Black Colleges: New Perspectives on Policy and Practice

Black colleges are central to the delivery of higher education. Notwithstanding, there is scant treatment of these key institutions in the research literature. There is a need for a comprehensive and cogent understanding of the primary characteristics of the policies and practices endemic to black colleges. This book provides the scholarly basis requisite to organize, give meaning to, and shape the analyses and applications of policy and practice within the black college. The collected chapters respond to the paucity of research literature addressing these institutions. In each chapter, the authors acknowledge the specific characterisics of black colleges that make them unique. Understanding the fundamental characteristics that shape black colleges is critical to gaining a comprehensive understanding of higher education at large. The policy and praxis challenges exhibited at black colleges serve as exemplars to how all colleges perform their respective functions in society. Black colleges serve as testimonies to the transformative power of adversity, and beacons of possibility in and era of retrenchment and ambiguity. These roles call on black colleges to aid and assist in creating an opportunity for educational change.

In this collection of studies of historically black colleges and universities, Brown (director, Frederick Patterson Research Institute of the United Negro College Fund) and Freeman (education, Dillard U.) seek to rectify the omission of those institutions from higher education research. The studies analyze the relevance of black colleges for black students and the effect of general education policies, with their embedded concepts of race and power, on policies at black schools. The earlier chapters document the practices and policies of black colleges and universities; the later sections make recommendations for the continued viability of those schools. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

M. CHRISTOPHER BROWN II is Kauffman/Missouri Endowed Professor of Education and Interdisciplinary Studies and Assistant Dean for Institutional Research at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

KASSIE FREEMAN is Dean at Dillard University.