The Small but Mighty HBCUs Doing More With Less

9.28.20 by Lisa Armstrong for Zora Magazine

Huston-Tillotson University, a small HBCU in Austin, Texas, Zahria Touchstone found a place where she could blossom. Touchstone, 20, was student body president at her high school in Waco, Texas, where she said she was one of the few Black students in her senior class. She says classmates and teachers saw her assertiveness as “coming off too strong,” and she wasn’t necessarily encouraged to excel. But, pushed by her father to find universities to attend, Touchstone stumbled across Huston-Tillotson.

She toured the school five times and quickly felt a sense of belonging.

“It wasn’t, ‘Oh, here’s what we can do for you,” Touchstone says, “but, ‘Hey, Zahria, who are you as this individual we’re welcoming into our family?’”

Touchstone is now a junior studying business administration with a concentration in entrepreneurship. The straight-A student says Huston-Tillotson allowed her to come into her own as a Black woman.

“Huston-Tillotson was just a place [where] I knew that I could be good. I could be passionate, and I would have people support me and be enthused by my passion and not look at it as anger or thinking that I’m cocky or rude,” Touchstone says. “Love has always been poured into me. There has never been a doubt in my mind where I felt like my professors or my administration didn’t love me.”

Huston-Tillotson is one of the lesser known of the 107 historically Black universities and colleges in the country, but for students like Touchstone, it provides opportunities and a level of attentiveness from professors and administrators that they don’t feel they’d get anywhere else.

Several HBCUs have recently made headlines as the result of large donations from notable figures. In June, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and his wife, Patty Quillin, donated $120 million to the United Negro College Fund (UNCF), Spelman College, and Morehouse College. In July, MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, gave to several HBCUs, including $40 million to Howard, $30 million to Hampton, and $20 million to Xavier — each donation being the largest gift the school had ever received. In September, former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg committed to giving $100 million to Howard University College of Medicine, Morehouse School of Medicine, Meharry Medical College, and Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science.

Generally speaking, HBCU endowments lag behind those of non-HBCUs by at least 70%, according to a report by the American Council on Education. Smaller and less well-known HBCUs like Huston-Tillotson are typically the most financially strapped, as they don’t often get the kind of donations that make national news. But these schools use the financial resources they do have in innovative ways, and doing more with less has left them well equipped to deal with a pandemic.

“Many institutions are having struggles as a result of Covid-19. That’s every term for us,” says Dr. Colette Pierce Burnette, president of Huston-Tillotson. “The pandemic is making it harder, because our communities are hit economically. So, [the struggle] is compounded, but it’s not new. We’ve been operating like this, in my case for 145 years, and still staying strong.”

Since these schools often have smaller student bodies — Huston-Tillotson has 1,100 students — they are also better able to build a sense of community and provide a certain level of nurturing and emotional support, which has been crucial this year. While students at many other schools were left for the most part to figure things out once campuses closed in the spring due to the pandemic, administrators at small HBCUs were hands-on when it came to helping their students.

“Presidents at our institutions knew the status of the most vulnerable of their student populations,” says Dr. Latoya Owens, director of learning and evaluation for the Frederick D. Patterson Research Institute at the UNCF. “They knew there were students that they would have to buy plane tickets. They saw students to the airport and bus stations. There were students from very rural populations, and they didn’t send them home without technology.”

Schools have continued to support students this fall, either choosing to reopen campuses or offer remote learning, depending on students’ needs.

Dr. Bobbie Knight, president of Miles College in Fairfield, Alabama, said her campus reopened in part because of pleas she received from numerous students.

“One young lady said, ‘Madam President, I really need you to open the campus back up. I need to come back. Nobody here at home cares about me,’” Knight says. “One young man who was homeless, he needed to come back. This is his home until he can make it in the world. This is their home, and we try to treat them like it’s their home.”

Currently, Huston-Tillotson is fully remote, and the college provided tablets and vouchers to pay for internet access for all students. Paul Quinn College, an approximately 450-student HBCU in Dallas, is also fully remote and has provided 133 laptops and 107 Wi-Fi hotspots for students.

The additional costs — Huston-Tillotson has spent approximately $1.8 million on tablets, internet connectivity and instructional software— were covered in part by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, which gave $14 billion in federal funding to post-secondary learning institutions. HBCUs, tribally controlled colleges, and universities serving low-income students received an additional $1.4 billion. But since more than 70% of students attending HBCUs are low income, these schools had to not only provide technical assistance for online learning but also figure out how to address issues like food and housing insecurity, Owens says.

