http://time.com/2907332/historically-black-colleges-increasingly-serve-white-students/
…Kirby is white. So are 82 percent of the students at West Virginia’s Bluefield State College, which nonetheless qualifies for a share of the more than a quarter of a billion dollars a year in special funding the federal government set aside for historically black colleges and universities in 2011, the last year for which figures are available. These schools, known as HBCUs, can also apply for federal loans through the Historically Black College and University Capital Financing Program. Last year, they got $303 million from that program, on top of $1.1 billion in previously approved loans.
HBCU’s have always enrolled students of all races, but they are increasingly becoming less black. At some, like Bluefield, blacks now comprise less than half of the student body. At Lincoln University in Missouri, African-Americans account for 40 percent of enrollment while at Alabama’s Gadsden State Community College, 71 percent of the students are white and just 21 percent are black. The enrollment at St. Philip’s College in Texas is half Hispanic and 13 percent black, according to 2011 enrollment data from the U.S. Department of Education.
Congress has never stipulated whether an institution could continue to be considered historically black if it became mostly white. The legislation that gives the schools their largest pool of money says only that they have “contributed significantly to the effort to attain equal opportunity through postsecondary education for black, low-income, and educationally disadvantaged Americans.”
Not everyone agrees. Economist Richard Vedder favors eliminating special funding for HBCU’s on the grounds that all schools should receive money based on present realities, not historic mission. “If you’re going to give subsidies for institutions, you shouldn’t give it on the basis of some sort of historical [legacy],” says Vedder, director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity.
HBCUs “are there to provide opportunity and avenues for education for people who were disenfranchised,” says Michael Sorrell, president of Paul Quinn College, an HBCU in Dallas. “Slavery has been over for a long time, so you can’t have such a narrow view point on this.”
Anthony Bradley, a professor at The King’s College in New York City who has written about HBCUs, disagrees. He says that broadly targeting disadvantaged students isn’t enough to merit continued special funding from the federal government, since many other colleges and universities also do this.
“That doesn’t set them apart from community colleges,” Bradley says. “Most colleges in the country have special programs to recruit and matriculate and graduate disadvantaged students.”
“That doesn’t set them apart from community colleges,” Bradley says. “Most colleges in the country have special programs to recruit and matriculate and graduate
Most?