Most of the influx has come at public institutions, which receive funding from federal and state governments. As such, many colleges are pressured to increase their white enrollment -- even as affirmative action requirements at some other universities are waning.
"It is an odd and dubious legality that institutions that have not excluded anyone" are now forced to recruit white students, said Lezli Baskerville of the Silver Spring-based National Association for Equal Opportunity in Education.
"The people who are nice to me are genuinely nice, " says Chad Bishop, left, with Robert Jones at Howard.
(Dudley M. Brooks -- The Washington Post)
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Tennessee State University, for instance, was at one point under court order to increase its non-black enrollment to 50 percent. The court eventually dropped that requirement, and the campus has agreed to earmark $924,000 a year for scholarships to white students.
Three universities in Mississippi -- Jackson State, Mississippi Valley State and Alcorn State -- must increase their white enrollments to at least 10 percent and maintain that level for three years before they can receive a portion of the $524 million in state funds for school improvements provided in a federal court settlement, officials said. An effort to overturn that settlement reached in Ayers v. Fordice, a landmark desegregation case for colleges, was rejected Oct. 18 by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Alcorn State University, about 90 miles southwest of Jackson, has not found enough eligible white students from Mississippi interested in attending, so officials began recruiting overseas.
Eugenia Merculova Lubrano, 24, of Veronezh, Russia, a 2001 graduate who works as a recruiter for multicultural students at Alcorn, said she heard about the college from the mother of a friend. The word spread, she said, and now 40 people from her town have attended the historically black college.
Lubrano said she never could have gone to a U.S. university without the full scholarship Alcorn State offered.
Alvin O. Chambliss, the attorney who argued the Mississippi desegregation case, said the focus at historically black campuses should be on providing a quality education, not on drawing white students.
"They are going all the way to Russia to give away scholarships when they are sitting in the poorest state in this country and there are many poor black kids right there who could use those scholarships," Chambliss said. "They should be focusing on improving facilities and adding professional programs so that it will make all students want to go to these schools."
Morgan State University President Earl S. Richardson agreed. He said the key to diversifying student populations is offering quality programs. The Baltimore school offers no race-based scholarships, but has unique programs in architecture and city regional planning that help bring in students of all races. About 8 percent of its undergraduates and 20 percent of its graduate students are white, Asian or Latino.
"My goal here is to create an institution that is comparable to any of the majority-white universities," Richardson said. "Then, we not only improve the quality of education we offer our black students -- we make it attractive to white students, as well."
Morgan State and Maryland's other three historically black institutions -- Bowie State, Coppin State and University of Maryland Eastern Shore -- are governed by a 2000 accord with the U.S. Department of Education that sets no quotas for enrolling white students. Rather, the agreement encourages the state to invest in those colleges so they can offer unique programs to draw all students. Virginia, too, has focused on enhancing facilities and academic programs at Norfolk State and Virginia State universities rather than setting quotas.
Private universities, such as Hampton in Virginia and Howard, face no court mandates to attract white students and generally have less diverse student bodies. At Howard, 1 percent, or about 100, of their 11,000 students are white. Those who do enroll are generally drawn by its academic reputation or its music and athletic programs.
Bishop -- a tall, sandy-haired native of Shreveport, La. -- whittled his college choices to Howard and the University of Michigan because he had relatives near both campuses.
