marketing and selling colas to select demographic groups.”Footnote 35 He contends that an educational focus that merely centers on the practical or the professional renders Black college graduates powerless. Black students will not be able to critically engage important ideas and “reformulate the foundations of knowledge.Footnote 36 As an alternative, Price suggests that a liberating curriculum at HBCUs is one that “encourages students at HBCUs to think critically and independently, without regard to the practical vocational utility of the intellectual competencies acquired.”Footnote 37 Moreover, a true liberal education, according to Price, is “dedicated solely to developing the free exercise of the mind.”Footnote 38
When considering Price's perspective, it is imperative that we remember that many public HBCU students have been traditionally first-generation, low-income college students. For example, according to a recent demographic report by the Thurgood Marshall College Fund (the leading representative of public Black colleges and universities), in 2007, 62 percent of the students attending public Black institutions received Pell Grants, as compared to 32 percent at historically white institutions. Likewise, over half of Black college students are first-generation, as compared to 35 percent of students at historically white institutions.Footnote 39 For these students, being financially solvent is essential so that they can assist themselves and their families. Unfortunately, those who are more affluent are perhaps at greater liberty to enjoy a liberal arts experience. Should this be the case? A sense of justice would lead one to argue for the opposite. Is there a middle ground for African American students—one on which they can gain practical skills that lead to increased income, but still be challenged in ways that make them, in the words of scholar Darryl Peterkin, “conscientiously uncomfortable”?Footnote 40
Just what are the missions of Black colleges and universities today? Do they focus on a vocational or liberal arts education? Or do they offer a combination of both educational foci? And, if the nation's Black colleges and universities are not creating Black intellectual capital as they have in the past, where will the Black intelligentsia be educated? Do Black institutions want to hand over the task of educating Black intellectuals to historically white institutions alone?Footnote 41 According to Verharen, Black colleges “have a moral responsibility to furnish curricula that focus students' attention on problems that may escape the concentration of other institutions.”Footnote 42 And, in the words of Gregory Price, if Black colleges do not focus on providing a liberal education, they “will find themselves participating in the existentially corrupt task of creating a…subculture devoid of intellectual aspirations, concerned only with material progress, forsaking the pursuit of questions and endeavors that make a humanity and civilization possible.”Footnote 43
On the Importance of Mission
Virtually every college and university in the United States has a mission statement. These often-ambiguous statements articulate a shared purpose that serves as a foundation for organizational aspirations.Footnote 44 According to recent research, college and university mission statements serve two main purposes. First, they are instructional; that is, they help college administrators and faculty differentiate between those ideas that are central to the institution and those at the peripheral. Mission statements, according to Christopher Morphew and Matthew Hartley, also express a “shared sense of purpose” that results in the “capacity to inspire and motivate those within an institution and to communicate its characteristics, values, and history of key external constituents.”Footnote 45 They add that some “scholars see the mission statement glass as half-empty. They view them as a collection of stock phrases that are either excessively vague or unrealistically aspirational or both.” However, in their research, Morphew and Hartley found that mission statements do reflect the values of an institution and signal a commitment to those values on the part of the institution to its constituents. Public institutions, in particular, “are cognizant of their need to show their relevance to important external constituent groups…as they compete for public funding with groups whose services to the local region is much more conspicuous.”Footnote 46
We should note that although examining mission statements can produce an understanding of the way a college or university approaches learning, it is not a comprehensive measure. While many institutions of higher education stay close to their missions, others stray away, merely offering platitudes. However, according to leading scholars who study college and university missions, these statements can serve as a close proxy for the type of education institutions provide to students.
Method
Based on the findings of Morphew and Hartley, as well as of other scholars who have conducted empirical research related to college and university mission statements, we examined the statements of public Black colleges and universities and how they reflect a liberal arts, vocational/professional, or hybrid focus.Footnote 47 We followed the lead of Morphew and Hartley, taking the position that these mission statements reflect the values of public Black colleges and universities.
