Understanding The Challenges That HBCU Students Face

I'm going to tie everything you said to this question that I love right here from Ed Richardson. So the question is, and I swear I'm going to link it all together. It says, how do we make HBCUs test beds for new educational models like MIT or Arizona State University? I love that. I don't know where you are, Ed Richardson. You're my favorite person ever. We're best friends now. I love that question because it is something that I really do aspire to Bennett College to be. I really do want us to be, I often say like, where's the MIT media lab of HBCUs? And I say this because while we have a set of challenges, we also have a set of strengths. I think one of the things that if you're going to be a hub for innovation and new educational models, you have to take things that are usually perceived as negatives and you've got to turn it on its head and say, okay, how can that be positive? So one of our strengths is our smallness. We are deliberately small. We're deliberately a micro college so we can wrap ourselves around our students. That means that last year our retention rate was 86%. This year it's 92%. This is really critical for our students to be successful. 75% of our students are Pell recipients. Half of our students come from North Carolina and receive North Carolina need-based aid. 100% of our students receive financial aid. There is no family that writes a check. So the issues that our students talk to us about really run the gamut of things that you would think of. You know, they are thinking about how do I pay for college? The average gap if they do have to come up with something between their Pell and their North Carolina need-based aid, for example, it's about $8,000. That's a lot, right? That's a lot for a family that doesn't have much. So financial challenges, everyone has this, but mental health. Number one on the list is mental health. And we're really trying to work with our students to figure out what are the things that would make sense to respond to mental health issues. We have a group on campus, again, student-led, called Built to Last. And those students, instead of asking us for more counselors, yes, they do want more counselors. None of us can afford all the counselors. But they've also come up with other ideas, other ways of helping to support mental health, which includes nutrition, right? We're in a food desert. How do we address that? The digital divide is real, and trying to figure out, again, how can they have access so that they can join classes because we're hybrid model? So why did I tie this to this question about educational models? I think that with all of that being said, with all of those issues, our students, faculty, and staff are still really, really successful. So imagine what would happen if we had real investment in our institutions. Imagine what would happen if we really could upgrade our IT infrastructure, which we are in the middle of doing, thanks to our SFI partnership and with Cisco. But imagine where we would be. So if our students now are very competitive for national fellowships and for graduate school, I just keep thinking, what else is possible? Because if you take that smallness, so other places would say, oh, my God, small, oh, no, that's horrible. No, our smallness is our strength. And we can start to address some of these issues, help prepare students for the future.