Joyner Beckons Barack for HBCU Dollars

Nationally syndicated radio host Tom Joyner has written a compelling letter to President Barack Obama, beckoning him to extend another $85 million to historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs):

"We want you to extend the $85 million that was included in the College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007 and is slated to expire in 2009."

Citing HBCUs as integral to the professional development of many blacks, Joyner lists stats from the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education to drive his point:

"Twenty-four percent of all PhDs earned each year by African Americans are conferred by 24 HBCUs; Eighteen of the top 23 producers of African Americans who go on to receive science related PhDs are HBCUs; Four out of the top 10 producers of successful African American medical school applicants are HBCUs."

The list goes on.

Hurray for Joyner in bringing this to the president's attention. I went to an HBCU (Spelman College) and know many of my classmates who went on to not only continue their education at Ivy League institutions, such as Berkeley, Yale and Cornell, but also launch successful careers afterword as journalists, professors and engineers.

Therefore, in Joyner's words:

"Mr. President, restore that $85 million today! This small amount is the kind of investment that will truly impact the lives of thousands of black men and women who will end up helping you bring about the change you talked about during your campaign."

Read Joyner's plea in its entirety here.

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Top HBCUs

Flip through the top HBCUs according to Black Enterprise and U.S. News.

Spelman is America's oldest historically black college for women. The school is name after Laura Spelman, the wife of American industrialist John D. Rockefeller.

BlackVoices.com

Top Schools For Black Students

10) Wesleyan University (Middleton, CT)
Tuition and fees: $36,806
Room and Board: $10,130

Wesleyan was one of the first highly selective schools to actively recruit black and other minority students, and in the class entering in 1965 had the first substantial group of minority students, 14 young men -- 13 Blacks and one Latino.

9) University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA)
Tuition and fees: $35,916
Room and Board: $10,208

According to the university, Penn is America's first university and is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States.

8) Columbia University (New York, NY)
Tuition and fees: $36,997
Room and Board: $9,098

Columbia University is home to the Pulitzer Prize, which has rewarded outstanding achievement in journalism, literature and music for over a century. Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism was founded by Joseph Pulitzer.

7) Stanford University (Stanford, CA)
Tuition and fees: $34,800
Room and Board: $10,808

Stanford offers strong programs in business management and engineering because of its close location to Silicon Valley. Many Stanford alumni have founded companies associated with technology, such as HP and Google.

6) Hampton University (Hampton, VA)
Tuition and fees: $14,818
Room and Board: $6,746

Under what is now called the Emancipation Oak tree, Mary Smith Peake taught the first classes on September 17, 1861, in defiance of a Virginia law against teaching slaves, free blacks and mulattos to read or write, a law which had cut her own education short years earlier.

5) Spelman College (Atlanta, GA)
Tuition and fees: $18,615
Room and Board: $9,200

Spelman has amassed an endowment fund of over $291 million, and is ranked currently at 75 in the 2008 U.S. News and World Report ranking of all U.S. liberal arts colleges. The 2008 U.S. News and World Report also ranked Spelman first among Historically Black Colleges and/or Universities.

4) Harvard University (Boston, MA)
Tuition and fees: $34,998
Room and Board: $10,662

Founded in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. It is also the first and oldest corporation in North America.

3) North Carolina A&T State University (Greensboro, NC)
Tuition and fees: $17,315
Room and Board: $7,370

On February 1, 1960 four distinguished freshmen sparked the civil rights movement of the south. Ezell Blair (Jibreel Khazan), Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, and David Richmond "sat-in" at an all white eating establishment (Woolworth's)and demanded equal service at the lunch counter.

2) Howard University (Washington, DC)
Tuition and fees: $14,020
Room and Board: $6,976

Howard University is the number-one producer of African American Ph.D.s in the United States. It is often known as the Black Harvard.

1) Florida A&M University (Tallahassee, FL)
Tuition and fees: $14,465
Room and Board: $5,492

In the fall of 1997, FAMU was selected as the TIME Magazine-Princeton Review "College of the Year" and was cited in 1999 by Black Issues in Higher Education for awarding more baccalaureate degrees to African-Americans than any institutions in the nation.