We reviewed the mission statements of thirty-nine four-year public Black colleges and universities as designated by the U.S. Department of Education. Each statement was secured through a search on the World Wide Web. We reviewed each mission individually and collaboratively. We then assessed the data by reading through each statement once. During the second reading, we identified terms related to liberal arts (for example, foster critical thought, stimulate intellectual curiosity, promote the exchange of ideas), professional (for example, development of workforce, professional competence, contribute to job market, prepare students for careers), and hybrid education (that is, a combination of these terms) based on the ideas of researchers who have studied curricula at Black institutions. We also discussed any discrepancies found in the data. This qualitative approach helped us to determine the mission, in terms of curricula, of public Black colleges as represented by their institutional mission statements. It is important to note that we did not study the institutional practices of these public Black institutions. Our understanding of their curricular focus is based on our review of their missions.
Findings
Our findings are divided into three sections: liberal arts–focused Black colleges, professional/practically focused Black colleges, and Black colleges that combine the liberal, professional, and practical in a hybrid approach. The literature helped us to construct our understanding of a liberal education and a professional/practical education. We have also included two subsections in our findings, which are based on our examination of the mission statements and themes in the literature; these subsections are and “morals and ethics” and “community engagement.”
Of the thirty-nine public Black colleges and universities that we examined, six institutions had mission statements focused solely on a liberal arts education and five had an emphasis on only professional education (see Table ). Of note, the majority (28) of the institutions made mention of both a commitment to the liberal arts and professional education in their mission statements (see Table ).
Table 1
Table 2
Liberal Arts–Focused Black Colleges
Those Black colleges that we identified as having a liberal arts–focused mission stressed the value of this type of curriculum in creating a foundation for all learning. As Verharen argues, “Knowledge of the philosophy of a discipline gives students a sense of the deepest controversies that divide the most original thinkers within that discipline. Knowledge of the history of a discipline gives students a sense of how the nature and subject matter of these controversies change over time. In the best case, historical background furnishes students with details that can help them extrapolate from the present in order to anticipate the future and thereby become original thinkers in a field of study.”Footnote 48 These liberal arts–focused colleges consider a liberal education crucial to all types of learning and to the advancement of knowledge overall.
According to Central State University's mission, its aim is to “stimulate in students an intellectual curiosity and a continuous search for knowledge.” Likewise, Cheyney University of Pennsylvania seeks to provide an “intellectually challenging” education through which the institution will teach students to “think creatively and communicate effectively.” These institutions want to provide a “well-rounded education” and as Fayetteville State University's mission notes, “produce creative thinkers and leaders who will reach beyond current intellectual and cultural boundaries to become change agents for shaping the future of the nation and the world.” These liberal arts–focused institutions aim to challenge, explore, and transform “human and social” conditions just as they did when they served as the only educational choice for African Americans during the decades of Jim Crow.Footnote 49
Professional/Practically Focused Black Colleges
Those public Black colleges that we concluded had a more professional or practically focused mission emphasized developing students for careers in the workforce and having an impact on economic development. For example, Bluefield State College wants students to develop “professional competence” and to be prepared for “challenging careers.” Likewise, Fort Valley State University has a “decidedly professional focus.” And, Lincoln University of Missouri prepares “students for careers and life long learning.” These Black colleges and universities, as noted by John W. Davis, are concerned with placing their graduates on “firmer economic footing,” and as a result giving them independence.Footnote 50
Black Colleges with a Hybrid Mission
The majority of the mission statements that we examined revealed a hybrid focus that drew upon both liberal arts and professional/practical perspectives. These Black colleges combined educational traditions in an effort to give students a liberal arts foundation, but to also prepare them for the practical world that they would soon enter.Footnote 51 For example, at Delaware State University, students are to receive a “thorough and marketable education,” but are also pushed to “develop conceptual thinking ability.” The institution aims to “nurture the inquiring mind of each student.” Delaware State is representative of the institutions in this hybrid category in that it urges students to merge, in the words of Verharen, theory and practice and gives them ample opportunities to do so.Footnote 52 Similarly, at Harris Stowe State University, students are encouraged to think critically, understand and respect diversity, and grow in terms of their interpersonal skills; however, the Black university also places an emphasis on making sure that students are “workplace ready.” The institution accomplishes these goals by having a professionally oriented undergraduate program that is “undergirded by a traditional liberal arts program.” Like Harris Stowe, the University of the District of Columbia offers a strong foundation in the liberal arts, but the institution also boasts the ability to “prepare students for immediate entry into the workforce.” Although North Carolina A&T University has an overwhelming emphasis on engineering in their institutional mission, the Black university aims to be a “learner-centered community that develops and preserves intellectual capital through interdisciplinary learning, discovery, engagement, and operational excellence.” In a perfect world, it might be possible to avoid dirtying a liberal arts education with notions of the practical, as Gregory Price suggests. However, it seems that there might be a middle ground: Black colleges and universities that build on the liberal arts, yet make connections with the practical and professional for their students. Moreover, these institutions can work to use the critical thinking skills developed through a liberal education to challenge assumptions within the practical and professional worlds.Footnote 53
As noted earlier in this article, two other themes emerged from our examination of public Black college and university mission statements: “morals and ethics” and “community service.” These themes are present in the literature and rooted in the philosophies of Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois, respectively.
