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From Four to Fifty: Rebuilding Black Boarding Schools and Day Schools for STEM Dominance

Posted on February 20, 2026 by | Leave a comment

I have discovered few learning disabled students in my three decades of teaching. I have, however, discovered many, many victims of teaching inabilities. – Marva Collins

When the Eight Schools Association, comprising Phillips Exeter, Phillips Andover, Choate Rosemary Hall, and other elite boarding schools, sends delegations to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair or MATHCOUNTS Championships, they arrive with institutional power behind them. Generations of alumni networks, endowments in the hundreds of millions, dedicated competition coaches, and a culture that expects excellence. These schools don’t just prepare students for competitions; they’ve built entire ecosystems that produce winners systematically.

The African American community needs the same—not to gain access to their institutions, but to build our own parallel ecosystem of excellence. This isn’t about integration into existing structures; it’s about developing Black-controlled educational institutions that create seamless pipelines from kindergarten through college, from HBCU undergraduate research to Black-owned businesses and laboratories. It’s about institutional sovereignty and generational wealth-building through education.

The infrastructure already exists in fragments: four remaining historic Black boarding schools fighting for survival, HBCU laboratory schools serving thousands of students on HBCU campuses, scattered private Black schools across the nation, and 101 HBCUs waiting to receive the next generation of Black scholars. What’s missing is the connective tissue—the strategic vision to link these institutions into a powerhouse network that rivals anything the Eight Schools Association offers, while recognizing that most Black families need day school options, not just boarding programs.

African American students’ underrepresentation in elite STEM competitions—Science Olympiad, USA Biology Olympiad, American Computer Science League, Conrad Challenge isn’t a talent problem. It’s an institutional problem. When majority-Black schools face closure rates nearly double that of other schools nationwide, according to Stanford research, competition programming becomes an afterthought, if it exists at all. Meanwhile, prestigious institutions treat competition success as institutional mandate. They hire Ph.D.-level coaches, fund unlimited travel to regional and national contests, maintain state-of-the-art laboratories and makerspaces, and celebrate academic victories with the same fervor as athletic championships. Most importantly, they’ve built alumni networks spanning decades that provide mentorship, internships, and career pathways for graduates.

The Eight Schools Association demonstrates what institutional coordination achieves. These schools share best practices, collaborate on programming, and maintain standards of excellence that elevate all members. Their graduates don’t just attend elite colleges; they create companies, endow professorships, and return resources to strengthen the institutions that launched them. African Americans need this same institutional architecture but built for us, by us, serving our community’s interests and priorities.

While boarding schools capture attention with their prestige and immersive environments, the reality is that most Black families want and need high-quality day schools. Boarding schools serve grades 9-12 and require families to send children away, a proposition that doesn’t align with many Black family structures, cultural values, or financial realities. The future of Black educational excellence must therefore be built on a foundation of elite private day schools serving Pre-K through 12, supplemented by strategic boarding school options for families who choose that path.

Only four historic African American boarding schools remain from the over 100 that once existed: The Piney Woods School in Mississippi, Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina, Pine Forge Academy in Pennsylvania, and Redemption Christian Academy in upstate New York. These institutions represent more than educational options—they embody Black self-determination in education. The decline from over 100 to just four is a catastrophic loss of Black educational infrastructure that demands urgent reversal. But the primary focus must be on establishing a network of at least fifty elite Black private day schools across the country within the next decade, complemented by fifteen boarding schools for families seeking that option. Together, these institutions would create a comprehensive ecosystem serving Pre-K through grade 12, explicitly designed to rival the Eight Schools Association and other elite networks in resources, reputation, and results.

The day school model solves multiple practical challenges. Families maintain daily contact with their children while accessing elite education. Schools can serve Pre-K through 12, creating 14-year pipelines instead of just four years. Geographic coverage can be broader, with schools in major metropolitan areas where Black families are concentrated. And costs per student are lower than boarding, making sustainability more achievable.

Each elite Black private day school in the network would be designed as a competition powerhouse from the ground up. This means recruiting PhD-level faculty and competition coaches—the same caliber of talent that elite institutions employ. Science programs need teachers with doctoral degrees who’ve conducted research and understand how to prepare students for Olympiad-level competition. Mathematics departments require faculty who’ve published in their fields and can coach students to MATHCOUNTS and AMC excellence. Computer science programs need instructors with both academic credentials and industry experience who can lead programming teams to national prominence.

The Eight Schools Association succeeds because they pay top dollar for elite talent. Black private schools must do the same, offering competitive salaries that attract the best minds to teach our students. This isn’t optional it’s the price of competing at the highest levels. A well-meaning teacher with a bachelor’s degree cannot compete against PhD coaches at elite institutions. We must match their investment in human capital.

Beyond faculty, these schools require world-class infrastructure. State-of-the-art science laboratories where students can conduct genuine research. Extensive libraries with digital and physical resources rivaling small colleges. Advanced makerspaces with 3D printers, laser cutters, and robotics equipment. Computer labs with the latest technology. Athletic facilities that support both physical education and competitive sports. These facilities cannot be afterthoughts they must be built from the beginning to match or exceed what elite independent schools offer.

These schools must be strategically distributed across the country, not hostage to HBCU locations. Major metropolitan areas with significant Black populations need multiple options. Atlanta should have at least three elite Black private day schools. The DMV area (D.C., Maryland, Virginia) needs at least four. Houston, Dallas, Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans, Memphis, Charlotte—each requires multiple institutions to serve their communities adequately. But the network must also extend to underserved regions. New Mexico, Maine, the Pacific Northwest, Montana—areas with smaller but growing Black populations deserve options beyond traditional centers. These schools serve dual purposes: providing excellent education to local Black families and attracting families willing to relocate for access to elite Black institutions.

