Men struggling to finish at black colleges

Money matters
Like their counterparts at any college, HBCU women enjoy rewarding, lifelong friendships. But the competition for men can sometimes strain.

"It's sad to say, but in the African-American community, it's hard enough for women to get along without the issue of men," said Bridgette Alexis, a LeMoyne-Owen freshman from Springfield, Mass. "You throw a small percentage of guys into the picture, and women who are looking and hoping to have boyfriends and relationships, and there's not enough for everybody to have one. So that just makes the situation worse."

Why do so many men drop out? Money is the reason you hear most. More than six in 10 students at the HBCUs the AP analyzed get Pell Grants, which go mostly to students from families earning under $30,000.

The faltering economy is hitting HBCU students hard. Fisk University in Nashville has lost 11 percent of its enrollment since August.

Another reason is preparation. On average, black students are less well prepared for college — and black men less so than women. The best black students are now also being recruited by majority-white institutions.

At Edward Waters, virtually every student takes developmental courses — essentially, to finish the high school education they never fully received. Only then can they start progressing toward a college degree.

Cultural factors
To explain the particular struggles of men, educators point to a range of cultural factors that affect black men everywhere, but which are especially visible at HBCUs.

Men have fewer role models, and also seem to think they have more opportunities without a degree. Educators also describe a constant battle against two poisonous ideas: that black men can't succeed, or that if they do they are somehow less than genuine.

Tyshawn Johnson, 20, a junior education major at Claflin University in South Carolina, says it's discouraging to see so few male faces on the campus, which is two-thirds female.

"When (men) come to school they think they're never going to make it," he said. "They start out and when they don't think they're up to snuff, they just quit. And that's why females will always dominate the college ranks."

There's no silver bullet strategy for boosting graduation rates. But persistence helps.

Elizabeth City State University, a public HBCU serving a low-income corner of North Carolina, tries to identify who's struggling and throw every possible resource their way. The best professors teach introductory and developmental courses. There are mandatory sessions to help students correctly apply for federal financial aid. When students drop out, ECSU calls them to find out what went wrong and try to persuade them to return.

The result is a graduation rate — around 50 percent — that substantially exceeds that of peers with similar student profiles.

New strategies, programs
At some HBCUs, there's a growing recognition that some strategies need to focus specifically on men.

Last semester, Philander Smith established mentoring programs for men and aggressively recruited them. Some are simple: Students who came from homes without fathers never learned to tie a necktie, said Kimbrough, the president, and were embarrassed not to have one during chapel. So the school teaches them how.

Graduation rates have improved from the teens to near 30 percent.

"There's still this idea that guys come to college, and if you need to help, you don't ask for it. To me that's the No. 1 barrier," he said.

"A lot of students are coming with issues students didn't even think about 30 years ago," Kimbrough said. "Our jobs have changed. I think we have to be much more intrusive."

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