A Commitment to Morals and Ethics
Public Black college mission statements were heavily laden with references to inculcating values and morals in students. At Bowie State University, the institution seeks to nurture students who are “committed to high moral standards.” Likewise, at Central State University, the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, and the University of Maryland at Eastern Shore, students are nurtured “within a value-based environment”; while Florida A&M University students are educated with a “particular emphasis on integrity and ethical conduct.” At Alcorn State, Delaware State, Fort Valley State, and Southern A&M, students are developed into “responsible citizens” who are prepared to participate in a democratic society. These phrases are reminiscent of the early missions of Black colleges that were heavily influenced by white missionaries from the northeast.Footnote 54 One can also see the influence of Booker T. Washington on these institutions. As noted earlier, Washington was dedicated to instilling the concepts of Christian morality and character into his students. He worked diligently to build individual character and to demonstrate for whites that Blacks could be civilized and not a menace to society.Footnote 55
The emphasis on in loco parentis (that is, the institution taking on the role of the parent) at Black colleges is an important consequence of these colleges' emphasis on morals. However, in the past and more recently, students have pushed against administrators and policies that have sought to enforce rigid moral codes. Of course, the more emphasis that Black colleges place on critical thinking and challenging assumptions, the more likely it is that their students will use these skills to challenge the institutions and their leadership.Footnote 56
Another aspect of morals and ethics is the idea of brotherhood: the obligation that one human being has toward another. Black colleges have the potential to produce good citizens who have a sense of obligation to one another. Students, instilled with this idea, it is thought, will through their actions cultivate a positive reputation for their alma maters. However, an emphasis on morals can also lead to the production of conservative attitudes and students who are reluctant to challenge the status quo in the future. As Carter G. Woodson noted, in the opening epigraph quote to this article, “The only question which concerns us is whether these ‘educated’ persons are actually equipped to face the ordeal before them or unconsciously contribute to their own undoing by perpetuating the regime of the oppressor.”Footnote 57
A Dedication to Community Service
Although HBCUs are rarely mentioned in the civic and community engagement literature, they have a long history of working in local communities, providing education, health care, and training people to challenge civil rights injustices. Perhaps the most common element in the public Black college mission statements was a dedication to community service on the part of the institution. Our results are consistent with those of Christopher Morphew and Matthew Hartley, who found that public colleges and universities overall, regardless of racial make-up, “heavily emphasize service—both as institutions within a region and through instilling in students a sense of civic duty.”Footnote 58 Thirty-three of the public Black colleges included language that pertained to community service in their mission statements, with many boasting about their comprehensive “outreach programs.” Alcorn State University referred to its program as a “communiversity,” which, it claimed, “provides outreach programs and services that are geared toward assisting and meeting the educational, economic, recreational and cultural needs of the immediate community, the region, and the state.” Drawing upon its land–grant roots, the university also seeks to “serve families with limited resources and to help small and family farmers improve their standard of living” through their agricultural and extension programs. Most institutions also placed an emphasis on serving not only the local community but also the nation and the world. They asked students to improve the “quality of life for all persons.” Some institutions rooted their statements in the long history of Black colleges assisting their local communities. For example, Kentucky State University is “committed to keeping relevant its legacy of service by proactively engaging the community in partnerships on civic projects driven by the objective of positively impacting the quality of life of the citizens of the Commonwealth.” Likewise, Morgan State University encourages students to “improve the quality of life of residents of Baltimore and [the] state.” Last, many of the institutions emphasized their commitment to economic development.