Boarding schools, given their residential nature and focus on high school, can be even more geographically flexible. A boarding school in rural Vermont or coastal Oregon can draw students nationally, serving families across the country who choose that educational model for grades 9-12.

Each school—whether day or boarding—should partner with one or more HBCUs through strategic regional arrangements. For instance, Atlanta’s day schools could partner with Spelman, Morehouse, Clark Atlanta, and Morris Brown. A boarding school in Texas could be triangulated between Prairie View A&M, Texas Southern, Grambling, and Southern University, with all four institutions sharing governance and pipeline responsibilities.

This distributed partnership model offers several advantages. HBCU faculty from multiple institutions would serve on academic boards, bringing diverse expertise while ensuring curriculum rigor and alignment with college expectations. Students would have guaranteed pathways to any partner HBCU, expanding their options beyond a single institution. College students from partner HBCUs could supplement as residential advisors and tutors, gaining education experience while strengthening connections between institutions.

However, to truly compete with the Eight Schools Association, these boarding schools must recruit PhD-level faculty and coaches—the same caliber of talent that elite institutions employ. Science competition teams need coaches with doctoral degrees in their fields, not just enthusiasm. Mathematics programs require faculty who’ve published research and understand competition mathematics at the highest levels. Computer science teams need instructors with industry and academic credentials. The Eight Schools Association succeeds because they pay top dollar for elite talent; Black boarding schools must do the same, offering competitive salaries that attract the best minds to teach and coach our students.

These K-12 institutions cannot be dependent on HBCU facilities or resources. To truly compete with elite independent schools, they must build and maintain their own infrastructure and secure their own endowments. Each elite day school should target minimum endowments of $50-100 million. Each boarding school should aim for $100-200 million. These endowments ensure financial sustainability, enable need-blind admissions, support competitive faculty salaries, and provide unlimited resources for student opportunities. HBCU partnerships provide crucial academic connections and pipeline benefits, but the K-12 institutions themselves must stand as independently powerful schools capable of competing with the best in America.

For this ecosystem to succeed, competition excellence cannot be an extracurricular afterthought—it must be embedded in institutional DNA from day one. Every school in the network should mandate that students participate in at least one major STEM competition annually. This normalization is critical. When competition participation becomes expected rather than exceptional, students prepare differently, families support differently, and results follow.

Consider what this looks like in practice at an elite Black day school serving Pre-K through 12. Elementary students (grades 3-5) participate in regional Science Olympiad divisions, Math Kangaroo, and Lego robotics competitions. Middle schoolers (grades 6-8) compete in MATHCOUNTS, Science Bowl, National History Day, and American Computer Science League. High schoolers (grades 9-12) engage in USA Biology Olympiad, Chemistry Olympiad, Physics Olympiad, Congressional Debate, Model UN, and Intel Science Fair. Every student finds competitions aligned with their interests and abilities. The school’s culture celebrates competition success publicly and prominently—trophies in display cases, assemblies honoring winners, media coverage of achievements. Academic competition excellence becomes as central to institutional identity as athletics at traditional schools.

The network should also establish its own internal competitions. An annual Black Excellence Science Olympiad. A Black School Network MATHCOUNTS Championship. Computer science competitions exclusively for students in the pipeline. These internal competitions provide practice grounds while building institutional identity and healthy rivalry that elevates performance across all schools.

HBCU laboratory schools—at institutions like Alabama State University (which pioneered the model in 1920), Southern University, Florida A&M, Howard University, and North Carolina A&T—serve crucial roles in this ecosystem. Virginia’s recent incorporation of laboratory schools at Virginia Union University and Virginia State University shows continued commitment to the model. These schools can serve as proof-of-concept institutions, demonstrating what’s possible when Black schools receive adequate resources and maintain rigorous competition programming. Their success provides templates for independent day schools to replicate. A laboratory school that sends students to national Science Olympiad championships proves the model works; independent schools can study their methods and adapt them.

Laboratory schools should also function as regional hubs, establishing partnerships with at least five majority-Black schools in their areas. They share competition resources, coaching expertise, and best practices, elevating the entire region’s performance while identifying top talent. Southern University Lab School partners with New Orleans-area Black schools. FAMU’s developmental research school does the same in Florida. Howard Middle School anchors D.C.-area networks. This hub-and-spoke model accelerates ecosystem development beyond the schools the network directly controls. Within five years, hundreds of majority-Black schools have competition programming that didn’t exist before, creating a rising tide that lifts all boats.

None of this happens without resources, and HBCU alumni must lead the investment. Every HBCU has thousands of successful graduates—doctors, engineers, lawyers, business owners—who could fund this institutional development. The goal isn’t charity but investment in infrastructure that strengthens the entire Black community. Alumni funding priorities should include capitalizing day school construction in major metropolitan areas nationwide, establishing minimum $50-100 million endowments for each day school to ensure sustainability, endowing boarding school scholarships so talented students can attend regardless of family income, funding PhD-level faculty recruitment with competitive salary packages, constructing world-class facilities—laboratories, libraries, makerspaces, athletic complexes—that rival elite independent schools, and creating venture capital funds that support businesses founded by network graduates.

The Eight Schools Association’s power derives largely from alumni commitment. Exeter’s endowment exceeds $1.5 billion. Andover’s tops $1.3 billion. These resources enable need-blind admission, world-class faculty recruitment, and unlimited opportunities for students. Black schools need similar commitments scaled appropriately. What if Spelman and Morehouse alumni collectively committed $200 million to establish three elite Black day schools in Atlanta? What if Howard University graduates funded two D.C.-area day schools with combined endowments of $150 million? These numbers are achievable when alumni understand they’re not donating to charity but investing in institutional power that will serve generations.

Regional alumni coalitions should form specifically to capitalize schools in their areas. The Texas HBCU Alumni Coalition funds schools in Houston and Dallas. The Midwest HBCU Coalition establishes schools in Chicago and Detroit. The Southeast Coalition covers Atlanta, Charlotte, and Memphis. This regional approach creates ownership and ensures schools reflect their communities’ needs.

