Appointed Executive Director for the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, John S. Wilson, visited SU last Friday and delivered a speech and presentation based upon the current status of HBCUs across the nation. Wilson currently works with the presidentially appointed HBCU Board of Advisors and assists the Secretary as liaison between the executive branch and HBCUs. He also collaborates with 32 federal agencies that support HBCUs through federal grants and contracts. His discussion mainly informed board members of the importance of HBCUs raising money towards the institution instead of relying on tuition.
“We need resource centers on campus and we need to get at the core business of higher education”, said Wilson. “Most HBCUs operate in the red, not to say operating at a deficit, but as in tuition dependency. We are well behind,” continued Wilson.
HBCUs and African American leaders, in past centuries, envisioned greatness in every endeavor within the realms of higher education. They mainly focused on raising money themselves rather than depending solely on the government, this trend has diminished from the scene over time.
Wilson enlightened board members by stating, “Black colleges are so far behind because of our endowment expense ratio. It should be between 5 and 10. That means your endowment should be 5 to 10 times greater than the money you spend to deliver your education. For instance, if you spend 80 million a year; the endowment should be at least 400 million.” Wilson continued, “Amherst has an endowment 15 times greater, and Princeton is 13 or 11 times greater. Spellman is the top HBCU with an endowment 4 times greater than annual expenses, while Morehouse is second with a ratio of 2. Most Black colleges are 1 and below.”
The Southern University System held a radiothon to raise money last Friday from 7am-pm. Majority of SU Alumni donated funds ranging from various amounts and a generous donation of $10,000 was donated from Walter C. Dumas, Senior Attorney and President of Dumas & Associates Law Firm, to reach the initial goal of $80,000. An estimate of $80,500 was raised last Friday. This shows SU making an attempt at raising funds towards becoming tuition dependent; however, according to Wilson’s presentation; $80,000 is considered a “violin fundraising” attempt.
”In 1985 there was a revolution in higher education. This is when higher learning institutions began to raise their own funds”, Wilson stated. “Stanford University was the leader of this revolution and raised one billion dollars”, Wilson added. “A lot of the more progressive institutions now have a disproportionate goal bar which means that most of their expenses in any given year are covered by their endowment rather than by tuition. That’s a great place to be folks. That’s what defines a revolution. That’s what defines a transformation.” Wilson said.
Alumni fundraising can be a problem because if the collegiate experience was a burden, graduates would most likely not contribute towards the endowment.
”If students had to scrape, borrow, and crawl and build up an attitude against the financial aid office workers who had an attitude with the students and their family, they are going to have an attitude and not write a check. So what we have to do is shift from being undercapitalized to being capitalized in a state of the art way,” implied Wilson.
He continued by painting a vivid illustration of the syndrome by noting that not one HBCU has gotten to the higher epsilon of 60 percent in alumni giving. He also notes that Spellman is strong at about 38 percent and the rest are weaker in single digits and that this is the problem. The power point presentation Wilson presented included several strategies of improving HBCUs current conditions. The first step is to go from violin fundraising to trumpet fundraising which means the fundraising should appeal to the contributors conscious. Wilson uses a brief scene from “Trading Places,” starring Eddie Murphy as a bum who goes from rags to riches in a few days. The scene shown in front of the board captured Eddie Murphy sobbing and pleading for money while crawling on his knees which in turn illustrates the sluggish fundraising that has been carried out by HBCUs. The next steps, which were rushed through due to time constraints, were titled from Entitlement to Competiveness, which means we must reshape institutions before we can say “show me the money”, and from Narcissism to Mutualism, which means we need to stop using methods of fundraising that does not appeal and are ineffective.
Wilson also introduced the signal to ratio problems within the HBCU community. Media over the years have a big role in broadcasting the negative sides of HBCUs instead of the positive sides.
“We have a low signal to noise ratio. The noise of our vices is louder than the noises of our virtues. We need to increase positive news.” said Wilson.
A brief story of Larry Summers, former president of Harvard University, was used as an example. Summers could not lower the signal to noise ratio and was therefore fired from Harvard. Wilson also believes HBCUs should go beyond our “Dubosian Twoness”, a phrase formulated by Wilson in comparison to W.E.B. Dubois and Booker T. Washington’s different philosophies on education, which means we should set and reach for higher goals.
“Dubois and Booker T. Washington believed we should be Harvard and Yale today”, said Wilson. “Booker T. Washington raised $2 million in 1915 which is equivalent to 17 million today. These guys aimed at high goals and their focus was dedicated to fundraising. We need to excel in everything.”
Towards the end of the presentation, Wilson presented a solution strategy, which he calls the Cathedral strategy. The first shift, of the trajectory shifts, was entitled from followers to leaders. HBCUs are currently following the trends of being educated for the way the economy used to be Wilson stated. The second shift is entitled from Bricks to Steeples, which means there should be Universities that stick out and use them to produce a positive signal. The final shift, entitled Steeples to Cathedrals, involves HBCUs being above or at an equal level of performance and competition with Higher Education Institutions such as Harvard and Yale.
“Not one HBCU is a cathedral right now,” said Wilson. “I will come back with more actual data to illustrate fully what we need to conquer. Every HBCU should have a cathedral strategy and that is to say how are we going to pursue greatness one steeple at a time” Wilson stated in closing.