Charles C. Verharen suggests that Black college and university students embrace a community-oriented agenda in which there is a focus on education and knowledge for both themselves and the communities in which they reside.Footnote 59 Cheyney University of Pennsylvania's mission is congruent with Verharen's assertion. It states, “Cheyney University graduates will be a diverse group of local, national, and international students, who will apply the knowledge and skills gained from our rigorous and challenging academic programs to the advancement of the nation and global community.”
Interestingly, we found, in an earlier study, that graduates of Black college MBA programs, which have a strong emphasis on uplifting the race and community service, tend to work for nonprofit organizations upon graduation, forgoing the corporate world.Footnote 60 According to Derrick P. Alridge, Du Bois's position on community service is rooted in “a communal educational perspective [that] provides a strategy for African-Americans to engage in community-based efforts of liberation and self-help.” Du Bois's perspective is aligned with many public Black colleges and universities' commitment to turning their students' time and energies to their immediate and greater communities. When liberation and self-help are realized, Alridge maintains, African Americans “reclaim their neighborhood schools, re-establish cultural and historical bonds between children and elders in the community, and become teachers, administrators, and volunteers in their community schools.”Footnote 61
Conclusion
For African Americans, there are considerable benefits to obtaining a purely liberal arts education. Graduates may arrive in the workplace with a critical eye toward problem solving, paying particular attention to how they can help African American communities. For example, Black college graduates with training in the biological sciences could potentially conduct groundbreaking research related to HIV/AIDS or sickle cell anemia. Through big picture, critical thinking that draws from interdisciplinary approaches, Black college graduates could tackle philosophical and practical questions pertaining to the strengthening of the African American family. These graduates could think critically about African American communities as well as the majority community, challenging the status quo and moving various African American communities forward.
Of course, there are drawbacks to a purely liberal arts education. Having a more philosophical and less practical approach could lead to difficulty gaining employment after graduation for Black college and university alumni. Moreover, one could argue that although it is beneficial to develop critical thinking skills, one also needs the resources to implement his or her ideas. It has been noted, for example, that Du Bois was a great intellectual, pushing society (Black and white) to think differently and challenging authority in meaningful ways; however, he saw few of his ideas come to fruition due to a lack of resources.Footnote 62
A purely professional curriculum could also have ample benefits. As mentioned, graduates have a better chance of achieving financial security, allowing them to contribute to their families, society, and back to their alma mater. Moreover, through the work of their graduates, Black colleges and universities themselves benefit as they are viewed as contributing more fully to local and state economies. Graduates of practically focused Black institutions are also likely to make practical change in Black communities by potentially establishing programs that educate Black communities and investing in businesses that lead to Black economic empowerment and the acquisition of more Black assets.Footnote 63
Unfortunately, a professional curriculum may have the potential to focus too much on individual and material gains. Will graduates of Black colleges and universities with a more practical focus contribute new knowledge? Will they be satisfied with being a mere “cog in a machine,” at the mercy of an economic and political system that was not designed for their success? And, although these graduates may be better off financially than those students who were educated purely in the liberal arts, will their knowledge, when combined with their financial resources, be adequate to change society? With the continued change in America's economic situation, will students' training in business and technology even afford them job security?
Graduates of Black institutions, which have a hybrid approach, benefit from a combination of hands-on and critical thinking skills. They can potentially not only challenge the status quo but also change it. These graduates can add intellectually and economically to society and Black communities, moving society ahead at the micro and macro levels. Lastly, students educated with a hybrid approach may be more versatile and able to adapt to complex and varied situations.