While building new elite institutions is essential, the network must also elevate existing Black private schools and support majority-Black public schools in developing competition cultures. Not every Black school can or should become a boarding institution, but every Black school can raise its educational rigor and competition participation. The network should establish a tiered certification system. Tier One schools meet the highest standards—PhD faculty, comprehensive competition programming, world-class facilities, and proven track records of sending students to top competitions and HBCUs as elite scholars. Tier Two schools are developing toward these standards with network support. Tier Three schools are beginning the journey, receiving mentorship and resources from established institutions.

This certification creates aspirational goals while providing roadmaps for schools at different development stages. A small Black private school in Birmingham might begin as Tier Three, receiving coaching expertise and competition funding from the network. Within five years, they achieve Tier Two status. Within a decade, they’re Tier One, competing nationally and serving as a regional hub themselves. The network succeeds not only by building new schools but by elevating all Black schools toward excellence. Every student in a majority-Black school—whether public, private, or laboratory school—should have access to competition programming, rigorous academics, and pathways to HBCUs and beyond.

The ultimate goal transcends competition trophies and college admissions. This ecosystem should produce a generation of Black scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs who build institutions, create wealth, and invest back into the network that developed them. A student who attends an elite Black day school from Pre-K through 12, earns a degree from an HBCU, and then receives seed funding from the network’s venture capital arm to launch a tech company—that’s the full pipeline. Ten years later, that founder endows scholarships at their alma maters and hires exclusively from the network. This is how generational wealth builds and how communities transform economically.

The competition focus matters because STEM competitions lead to STEM careers, which offer the highest salaries and most secure employment in the American economy. But the jobs aren’t enough. The network must produce business owners, not just employees. Laboratory directors, not just lab technicians. University presidents, not just professors. The institutional ecosystem must aim for complete economic sovereignty. Black-owned research laboratories should hire preferentially from network schools. Black engineering firms should recruit from HBCU programs fed by network pipelines. Black investment funds should capitalize businesses founded by network graduates. This closed-loop system ensures wealth circulates within the Black community, building generational prosperity.

The vision is clear, but visions don’t implement themselves. This ecosystem requires institutional leadership with the authority, resources, and commitment to coordinate across decades. The answer must be a new entity—a Black Educational Excellence Consortium governed by a coalition of HBCU presidents, major HBCU alumni association leaders, Black philanthropists, and representatives from the four remaining boarding schools. This consortium would function similarly to how the Eight Schools Association coordinates among its members, but with broader scope covering day schools, boarding schools, and laboratory schools.

The consortium’s core responsibilities would include establishing and enforcing network standards and the tiered certification system, coordinating capital campaigns and alumni fundraising across regions, recruiting and vetting PhD-level faculty and leadership for new schools, managing the network-wide competition circuit and celebrating achievements, administering the venture capital fund for graduate entrepreneurs, ensuring HBCU partnership agreements are formalized and beneficial to all parties, and providing technical assistance to schools at all development tiers.

This consortium cannot be housed within a single HBCU—it must be an independent 501(c)(3) with its own board, staff, and budget. However, HBCUs should hold majority governance positions, ensuring the pipeline serves their institutional interests. Initial capitalization of the consortium itself would require $25-50 million to establish offices, hire expert staff, and begin coordinating the network’s development. Regional chapters of the consortium would operate in major areas—the Southeast Chapter, Texas Chapter, Midwest Chapter, West Coast Chapter—each responsible for school development in their territories. These chapters would be staffed by education experts, fundraisers, and facilities planners who understand both K-12 education and HBCU pipelines. The consortium model solves the coordination problem. Without it, well-meaning but disconnected efforts will struggle. With it, alumni know where to direct resources, new schools follow proven models, and the ecosystem develops strategically rather than haphazardly.

With leadership structure established, building this ecosystem requires coordinated action across a decade. Year one should focus on stabilizing and expanding the four remaining Black boarding schools with immediate capital infusions, launching five elite Black day schools in major metropolitan areas with full capitalization and endowments, and establishing formal partnerships between all K-12 institutions and nearby HBCUs. Year two should expand competition programming at all HBCU laboratory schools with PhD-level coaching staffs, launch ten additional elite day schools in strategic regions nationwide, and create the first network-wide competition circuit exclusively for member institutions.

By year three, the network should establish tiered certification for all participating Black schools, regardless of founding date, launch the first network venture capital fund for graduate entrepreneurs, and open five new boarding schools in geographically diverse locations. Year four should scale to thirty total elite day schools and ten boarding schools, establish PhD faculty recruitment pipelines specifically for network schools, and create comprehensive summer programs where students from all network schools can access intensive competition preparation. Finally, year five should see the graduation of the first full cohorts who experienced elementary through high school entirely within network institutions, the achievement of national competition championships by multiple network schools, and network endowments exceeding $2 billion collectively across all institutions.

Within a decade, this network produces tens of thousands of Black students annually receiving world-class education, wins national competition championships regularly, feeds HBCUs with exceptionally prepared students, and becomes self-sustaining through graduate giving and economic activity. The Eight Schools Association took over a century to build their institutional power. With strategic focus and adequate resources, the Black K-12-to-HBCU pipeline can achieve comparable influence in a fraction of that time.

The civil rights movement fought for integration, and those battles were necessary. But sixty years later, the results are mixed. Majority-Black schools face disproportionate closure. Black students in predominantly white institutions navigate isolation and microaggressions. The promise that integration would provide equal access has proven incomplete. The path forward isn’t abandoning integration but building powerful alternatives—Black-controlled institutions that offer excellence on our terms. When the Eight Schools Association sets standards, they do so for their community’s benefit. When they build pipelines to Ivy League schools, they’re securing their children’s futures. African Americans deserve the same institutional sovereignty.

