What's So Great About HBCU's Anyway?
87 replies
·
25825 views
·
Started by venom3384
·
Apr 2005
venom3384
Main City, CA
This is my question. I hear all kind of people lauding the HBCU experience and seem utterly enraptured with the idea that they will be able to spend the four years of their undergraduate experience with people who share their same ethnic background. 1st question: Is this at all representative of real life? From my personal experience I have found that we, or at least in the upwardly socio-economic realm that you high achieving and socially conscious African-American (predominantly) hope to take part in, live in a white world. How will an HBCU where you will be surrounded by people like you and taught be professors like you be at all representative of real life? Or at least the one you hope to be living?
My 2nd question involves personal and academic preference. I have been accepted into a number of Universities and can go anywhere I want. So what would make me want to attend a HBCU rather than a more traditional Ivy League school or one of its equivalents when my goals is to become as educated as possible and subsequently be the most qualified for any future position or work that I would like to pursue. Furthermore, how diverse can an HBCU be and how much can you learn about other cultures/environments when you are surrounded my only one megaculture?
#61
Reply
Jazzy808 wrote:That was well said. My mom just told me about an article she read stating that most African Americans in the coporate workplace come from HBCUs.WileECoyote06 wrote:Well stated about the megaculture, Thunder. Put southerners, the westerners, rich kids and poor kids, republicans, africans, carribean-latino identifying blacks, churchgoers, followers of islam, and atheists in the same dorm and you've got a cast worthy of MTV's the Real World. As far as choosing an HBCU, it really depends on why you're attending school. If you're just in school to get a job, then by all means go with the "name-school". Many HBCU students attend college with aspirations and inspirations that are influenced by family traditions, a respect for the historical significance of HBCU's, a longing to improve social strata or to eliminate the pressure from the academically competitive nature of top white and asian students. Some just go to surround themselves with positive, intelligent black people. Reading US News and World Report or the Carnegie report, a prospective student would believe that the education at HBCU's is not competitive. However, one must consider that magazines are a form of media and thus are influenced by who is telling the story. The awards of our students and legacy of our alumni proves that HBCU's are doing a great job of educating students and preparing them for success. I longed to go to an HBCU because the HBCU alumni list at the time was a who's who list of black america and black history: Phylicia Rashad, Debbie Allen, Oprah Winfrey, Earl Graves (founder of Black Enterprise), Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Martin Luther King, Jr., Former US Surgeon General David Satcher, Marva Collins, Brown University President Ruth J. Simmons, Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, Alice Walker, Jesse Jackson, Kweisi Mfume, Branford Marsalis, NC Governor Mike Easley, former VA governor and current mayor L. Douglas Wilder, and countless others. Currently, the next generation of black leaders is being forged among the younger set. Howard's moot court team just knocked off highly regarded Harvard's team in the American Bar Association Mock Trial Competition. A former classmate from NCCU is on that team. NCCU's campus newspaper, The Campus Echo, just won several awards in journalism from the Society of Professional Journalists, including #1 Online Non-Daily for the mid-atlantic states. Howard continually produces Rhodes Scholars, including four in the past four years. FSU's Master of Business Administration team has been invited to participate in the International Business Plan Competition sponsored by Moot Corp, whose slots are normally reserved for the most prestigious schools in the country. VUU had a student place first in a recent statewide Phi Beta Lambda conference. Hampton University is building a Proton Beam Therapy Center (this will only be the fourth one in the country). Our legacy continues. . . Sorry about the length of the post.
