However, these colleges and universities have to be financial and academically viable or they should cease to exist. I'm not even saying eliminate state subsidies/funding or government student loan programs, but these colleges can't be endless money pits just because it's "a historically black college" and has always been there.
These colleges have lost their reason for existing, as legal segregation was ended decades ago. Sounds as if they have trouble competing based on their own merits, the quality of their own academic programs, etc.
And it has to be hard to recruit a talented student body. Black students can attend any college nowadays. Odds are that the historically black colleges are getting less academically qualified students, the ones left over, who couldn’t get in anywhere else.
SC State ( a HBCU ) has constantly had several news reports about the school being close to losing their accreditation. Nothing further is written on what they did to solve the problem. Then in a few years, more news comes out about a new accreditation threat. This has been going on for decades. I wish they would stop pretending that nothing is wrong and be done with it.
A few years ago, a son of a co-worker (white) got a full-ride athletic scholarship at Edwin Waters in Jax, FL. While he was a decent baseball player, he certainly couldn't get a ride at a normal school. He was there for one reason - to help raise the academic average of the athletic dept, in order to retain conference eligibility for the basketball team.
So the baseball team had several white guys, lousy w/l record, but very good academic avg. The basketball team had no whites, very good w/l record, and lousy academic avg. But the academics for the dept averaged good enough to satisfy the conference.
So the College was happy, but spent money on scholarships that were not justified. Who picks up that tab, I wonder.