This ecosystem—day schools, boarding schools, laboratory schools, HBCUs, research labs, businesses—creates options. A Black student should be able to receive world-class education from Pre-K through doctoral degree entirely within Black institutions, if they choose. That choice currently doesn’t exist at scale. Building it is the work. The competition focus is merely the entry point—a measurable goal that drives institutional development. But the vision extends far beyond Science Olympiad trophies. It’s about creating an ecosystem where Black excellence is systematically produced, celebrated, and leveraged to build generational wealth and institutional power.

Our children deserve day schools and boarding schools as prestigious as Exeter and Andover—schools that are ours. They deserve laboratory schools as innovative as the most progressive independent schools—schools that feed into our universities. They deserve competition networks as robust as any in America—networks that celebrate Black achievement unapologetically. The infrastructure exists in fragments. The model is proven. What’s required now is collective commitment—alumni investment, HBCU leadership, and community support to build an ecosystem of Black educational excellence that rivals any in the world. Not for integration into existing power structures, but to establish our own. Not just for high school, but from the earliest years through college and career. Not just for the few who can access boarding schools, but for the many who need excellent day schools in their communities. The time for this work is now. The resources exist. The need is urgent. Let’s build.

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You Want a Bigger HBCU Endowment? Graduate Students in Four Years—and HBCU Alumni Must Make That Happen

Posted on January 16, 2026 by | Leave a comment

The four-year graduation rate is often presented as a benign statistic tucked inside higher education reports, but for institutions serving African America, it is not benign at all. It is the lever on which long-term wealth, institutional survival, and multigenerational stability subtly depend. Wealthy universities treat the four-year graduation rate not as an outcome but as an engineered product, backed by endowment might, operational discipline, and capital-rich ecosystems. Their students finish on time because the institution ensures they are shielded from interruption. Meanwhile, HBCUs navigate a different reality: the same students who possess the intellectual capacity to thrive are too often delayed not by academics but by the economic turbulence that disproportionately defines their journey. It is here between the idea of talent and the machinery of capital that the four-year graduation rate becomes a revealing measure of African America’s structural position in the American economic hierarchy.

A delayed degree carries a cost structure that compounds aggressively. Extra semesters are not simply tuition bills; they are opportunity-cost accelerants. A student who graduates at 22 enters the workforce two to three years ahead of a peer who reaches the finish line at 24 or 25. Those early earnings fund retirement accounts earlier, compound longer, support earlier homeownership, and create the financial runway that future philanthropy relies upon. For African American students who statistically begin college with fewer financial reserves and exit with higher student debt those lost years are wealth years. They represent not only diminished individual prosperity but the slowed creation of a donor class that HBCUs and other African American institutions depend on to build endowment strength and institutional sovereignty.

Endowments, which serve as the economic lungs of a university, breathe differently depending on how quickly their alumni progress into stable earning years. A university that graduates students in four years rather than six gains an alumni base that stabilizes earlier, saves earlier, invests earlier, and gives earlier. A philanthropic ecosystem is essentially a long-term consequence of time management: the more years an alumnus spends debt-free and employed, the more predictable their giving pattern becomes. Elite institutions leverage this fact elegantly. HBCUs, despite producing extraordinary alumni under significantly harsher financial conditions, remain constrained by the delayed timelines imposed by student financial fragility.

Financial fragility is a central explanatory variable in the HBCU graduation gap. It is not uncommon for a student to miss a semester because of a $300 balance or a transportation breakdown that derails their schedule. In the broader American economic system, such modest shocks rarely jeopardize a wealthy student’s trajectory. But within the HBCU ecosystem, they represent the sharp edges of institutional undercapitalization meeting the exposed nerves of household vulnerability. The four-year graduation rate is therefore not simply a metric of academic navigation but a map of where the Black household economy intersects with American higher education’s structural inequities.

This makes alumni involvement not a sentimental tradition but an economic necessity. Alumni can narrow the financial fragility gap more efficiently than any other stakeholder group. Microgrant funds, even modestly capitalized, are capable of eliminating the most common disruptions that extend time-to-degree. A $250 emergency grant can protect $25,000 in long-term student debt. A $500 intervention can guard a student’s four-year trajectory and thus preserve two additional years of post-graduation earnings that ultimately benefit both the graduate and the institution’s future endowment. Alumni-funded tutoring, advising enhancements, STEM support programmes, and paid internships create artificial endowment-like effects: stabilizing student progression even when the institutional endowment itself is undersized.

Yet HBCU alumni cannot focus solely on the university years if the goal is a structurally higher four-year graduation rate. The process begins far earlier within K–12 systems that shape academic readiness long before students set foot on campus. The elite institutions that boast 85–95 percent on-time graduation rates are drawing from K–12 ecosystems with intense capital saturation: high-quality teachers, advanced coursework, stable households, well-funded enrichment programmes, and neighborhoods that function as multipliers of academic preparedness. HBCU alumni have an opportunity to influence this pipeline through investments that are often modest in individual scope but transformational in aggregate impact. Funding reading centres, coding clubs, college-prep academies, robotics labs, literacy coaches, and after-school tutoring programmes plants the seeds of future four-year graduates years before college entry.

Indeed, a strong K–12 foundation reduces the need for remedial coursework, accelerates major declaration, strengthens performance in gateway courses like calculus and biology, and diminishes the likelihood that students need extra semesters to satisfy graduation requirements. When alumni support dual-enrollment initiatives, sponsor early-college programmes, or build partnerships between HBCUs and local school districts, they enlarge the pool of college-ready students whose likelihood of completing on time is structurally higher. In this sense, investing in K–12 is not philanthropy it is pre-endowment development.