About 85% of Paul Quinn’s students are eligible for the Federal Pell Grant, meaning they “display exceptional financial need.” In his 13 years as president of Paul Quinn, Dr. Michael Sorrell has had to make some tough decisions to keep the college open, including eliminating the school’s $600,000 to $750,000 per year football program in 2007. But Sorrell prefers to focus on what the school can provide to students and the community, rather than what it lacks. “Our students have spent their lives being told how their lives are inadequate because of the money they don’t have,” Sorrell says. “We don’t spend our lives worrying about what we don’t have, because that’s how you become trapped in a scarcity mindset. Our entire experience this last 13 years is an example of what you can do with discipline, creativity, and innovation.”

Paul Quinn is in a food desert, and in 2010 the school turned its unused football field into an organic farm to provide produce for local food banks. It also sells to restaurants and grocers; the money earned goes toward scholarships.

It was Sorrell who came up with the idea for the virtual national HBCU commencement celebration in the spring, which included 78 HBCUs and featured former President Barack Obama, dance legend Debbie Allen, and Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris as speakers. Over the summer, Paul Quinn announced a new three-year undergraduate degree in business administration and public policy, designed in partnership with the Minerva Project, a tech company that works with colleges to develop innovative programs.

Paul Quinn senior Alexya Soto, 21, says that as a Mexican American, she wasn’t necessarily planning to attend an HBCU. She was recruited to play soccer, and says that “Pres,” as Sorrell is affectionately known, has always expected greatness from students. “From the beginning, he saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself,” she says. While faculty and administration have “spoken realness” to students about the adversity they might face due to race or socioeconomic status, Soto says they also stress the “four Ls” of the school’s guiding principles: Leave places better than you found them; lead from wherever you are; live a life that matters; love something greater than yourself.

“The focus has always been ‘What do you have to offer the world?’” Soto says.

While HBCUs have had to tighten their belts in some areas, they’ve used the pandemic as an opportunity to improve online programs and technology at their schools. They’ve also received donations, often smaller gifts or from people with ties to the community.

In January, NBA hall of famer Charles Barkley, who grew up in Leeds, Alabama, gave $1 million to Miles College, which was the largest single gift in the school’s history. LeMoyne-Owen College in Memphis received $40 million from the Community Foundation of Greater Memphis in June, which will quadruple the school’s endowment. This summer, Renee Montgomery, a member of the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream, announced she is raising $3 million to support Morris Brown College.

Presidents at smaller HBCUs say they don’t have the relationships or staff that larger, better-known schools have that enable them to draw multimillion-dollar gifts from celebrities. Instead, smaller HBCUs use other means to get funding and create opportunities.

At Huston-Tillotson, a new partnership with Tesla will provide internships for students. Apple is providing scholarships for the school’s Black male students who intend to pursue a career in education, to help increase the number of Black male teachers in K-12 schools. Toyota has provided scholarships for students in the school’s environmental justice program. Burnette, who is very active in touting Huston-Tillotson’s successes on social media, says the Toyota partnership was sparked after a Black executive at Toyota saw Burnette’s posts on Instagram.

In raising the visibility of Huston-Tillotson, Burnette wants people to see the school’s story and recognize its value.

“We’re not a charity,” Burnette says. “We’re not asking for a handout. We’re asking for an investment. My students do not need to be saved. They need opportunity.”

Huston-Tillotson senior Natalia Cox says that because the administration and professors are so focused on the success of each student, the school provides internship opportunities tailored to help students attain their career goals. Cox, 20, is a biology major and wants to be an exotic animal veterinarian. Since last fall, she’s had an internship with Texas Parks and Wildlife, trapping and GPS-tracking urban coyotes.

“I’ve had internships and education I wouldn’t have anywhere else,” Cox says. “The school opened up potential in me that I didn’t know I had or hadn’t unlocked yet.”

Saffana Velji, a senior at Huston-Tillotson, says that while some might look down on her school because of its lack of resources or assume companies are interested in its students just to fill a diversity quota, she’s had more opportunities than she would have had if she were enrolled at another school. In her freshman year alone, Velji had a personal lunch with Burnette (who makes it a point to eat with students), studied in China, and participated in a SXSW HBCU Battle of the Brains challenge. Her internships have led to multiple job offers.

“My degree is valued just as much as anyone else’s — I think it’s worth more, in my opinion,” says Velji, 21. “There is this common misconception that for companies, we just represent a diversity number. But even if we do, our school looks at it as, ‘You want us as a number? We’re going to take it, and we’re going to prove to you that we’re worth more than just being a number.’ Our students take the internships, and they get rehired. We want to show you we can take your disadvantage and turn it into our own personal advantage.”