In her first leadership role as a member of Congress, North Carolina’s Rep. Alma Adams on Tuesday made sure that minority students and historically black colleges were included in a debate on how to improve the nation’s higher education system.
The longtime educator led the Democrats at a House Education and Workforce Training subcommittee hearing on the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. She filled in for ranking member Rep. Rubén Hinojosa, D-Texas, who could not attend the hearing.
From her days in the North Carolina state legislature, Adams has long advocated for educational equity and fairness in funding for historically black colleges. After getting to Washington, the first bill she co-sponsored in January was to reauthorize the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Historic Preservation program.
There are five HBCUs, as the schools are known, in North Carolina’s 12th District, which Adams represents. She taught at an HBCU, Bennett College, for 40 years and graduated from North Carolina A&T University, another historically black college.
During Tuesday’s hearing, Adams said historically black colleges continue to be under-resourced despite accounting for nearly 20 percent of African Americans who earn undergraduate degrees.
“We must ensure that we’re equipping institutions like our HBCUs with the tools and resources necessary to serve the unique needs of their student population and not penalize them for serving these students,” Adams said.
The hearing, titled “ Strengthening America’s Higher Education System,” may not have addressed historically black colleges, otherwise. The panel included former Indiana governor and current Purdue University President Mitch Daniels as well as other policy and financial aid professionals. They spoke about the challenges of affording college, the burdensome application process for financial aid and business needs for better trained students.
But it was Adams who questioned whether current success measures are appropriate for HBCU students, who come from largely lower income backgrounds. She also said that 2011 changes to federal loan programs have made it more difficult for tens of thousands of HBCU students to afford college.
An estimated 312,438 African American students, or 10 percent of all African American college students, attend one of the nation’s historically black colleges and universities, according to the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank in Washington.
David Bergeron, vice president for postsecondary education policy at the Center for American Progress, said many HBCU students come from low income backgrounds and therefore the schools are structured to provide them with additional support. While graduation rates at HBCUs are higher than public four-year colleges, according to the think tank’s analysis, he said the government still needs to give special consideration to these types of schools and that they should be placed in measurement categories with similar schools.
“We shouldn’t judge them against institutions that have tremendous resources and enroll students who are less at a disadvantage,” Bergeron said, responding to a question from Adams.
The committee chairwoman, Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., also has an education background and advised low-income students while she was an administrator and sociology professor at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C. She said the committee was considering the needs of all students and schools, but commended Adams for bringing her personal experience to the hearing.
“They’re part of the discussion that we’re having,” Foxx said of HBCUs. “Alma’s background is very strong in that area and I think we all bring our experiences to this work.”
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