The economic implications of strengthening both ends of the education pipeline are enormous. A 20–30 percentage-point improvement in four-year completion rates across the HBCU ecosystem would reduce student loan debt burdens by billions, accelerate African American household wealth accumulation, raise the number of alumni earning six-figure incomes before age 30, and increase the philanthropic participation rate across Black institutions. Over decades, such shifts ripple outward: stronger alumni lead to stronger HBCUs, which lead to stronger civic, cultural, and economic institutions in African American communities, which themselves create more stable families, more prepared K–12 students, and more future college graduates. The system feeds itself when time is efficiently managed.

In the HBCU Money worldview, where institutional power is the only reliable safeguard against structural marginalization, time-to-degree represents one of the clearest and most overlooked levers of collective economic advancement. In a Financial Times context, the four-year graduation rate appears as a liquidity indicator—showing how quickly an institution converts educational investment into economic output. In The Economist’s framing, it reveals the mismatched capital structures between wealthy universities and historically underfunded ones, and how those mismatches reproduce inequality in slow, quiet, compounding increments.

For African America, the conclusion is unmistakable. The four-year graduation rate is not merely a statistic. It is a wealth mechanism. It is an endowment accelerator. It is an institutional survival tool. And it is a community-level economic strategy that begins in kindergarten and culminates with a diploma. If HBCU alumni wish to see their institutions strengthen, their communities accumulate wealth, and their young people enter the economy with maximum velocity, then they must make both K–12 investment and four-year graduation obsession-level priorities. Institutions rise with the financial stability of their graduates. Ensuring those graduates complete degrees on time is one of the most effective—and least discussed—strategies available for building African American institutional power across generations.

A Tale of Two Virginias:

A revealing contrast in American higher education can be observed by examining two institutions that sit just 120 miles apart: Virginia State University (VSU) and the University of Virginia (UVA). NACUBO estimates VSU’s endowment at approximately $100 million for around 5,000 students, producing an endowment-per-student of roughly $20,000. According to U.S. News, VSU graduates 27% of its students in four years. UVA, one of the most heavily capitalized public universities in the world, possesses an endowment of roughly $10.2 billion for about 25,000 students, an endowment-per-student of approximately $410,000, more than twenty times the capital density VSU can deploy. Its four-year graduation rate stands at 92%.

The gulf between the two institutions reflects not a difference in student talent but a difference in institutional resource density and shock absorption capacity. A VSU student must personally carry far more academic and financial fragility. A single $300 expense can knock them off their semester plan. A delayed prerequisite can add a year to their degree. Limited advising bandwidth means problems are often discovered only after they have already extended time-to-degree. UVA faces the same categories of issues, but its endowment, staffing, and operating budgets act as buffers absorbing shocks before they disrupt academic progress.

Endowment-per-student, therefore, is not merely a balance-sheet statistic; it is a proxy for how much risk the institution can carry on behalf of its students. UVA carries most of the risk. VSU students carry most of their own. UVA’s 92% four-year graduation rate is a reflection of institutional cushioning. VSU’s 27% rate reflects its absence.

Yet to understand the true economic cost of the graduation gap, it is useful to model what would happen if VSU improved its four-year graduation rate—first to a plausible mid-term target such as 50%, and then to a UVA-like 90%. Both scenarios dramatically change the trajectory of the institution.

Assume that VSU today produces roughly 1,350 graduates every four years (based on a 27% rate). If it increased its four-year graduation rate to 50%, VSU would instead graduate 2,500 students every four years, an increase of 1,150 additional on-time graduates, each entering the workforce two years earlier, with lower student debt, earlier retirement contributions, earlier homeownership, and earlier philanthropic capacity. Even if only a modest fraction of these additional graduates contributed $50–$150 annually to VSU’s endowment, the compounding effect across 20 years would be substantial. Under conservative assumptions with basic donor participation growth and average returns of 7% VSU’s endowment could plausibly grow from $100 million to $155–$170 million over two decades, powered largely by the increased velocity and increased number of earning alumni.

Now consider the UVA-like scenario. A four-year graduation rate of 90% at VSU would mean roughly 4,500 on-time graduates every four years or over three times the current output. This scale of early, debt-lighter graduates would fundamentally transform VSU’s financial ecosystem. Even minimal alumni participation say, 12–15% giving $100–$200 annually would translate into millions in annual recurring contributions. Over two decades, with investment returns compounding, VSU’s endowment could grow not to $150 million but potentially to $300–$400 million, depending on participation rates and gift sizes. That would triple the institution’s financial capacity without a single major donor campaign, capital campaign, or extraordinary windfall. The key variable is simply graduation velocity.

This comparison illustrates a broader truth: endowment growth is not just a function of investment strategy but of how quickly a university converts students into earning alumni. A student who graduates at 22 gives for 40–50 years. A student who graduates at 25 gives for 30–35 years. A student who drops out does not give at all. VSU’s current 27% four-year graduation rate is not merely an academic statistic—it is an endowment drag factor. UVA’s 92% rate is an endowment accelerant.

The financial distance between the two universities appears vast, but it is governed by a formula that HBCUs can influence: more on-time graduates → more early earners → more consistent donors → more endowment growth → more institutional cushioning → more on-time graduates. VSU today sits at the fragile end of this cycle. A graduation-rate increase to 50% would move it into a position of stability. A leap to 90% would place it into an entirely different institutional category—one where it begins to accumulate capital in the same compounding manner that allows institutions like UVA to weather downturns, attract top faculty, and protect students from the shocks that so often derail academic momentum.

VSU cannot replicate UVA’s wealth in the short term. But by increasing on-time graduation, it can replicate the mechanism through which wealthy universities become wealthier. And that mechanism—graduation velocity—is one of the few levers fully within reach of alumni, leadership, and institutional partners.

Here are four strategic, high-impact actions HBCU alumni associations or chapters can take to directly raise four-year graduation rates and strengthen institutional wealth:

1. Create a Permanent Emergency Microgrant Fund (The “$300 Fund”)

Most delays in graduation arise from small financial shocks:
balances under $500, transportation failures, book costs, or housing gaps.