Certainly, a drawback of a hybrid type of curriculum is that it could lead students toward a watered down sense of intellectualism—too much focus on practical implications and no value of knowledge for knowledge's sake. The study of and research on humanities-focused topics could potentially fall by the wayside. However, Nicholas H. Farnham and Adam Yarmolinsky argue that “through the implementation of interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches to learning, along with better integration of the curriculum with the professional and vocational aspects of the institution,” a critical, challenging curriculum can be maintained.Footnote 64
It is imperative to point out that traditionally the liberal arts curriculum in white society had no immediate practical end: It was knowledge for its own sake. Learning about literature, philosophy, and history was for a privileged few, and not necessarily geared toward applying lessons for the betterment of humankind. What is unique about the Black college mission is that it was never, strictly speaking, liberal arts–focused. Even in Du Bois's vision, there is an end in sight: racial uplift. Whether you seek betterment through a class of Black leaders and thinkers or through a class of Black entrepreneurs, craftspeople, and business professionals, you are still seeking betterment; education is a means, not an end. Whites had no need for uplift, since they were (are) already on top.
We think that it is the combination and intersection of Du Bois's and Washington's perspectives that may benefit Black colleges and their students the most. The curriculum at Black colleges and universities must be responsive to the lives of students, but must also inspire students and build a foundation for their existence. A liberal arts curriculum, with practical, integrated dimensions, will motivate Black college and university graduates “to solve problems that other institutions of higher learning cannot.”Footnote 65 In the words of scholar Alan Colon, Black colleges and universities “have the obligation to help change assumptions that have prevailed about the sanctity of Western civilization and the conventional ideologies that emanate from it.”Footnote 66 These institutions' students have the potential to solve many of the problems that lay before us in the United States. These students must learn to be critical of what they are taught—not merely negative, but provocative.Footnote 67 According to African American philosopher Alain Locke, Black college students must learn to question their values and the integration of theory and practice must be placed at the core of the Black college curriculum.Footnote 68
Notes
Only three Black colleges were established prior to the Civil War: Lincoln and Cheyney in Pennsylvania and Wilberforce in Ohio. The rest were created after the Civil War.
Discussion in this article will not pertain to a set canon or a great books curriculum. Meira Levinson, The Demands of Liberal Education (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); D. G. Mulcahy, The Educated Person: Toward a New Paradigm for Liberal Education (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008); James O. Freedman, Idealism and Liberal Education (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996); Diana Glyer and David L. Weeks, eds., The Liberal Arts in Higher Education: Challenging Assumptions, Exploring Possibilities (New York: University Press of America, 1998); James O. Freedman, Liberal Education and the Public Interest (Cedar Rapids: University of Iowa Press, 2003); Barry Smith, eds., Liberal Education in a Knowledge Society (New York: Open Court, 2002); Judith Summerfield and Crys Benedicks, eds., Reclaiming the Public University: Conversations on General and Liberal Education (New York: Peter Lang, 2007); W. B. Carnochan, Battleground of the Curriculum: Liberal Education (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1994); Henry H. Crimmel, Liberal Arts College and the Ideal of Liberal Education (New York: University Press of America, 1993); Charles W. Anderson, Prescribing the Life of the Mind (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993); Ralph C. Hancock, ed., America, the West, and Liberal Education (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999).
Joan N. Burstyn, Preparation for Life? Paradox of Education in the Late Twentieth Century (New York: Taylor & Francis, 1986); Howard Gordon, The History and Growth of Vocational Education in America (New York: Allyn & Bacon, 1998).
Nicholas H. Farnham and Adam Yarmolinsky, eds., Rethinking Liberal Education (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Martha C. Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998).
Thurgood Marshall College Fund Demographic Report (New York: Thurgood Marshall College Fund, 2009). See also Marybeth Gasman, Minority Serving Institutions: Pathways to Successfully Educating Students of Color (Indianapolis: Lumina Foundation for Education, 2008).
John R. Thelin, A History of American Higher Education (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004); Derrick P. Alridge, “Conceptualizing a Du Boisian Philosophy of Education: Toward a Model of African American Education,” Educational Theory 49, no. 3 (Summer 1999): 359–380.
