Other Hbcus were not included because of lack of data.
Hbcus currently serve about 298,000 students
and rank among the highest producers of black doctors.
Hbcus have been in a constant struggle for their financial
survival because of declining enrollment, among other things.
In fact, some college finance experts predict that many Hbcus will disappear in the next 20 years.
Our success and the success of other Hbcus should dispel any notion that talent is
associated with socioeconomic status.
But before anyone celebrates our findings as a clear victory for Hbcus, a few caveats are in order.
Hbcus also play an outsized role in the production
of black graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM.
But the effect persisted
10 years after graduation for graduates of all 59 Hbcus- more than half of the 100
or so Hbcus in the nation- that were included in the sample.
In 2010,
two economists claimed that graduates of historically black colleges and universities, or Hbcus, suffer a“wage penalty”-
that is, they earn relatively less than they would had they gone to a non-HBCU.
Largely established to serve black people after the Civil War and
in the Jim Crow era of racial segregation, Hbcus were the only higher education option
for many black Americans up through the mid-1960s during the push for integration.