Alumni chapters can formalize a permanent, locally governed microgrant fund offering rapid-response support (48–72 hours).

A chapter raising just $25,000 per year can prevent dozens of delays, each shielding students from additional semesters of debt and protecting the institution’s future alumni giving pipeline.

This is low-cost, high-yield institutional intervention.

2. Fund Paid Internships and Alumni-Mentored Work Opportunities

Students who work long hours off campus are more likely to fall behind academically, switch majors repeatedly, or extend enrollment.

Alumni chapters can create paid internships, stipends, or alumni-hosted part-time roles tied directly to students’ majors.

Each position:

  • reduces the student’s financial burden
  • keeps them academically aligned
  • accelerates pathways to stable post-graduate employment

This lifts graduation rates and increases alumni earnings—expanding the future donor base.

3. Build K–12 Pipelines in Local Cities That Feed Directly Into HBCUs

Four-year graduation begins long before freshman year.

Alumni chapters can adopt 2–3 local schools and support:

  • literacy acceleration programs
  • SAT/ACT prep
  • dual enrollment partnerships
  • STEM and robotics clubs
  • early-college summer institutes hosted by their own HBCUs

Better-prepared students require fewer remedial courses, retain majors longer, and graduate on schedule, raising institutional performance and future endowment sustainability.

This is pre-investment in the future alumni base.

4. Pay for Summer Courses After Freshmen Year to Build Early Credit Momentum

After their first year, many students fall off the four-year pace due to light credit loads, failed gateway courses, or sequencing issues that a single summer class could easily correct. Yet for many HBCU students, summer tuition—often just one or two courses—is financially out of reach.

Alumni chapters can establish a Freshman Summer Acceleration Grant to pay for up to two summer course immediately after freshman year, allowing students to:

close early credit gaps,

retake or accelerate critical prerequisites,

reduce future semester overloads,

create a credit cushion for unexpected disruptions,

stay aligned with four-year degree maps.

A small investment of summer tuition produces an outsized institutional return: students enter sophomore year on pace, avoid bottlenecks in upper-level coursework, and dramatically increase their likelihood of graduating in four years. This is an early-stage compounding effect—protecting momentum before delays become expensive and permanent.

Disclaimer: This article was assisted by ChatGPT.

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HBCU B-Schools’ Leadership Still Embarrassingly Lacking In HBCU Alumni

Posted on September 9, 2025 by | Leave a comment

The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself. — Thales

By any reasonable historical standard, Warren Buffett’s rejection by Benjamin Graham is more than a quaint anecdote; it is a powerful parable about institutional loyalty and long-term economic strategy. Graham, the father of value investing, turned away the future Oracle of Omaha not because Buffett was unqualified—far from it—but because he had a principle. Graham hired exclusively European American Jews at a time when Wall Street’s doors were locked tight against them. It was his quiet resistance to systemic exclusion and a way to build a parallel institution that could compete and thrive. Graham wasn’t interested in assimilation; he was focused on insulation, independence, and empowerment. The same cannot be said about the leadership structure of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), particularly their business schools.

A decade has passed since a comprehensive review was last undertaken on the leadership of HBCU business schools. One would hope that the intervening years would have ushered in a renaissance of internal cultivation—an era where HBCU alumni, steeped in the culture, history, and mission of these institutions, took the reins of their business schools. That hope remains, for the most part, unrealized. Instead, many HBCU B-schools continue to be led by individuals who are not products of these institutions, and in many cases, are fundamentally disconnected from the unique economic and cultural needs of the African American community.

The appointment of deans and senior faculty from predominantly white institutions (PWIs) is often lauded as a move toward “excellence” or “best practices.” The coded language of meritocracy is a familiar refrain—best person for the job, regardless of background. But this belief, as commonly practiced within HBCUs, is a convenient myth. It sidesteps the structural disadvantages HBCU graduates face in academia and business, and reinforces a dependency on external validation and leadership.

The consequence? A business education ecosystem within HBCUs that remains divorced from the very communities these schools are intended to serve. There is no pipeline, no incubator of internal talent, no clear strategy to empower HBCU alumni to lead, govern, and shape the next generation of Black business leadership.

Institutional Amnesia

In failing to privilege their own alumni in leadership selection, HBCU B-schools suffer from what might be called institutional amnesia. There is little effort to study and replicate the success of institutions that have prioritized internal development. Jewish, Catholic, and even Mormon institutions have all built robust networks by leveraging internal cultural capital and aligning institutional leadership with community objectives. HBCUs, by contrast, often appear to suffer from an inferiority complex that manifests in a relentless pursuit of PWI credentials as a proxy for excellence.

Even when HBCU alumni are in the pipeline, they are frequently passed over in favor of candidates whose resumes boast affiliations with Ivy League or flagship public institutions. The irony is rich and troubling: HBCUs, which claim to be dedicated to the uplift of African Americans, routinely reject their own in favor of the very systems that have historically excluded them.

The Data Tells the Story

Of the 85 accredited HBCU business schools and departments (based on the latest available data), fewer than 20% are led by HBCU alumni. Of that number, fewer than half have received their undergraduate and graduate education at an HBCU, further diluting the institutional knowledge that could be reinvested back into the system.

By contrast, 75% of business school deans and department chairs at Ivy League universities hold at least one degree from an Ivy League institution. This underscores the importance these institutions place on continuity, network loyalty, and internal cultural capital.

Lack of a Succession Strategy

The dearth of HBCU alumni in leadership roles is not merely a matter of optics—it is a strategic failure. The absence of a deliberate succession plan, where institutions identify, mentor, and elevate their own talent, weakens the intellectual and operational spine of HBCU B-schools. When young Black scholars and students do not see themselves reflected in positions of power within their own institutions, the implicit message is that their ascent must take place elsewhere.