See Alridge, “Conceptualizing a Du Boisian Philosophy of Education”; Michael Bieze, Booker T. Washington and the Art of Self-Representation (New York: Peter Lang, 2008).
Bieze, Booker T. Washington and the Art of Self-Representation.
Ibid., Alridge, “Conceptualizing a Du Boisian Philosophy of Education.”
Bieze, Booker T. Washington and the Art of Self-Representation, 16.
Ibid.
Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery (New York: Penguin, 1986); Michael Bieze and Marybeth Gasman, Reading Booker T. Washington (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, forthcoming); Bieze, Booker T. Washington and the Art of Self-Representation; Louis Harlan, Booker T. Washington: The Making of a Black Leader, 1856–1901 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975); Louis Harlan, Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901–1915 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); Cary D. Wintz, ed., African-American Political Thought, 1890–1930: Washington, Du Bois, Garvey, and Randolph (New York: Sharpe, 1995); Raymond W. Smock, ed., Booker T. Washington in Perspective (Oxford: University of Mississippi Press, 1989); Jacqueline M. Moore, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, and the Struggle for Racial Uplift (New York: Scholarly Resources, 2003); Michael Rudolph West, The Education of Booker T. Washington: American Democracy and the Idea of Race Relations (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006); August Meier, Negro Thought in America, 1880–1915 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1964); Houston Baker, Turning South Again: Re-Thinking Modernism/Re-Reading Booker T. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001); Rebecca Carroll, Uncle Tom or New Negro? African Americans Reflect on Booker T. Washington and Up From Slavery 100 Years Later (New York: Broadway Books, 2006).
Alridge, “Conceptualizing a Du Boisian Philosophy of Education”; James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks in South, 1865–1930 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988).
Booker T. Washington, “A Speech at the Memorial Service,” in Bieze and Gasman, Reading Booker T. Washington.
Bieze and Gasman, Reading Booker T. Washington, 131.
Booker T. Washington, “Problems in Education,” in ibid.
W. E. B. Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1940), 70.
Alridge, “Conceptualizing a Du Boisian Philosophy of Education.”.
W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Hampton Idea,” in The Education of Black People: Ten Critiques, 1906–1960, ed. Herbert Aptheker (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973), 5. See also Marybeth Gasman, “W. E. B. Du Bois and Charles S. Johnson: Differing Views on the Role of Philanthropy in Higher Education,” History of Education Quarterly 42, no. 4 (2002): 493–516.
Alan Colon, “Black Studies and Historically Black Colleges and Universities: Towards a New Synthesis,” In Delores Aldridge and Carmen Young, eds., Out of the Revolution: The Development of Africana Studies (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2003), 38.
Du Bois, “The Hampton Idea”; Wintz, African-American Political Thought; Moore, Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, and the Struggle for Racial Uplift; Meier, Negro Thought in America, 1880–1915.
Alridge, “Conceptualizing a Du Boisian Philosophy of Education,” 369.
Marybeth Gasman, Envisioning Black Colleges: A History of the United Negro College Fund (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007); Shaun R. Harper and Marybeth Gasman, “How Black Male Students Experience the Politics of Historically Black Colleges,” Negro Educational Review 59, no. 1/2 (Summer 2008), 336–351.
See R. Grann Lloyd, “Economics Curricula in Black Colleges and Universities,” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 30, no. 4 (October 1971): 365–375; Clinton B. Jones, “Criminal Justice Education in Predominantly Black Colleges,” Journal of Negro Education 49, no. 1 (Winter 1980): 31–40; V. V. Oak, “Evaluation of Business Curricula in Negro Colleges,” Journal of Negro Education 7, no. 1 (January 1938): 19–31; A. J. Scavella, “On the Mathematics Curriculum in Black Colleges,” American Mathematical Monthly 77, no. 3 (March 1970): 297–298; Edward K. Weaver, “Development of Science Curricula in Negro Schools,” Journal of Negro Education 25, no. 2 (Spring 1956): 118–129.
