Black Colleges Struggle to Keep Students

University of Virginia student Jessica Page leans up against a column on the lawn in front of the school's Rotunda in Charlottesville, Va., Thursday, Sept. 21, 2006. Page is part of a steady trickle of talented black youths slipping away from the nation's most prestigious black schools. Experts say aging campuses, shrinking prestige, changes in what black students value and increasing competition from white educational powerhouses are stripping some of the nation's historically black colleges of the best and brightest students. (AP Photo/Steve Helber) (Steve Helber - AP)

RICHMOND, Va. -- When Jessica Page visited Hampton University in March, she considered the trip a formality. She had already made up her mind to attend the school, considered by many a jewel among the nation's historically black institutions. Then she saw the campus.

The dorms weren't as sleek as she had pictured. Buildings seemed antiquated. Was this "The Real HU" she had heard about?

"I wasn't impressed," said Page, who later enrolled at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. "Hampton was my No. 1 choice _ until I visited."

Page is part of a steady trickle of talented young blacks slipping away from the nation's most prestigious black colleges.

Experts say aging campuses are one reason. But other reasons cited include increasing competition from predominantly white schools that are trying to become more diverse; changes in black students' desires; and the greater opportunities available to them in a society more integrated than that of their parents.

The exodus has left some black schools struggling to market themselves to youngsters who do not feel as duty-bound to attend black colleges as their parents did.

"The issue for black colleges is not, in my view, that there are not enough students to go around," said Michael Lomax, president of the United Negro College Fund. Instead, "students have a lot more choices and those students are being careful and more selective than ever before."

There are 103 historically black colleges and universities across the nation. Clustered mostly in the South, they were largely funded during the Reconstruction by wealthy whites as an alternative to universities that had shut out blacks.

For generations, these schools were valued by blacks for their unique campus traditions, their family-like environment and their skill at grooming the nation's black intellectual elite.

But the attraction appears to be waning.

Total U.S. college enrollment of black men and women ages 18 to 24 has increased from 15 percent in 1970 to roughly 25 percent in 2003. The number of black students enrolling in historically black schools has slowly increased, too, from 190,305 in 1976 to more than 230,000 in 2001.

But the percentage of black college students choosing a black school has been slipping, from 18.4 percent in 1976 to 12.9 percent in 2001, according to the U.S. Education Department's most recent figures.