HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, BLACK-COLLEGES EDITION: Failing HBCUs: Should They Receive Life Support or the Axe? “Many of America’s 106 HBCUs—which are concentrated mostly in the South—are in crisis. Years of falling enrollment, declining academic standards and graduation rates, shrinking endowments, and poor management have called into question such institutions’ staying power. Various reforms have been attempted, but those have often been Band-Aids for problems that demand long-term solutions and fresh thinking. The downward trajectory has continued as HBCU supporters and policymakers have treated the sector as a protected class in higher education—one in which outside criticism is labeled reactionary or, worse, a vestige of racism. Objectively, however, HBCUs in many respects fail the students they purport to uplift: low-income students, first-generation college students, and students with substandard academic preparation.”

In the era of segregation, these schools got the best black students. Now they don’t. And their problems offer an advance look at what many other institutions will be experiencing soon.