E. P. Davis, “The Negro Liberal Arts College,” Journal of Negro Education 2, no. 3 (July 1933): 299–311, at 299.
Ibid., 302.
John W. Davis, “The Negro Land-Grant College,” Journal of Negro Education 2, no. 3 (July 1933): 312–328, at 314. See also Robert L. Jenkins, “The Black Land-Grant Colleges in Their Formative Years, 1890–1920,” Agricultural History 65, no. 2 (Spring 1991): 63–72.
Ibid., 317.
James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South.
Davis, “The Negro Land-Grant College,” 328.
Walter G. Daniel and Robert P. Daniel, “The Curriculum of the Negro College,” Journal of Educational Sociology 19, no. 8 (April 1946): 496–502, at 498.
Charles C. Verharen, “A Core Curriculum at Historically Black Colleges and Universities: An Immodest Proposal,” Journal of Negro Education 62, no. 2 (1993): 200–201.
Ibid., 201.
Gregory N. Price, “Black Colleges and Universities: The Road to Philistia?” Negro Educational Review 16, nos. 1–2 (January–April 1998): 9–21, at 9.
Ibid., 18.
Ibid., 20.
Ibid., 19.
Ibid.
Thurgood Marshall College Fund Demographic Report. See also Gasman, Minority Serving Institutions.
The quoted text is from a post by Darryl L. Peterkin, April 25, 2007. It can be found on the website of the Teagle Foundation, http://www.teaglefoundation.org
Price, “Black Colleges and Universities.”
Verharen, “A Core Curriculum,” 193.
Price, “Black Colleges and Universities.”
Christopher C. Morphew and Matthew Hartley, “Mission Statements: A Thematic Analysis of Rhetoric Across Institutional Type,” Journal of Higher Education 77, no. 3 (May–June 2006), 456–471.
Ibid., 457.
Ibid., 468.
Morphew and Hartley, “Mission Statements”; Peter Drucker, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (New York: Harper & Row, 1973); Matt Hartley, A Call to Purpose: Mission-Centered Change at Three Liberal Arts Colleges (New York: Routledge, 2002); George Keller, Academic Strategy: The Management Revolution in American Higher Education (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983).
Verharen, “A Core Curriculum,” 197.
Davis, “The Negro Liberal Arts College.”
Davis, “The Negro Land-Grant College,” 317.
Daniel and Daniel, “The Curriculum of the Negro College.”
Verharen, “A Core Curriculum.”
Price, “Black Colleges and Universities.”
Johnetta C. Brazell, “Bricks Without Straw: Missionary-Sponsored Black Higher Education in the Post-Emancipation Era,” Journal of Higher Education 63, no. 1 (1993): 26–49.
Bieze, Booker T. Washington and the Art of Self-Representation.
For an in-depth discussion of the conservative, controlling environment at some Black colleges, see Harper and Gasman, “How Black Male Students Experience the Politics of Historically Black Colleges.”
Carter G. Woodson, The Miseducation of the Negro (New York: African World Press, 1990 [1933]). Woodson was a professor at Howard University.
Morphew and Hartley, “Mission Statements,” 464.
Verharen, “A Core Curriculum.”
Meredith Curtin and Marybeth Gasman, “Historically Black College MBA Programs: Prestige, Rankings, and the Meaning of Success,” Journal of Education for Business 79, no. 2 (2004): 79–84.
Alridge, “Conceptualizing a Du Boisian Philosophy of Education,” 370.
Marybeth Gasman, “W. E. B. Du Bois and Charles S. Johnson: Differing Views on the Role of Philanthropy in Higher Education,” History of Education Quarterly 42, no. 4 (2002): 493–516.
Curtin and Gasman, “Historically Black College MBA Programs.”
Nicholas H. Farnham and Adam Yarmolinsky, eds., Rethinking Liberal Education (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 1.
Verharen, “A Core Curriculum,” 200.
Colon, “Black Studies and Historically Black Colleges and Universities,” 304.
Verharen, “A Core Curriculum,” 197.
Alain L. Locke, The Philosophy of Alain Locke: Harlem Renaissance and Beyond (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989); Verharen, “A Core Curriculum.”