Anecdotes abound of promising scholars who, having been educated and initially employed at HBCUs, eventually decamp to PWIs for better pay, prestige, or professional development. When those same scholars become leaders elsewhere, their institutional loyalty rarely circles back. The brain drain becomes self-perpetuating.

Cultural Incongruence and Strategic Drift

Leadership from outside HBCUs is not inherently problematic. However, leadership that does not understand or prioritize the mission-specific challenges and opportunities of HBCUs can lead to strategic drift. The market-driven nature of business education already pushes HBCUs to chase prestige metrics that are often defined by PWI standards—AACSB accreditation, international rankings, publication quotas. Yet these metrics seldom align with the needs of the African American community.

Who is building a curriculum around cooperative economics? Who is training students to start, fund, and grow businesses in historically Black neighborhoods? Who is leading research on Black entrepreneurship, Black banking, and financial exclusion? These priorities require not just academic competence but cultural commitment—something often missing in leadership that has not been formed within HBCUs.

The Cost of Outsourcing Leadership

The preference for external hires is also an expensive habit. Recruitment searches for deans can cost upwards of $250,000 when executive search firms are engaged. The revolving door of short-term leadership appointments, another consequence of weak institutional loyalty, creates instability in fundraising, student recruitment, and faculty morale.

Moreover, the indirect costs are enormous. When leadership lacks vision rooted in the mission of HBCUs, partnerships are misaligned, fundraising strategies are tone-deaf, and entrepreneurial ecosystems are underdeveloped. Business schools are economic engines, and the failure to connect them authentically to the community they serve is a missed opportunity of staggering proportions.

What Would Graham Do?

The story of Benjamin Graham and Warren Buffett is not merely about individual relationships; it is a case study in institutional integrity. Graham’s commitment to his community was not performative. It was strategic, values-driven, and unapologetically intentional. He understood that talent alone was insufficient. It had to be nurtured, protected, and positioned within the community’s own institutions.

African American leaders in education, particularly those responsible for HBCUs, must ask themselves: what kind of ecosystem are we building? Do we merely seek validation from the same institutions that denied us access for generations? Or are we committed to the difficult, often thankless work of institution-building?

The answer may well determine the fate of HBCUs in the 21st century.

A Call to Action

First, HBCU business schools must create formal succession pipelines for leadership from within their own alumni networks. This includes mentoring programs, leadership fellowships, and internal promotion tracks that incentivize long-term engagement.

Second, boards of trustees and presidential leadership must reexamine hiring criteria. Cultural alignment and mission understanding must be weighted as heavily as academic credentials.

Third, HBCUs should begin benchmarking themselves not against Harvard or Wharton but against institutions that have successfully used internal leadership to drive community outcomes. The benchmarks for success must be redefined to reflect mission, not mimicry.

Finally, alumni must hold their institutions accountable. Donations should come with expectations for institutional integrity. If alumni are good enough to fund these schools, they are certainly good enough to lead them.

HBCU B-schools sit at the intersection of education, economics, and cultural preservation. Their leadership must reflect that complexity. The time for apologetic hiring practices and external validation is over. It is time for HBCUs to know themselves—and to trust themselves enough to lead from within.

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Ohio’s Unclaimed Billions Could Empower Central State and Wilberforce Instead of Enriching the NFL

Posted on July 18, 2025 by | Leave a comment

You can’t have political power unless you have economic power. You can’t have economic power unless you own something. — Dr. Claud Anderson

In the quiet towns of Wilberforce, Ohio, two institutions — Central State University and Wilberforce University — have stood for generations as monuments of African American intellectual resilience and historical fortitude. Founded in eras when the very idea of African American higher education was radical, both institutions have graduated engineers, entrepreneurs, theologians, and teachers who seeded entire Black communities with knowledge and leadership. Yet, in 2025, they remain financially fragile — their endowments barely grazing the thresholds needed for robust institutional health.

Meanwhile, Governor Mike DeWine just approved $600 million in state funds — sourced from Ohio’s $4.8 billion in unclaimed assets — to support the Cleveland Browns’ new domed stadium in Brook Park, an NFL franchise owned by billionaires. The Haslam Sports Group, the Browns’ owners, is contributing an additional $1.2 billion to the project, and Cuyahoga County is expected to round out the financing with another $600 million. The stadium, estimated at $2.4 billion, is framed as a jobs and tourism engine — the typical rationale for professional sports subsidies. But beneath the surface lies a deeply racialized economic pattern: Black bodies as capital, Black institutions as afterthoughts.

Let us state this plainly — $200 million in endowment funding (split between Central State and Wilberforce University) would account for just 4.17% of the $4.8 billion in unclaimed assets Ohio plans to repurpose. Yet it would transform the future of two of America’s most storied HBCUs, whose total combined endowments likely do not reach even $20 million today.

The $200 Million That Could Rebuild Black Educational Futures

An endowment is the economic engine of institutional independence. It enables faculty hiring, scholarships, research labs, infrastructure repair, and the kind of multi-generational planning that insulates a university from the unpredictable winds of politics and philanthropy.

  • Central State University, Ohio’s only public HBCU, receives state support — but suffers from persistent underfunding compared to Ohio’s predominantly white public institutions.
  • Wilberforce University, a private HBCU affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the first college owned and operated by African Americans, has been in survival mode for decades, enduring accreditation threats and enrollment declines — largely due to chronic financial starvation.

A $100 million endowment per institution, conservatively managed with a 5% annual drawdown, would provide each HBCU with $5 million per year in perpetuity. That’s enough to:

  • Offer full-ride scholarships to dozens, if not hundreds, of students.
  • Endow faculty chairs in business, STEM, and African American studies.
  • Fund campus maintenance and restoration for aging facilities.
  • Launch centers focused on African American policy, agriculture, or entrepreneurship.
  • Reduce reliance on tuition and thus open doors to more low-income students.

