Do HBCUs Deliver the Goods?

Clifton Roscoe weighs in

The long silence is over: Clifton Roscoe is back! Regular readers will know that Clifton is a semi-regular correspondent here at The Glenn Show. When an issue can be illuminated by polls, stats, economic data, official reports, or other empirical measures, Clifton is on it. This week, he was moved to respond to my conversation with John about Trump’s anti-DEI policies. Take it away, Clifton.

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Professor Loury,

I want to provide you some feedback on your most recent conversation with John McWhorter about Trump's dismantling of DEI. I'll do this in bullet form:

1. The debate about DEI is ongoing, with people like Carol Swain, Coleman Hughes, and Victor Hanson Davis writing essays about why it's bad and why they're glad to see it go. Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg, however, says DEI is popular and that Trump doesn't have a mandate to kill it. That's a political argument that will play out over time. Within Black America, the response to Trump's efforts to kill DEI seem to be rage and/or resignation, combined with a concerted effort to boycott Target for backing away from its DEI programs. I'm just a PBA, but that seems like a waste of time.

2. DEI mostly benefits black people with college degrees and black small business owners. It has done nothing for the 25-30% of black people you are worried about being left behind. Truth be told, those folks are hanging on by a thread. The upper limit for the bottom quartile of usual weekly earnings for full-time black hourly and salaried workers was $722 as of the end of 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. There aren't many places where you can make it on $37,544 per year ($722 per week x 52 weeks), let alone thrive. Keep in mind that that this figure doesn't account for people who aren't working. For what it's worth, the black labor force participation rate was 62.4% as of December. The black employment to population ratio was 64.1%.

3. While I'm reluctant to criticize HBCUs (both my parents graduated from HBCUs), it's fair to say that their impacts are modest. They only educated 9% of black college students in 2022 according to Pew Research. That's down from 18% in 1976. For all their historical significance and a handful or historical graduates, they have not advanced Black America in meaningful ways. The percentage of America's doctors who are black men, for example, is low and virtually unchanged over the past 120 years according to an analysis from UCLA. The percentages of blacks in most of America's high-paying and/or most prestigious professions are low and have been that way despite all the civil rights legislation and regulatory efforts to boost them.

More importantly, HBCUs don't provide good returns compared to their peers. Payscale has an “ROI calculator” that allows comparisons of the value added (earnings above those of a high school graduate, minus the costs of college and lost wages while in school) associated with degrees from a variety of colleges and universities. Here's a comparison of the 20-year returns associated with Morehouse, Spelman, Emory, and Georgia Tech, four schools based in Atlanta:

• Emory: $605,000

• Georgia Tech (in-state): $1,091,000

• Georgia Tech (out of state): $1.006,000

• Morehouse: $408,000

• Spelman: $241,000

The folks at Morehouse and Spelman will tell you that their academics are just as good as those at Emory and and Georgia Tech, but what explains the gaps? Racism? Or does the marketplace simply value degrees from Emory and Georgia Tech more? To be fair, a disproportionate share of black college students cluster in low-paying majors, so it's not clear if a Morehouse chemistry major ends up with the same ROI as a Georgia Tech chemistry major.

A plus for HBCUs is that they make strong efforts to nurture their students and often go to great lengths to ensure that they graduate

So what's the answer? What would move Black America forward at a time when today's black leaders are taking “standing eight counts” in response to Trump's election victory and first two weeks back in office? The same and only things that would have moved Black America forward if Kamala Harris had won: stronger family structures and a renewed/sustained focus on academics.

Pick whatever academic metric you want—NAEP scores, ACT scores, SAT scores, graduate school admission scores, Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery exam, Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies survey, etc.—every single one of them shows that black children and adults lag behind their peers when it comes to cognitive skills. There's no way to reach anything resembling economic equality in a knowledge-based economy as long as those gaps remain.

Family structures are important as well. (You should have Melissa Kearney, author of The Two Parent Privilege on your show!) They determine the environments in which our children grow up and have huge impacts on how well prepared they are to compete for high-value work as adults. Consider these two graphics from the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the US Census Bureau:

The graphic above is a compilation of 12 indicators of child well-being. The higher the score, the better. It is notable that the Asian composite score is double that of blacks. The hierarchy and relative positions foretell household income figures:

The Asian median household income figures are double the black figures, just like before. The racial hierarchy and relative positions (e.g., black household incomes are half those of Asian households) closely mirror those in the the figures from the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Many economists would laugh at me for even making this comparison, but folks who live in the real world recognize a legitimate pattern when they see one. To them it would be easy to connect the dots, do a rough “roots to fruits” comparison and say, “Of course. It's no wonder that Asians are leading the pack when it comes to academic achievement, household incomes, household wealth, and life expectancies.” The rationale becomes even stronger if you factor in cultural differences.

The Obama and Biden presidencies should have proven to even the most fervent believer in the power of government that Uncle Sam will not save Black America or put it on a path to equality. If I was a prominent black intellectual, I would lay out the facts, make that argument, and tell black folks it's time to choose a new path. While there are black people who blame all of Black America's shortcomings on white people, the anti-black bias narrative doesn't explain away Asian success. In other words, Asians wouldn't be doing so well if whites had rigged America's economic system and institutions in ways that guarantee their success. Moreover, there's nothing that Asians are doing that black folks can't do, unless you believe that Asians are inherently smarter.

The two of you may be right. But black teen pregnancy once seemed like an insoluble problem. And yet, between 1990 and 2022, the black teen birth rate fell by more than 80%, according to HHS. There's no reason to think we can't make the same kind of progress on black out-of-wedlock birth rates.

Best regards,

Clifton Roscoe

P.S. This recent Wirepoints analysis paints a dire picture. Only the most stubborn of people can look at this graphic and think more of the same will turn things around for black folks in Chicago or the nation as a whole:

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