In short, it would empower these institutions to build, not just survive.

Meanwhile, the Billionaire NFL Franchise Gets a Taxpayer Bailout

The Cleveland Browns’ new stadium is not just an economic development plan — it’s a public-funded monument to private wealth. Let us remember: The NFL is a tax-exempt cartel whose franchises are operated by billionaires and whose profits — through broadcast rights, luxury boxes, and merchandise — soar year after year.

The public rationale for subsidizing stadiums is that they will generate jobs, tourism, and long-term economic vitality. Yet, study after study from economists across ideological spectrums consistently shows that these promises are overstated or entirely unfounded. Most NFL stadiums create a short-term construction boom, followed by long-term debt and opportunity costs.

But perhaps more galling is this: the economic lifeblood of the NFL is disproportionately Black men. While roughly 13% of the U.S. population is Black, nearly 60% of NFL players are African American. These players, often trained in underfunded high schools, many from single-parent households and first-generation college trajectories, generate billions — yet the communities and institutions from which they originate remain underdeveloped and neglected.

It is a grotesque inversion: Black talent builds white wealth, while Black institutions remain marginal.

Black Athletes, White Wealth, and the Poverty of Institutional Ownership

The NFL, and by extension the Cleveland Browns, benefits from a system where the labor is Black, but the ownership is almost entirely white. Out of 32 NFL teams, only one have non-white principal owners: Shahid Khan, a Pakistani-American who owns the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Meanwhile, no HBCU alum holds equity in any major professional sports franchise, despite HBCUs being core contributors to the American athletic pipeline that fuels leagues like the NFL and NBA.

Despite producing generations of elite athletes, coaches, and sports executives, no collective of HBCU alumni has leveraged its wealth or influence to acquire equity in a major professional sports franchise, leaving the economic rewards of Black athletic labor concentrated elsewhere.

Imagine a model where Ohio had used even half of the $600 million to create a Black Education & Sports Endowment, partially controlled by a consortium of HBCUs, Black public schools, and community development organizations. The returns from that endowment could support thousands of students, community health centers, literacy programs, and STEM labs for generations.

Instead, we see yet another example of extractive economics, where African American physical, cultural, and intellectual capital is used to build empires for others, while Black institutions — including HBCUs — remain dependent on begging, philanthropy, and hope.

Why Unclaimed Funds Should Serve The Forgotten

Ohio’s decision to redirect $1.7 billion in unclaimed funds to cover state expenditures is fiscally creative — but morally questionable. These are not “free” funds. They are monies left in dormant bank accounts, uncashed checks, unclaimed insurance payouts — many of which disproportionately belong to low-income individuals who lacked the resources or knowledge to retrieve them.

Data suggests that Black Americans are disproportionately represented among unclaimed property holders — in part due to higher levels of economic displacement, address changes, and financial exclusion. Redirecting these funds to subsidize an NFL franchise, instead of redressing the institutional and educational gaps that created that unclaimed status, is a betrayal.

Ohio could have:

  • Created a permanent Black Higher Education Trust, benefiting Central State and Wilberforce.
  • Used 5% of unclaimed funds — about $240 million — to fund Black-led public health initiatives in underserved areas.
  • Directed even 1% of those funds — roughly $48 million — to finance land acquisition and economic development for Black-owned businesses.

Instead, we’ve chosen to rescue billionaires from spending their own money.

HBCU Endowments Are An Economic Empowerment Issue — And the Gateway to Political Power

Endowments are more than just financial assets. They are strategic tools of power — insulating institutions from political winds, enabling bold experimentation, and giving their stakeholders the leverage to influence policy, not just plead for it.

For African America, the chronic undercapitalization of HBCUs is not merely a funding gap — it is an economic power vacuum that undercuts the entire community’s ability to advocate effectively for systemic redress.

While Williams College and Bowdoin College — small liberal arts schools with fewer than 2,500 students — boast endowments of $3.7 billion and $2.58 billion respectively, many HBCUs operate with endowments under $50 million, and some under $10 million. This discrepancy is not accidental. It is the compounding result of centuries of exclusion from generational wealth accumulation, philanthropic networks, and public investment.

Until African American institutions — especially HBCUs — are armed with independent and sizable capital, they will remain vulnerable to the whims of legislatures, accreditation bodies, and philanthropic trends. Worse, they will lack the institutional might to challenge inequity in courtrooms, boardrooms, and ballot boxes.

The fight for reparations, education equity, health justice, and fair housing requires leverage — and leverage requires capital. Political power without economic power is temporary and transactional. But economic power institutionalized through endowments can translate into permanent seats at the table, not just access to it.

Endowing HBCUs, then, is not a charitable gesture. It is a foundational strategy for African American sovereignty and redress. Without institutions that are capable of outlasting election cycles and media trends, African America will continue fighting uphill with borrowed tools and limited voice.

Ohio had a chance to fund that future. Instead, it chose to subsidize a stadium — once again reminding us: until we build our own institutions, we will always be asked to cheer from the stands while others profit from our play.merican educational infrastructure for the next 100 years. Instead, he invested in a stadium with a 20-year shelf life.

Choose the Future You Fund

In 2029, a new domed stadium will open in Brook Park. It will gleam with LED lights and imported steel. It will be filled with cheering fans on Sundays and concerts on Saturdays. The Browns may even win a playoff game or two.

But just 50 miles away, on the campuses of Wilberforce and Central State, students will still walk cracked sidewalks. Professors will still work on contracts. Students will still withdraw for financial reasons.

Unless Ohio chooses to invest in the institutions that nurture and protect Black futures, those futures will continue to be harvested but never planted.

This is not just about football. It is about the future of Black Ohio. And whether our institutions will ever be allowed to rise beyond survival — and into sovereignty.

Disclaimer: This article was assisted by ChatGPT.

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