Obama Answers Joyner's Plea for HBCUs

If you were wondering what ever happened to Tom Joyner's challenge to President Barack Obama to renew $85 million per year in temporary funding to historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), recent talk by his administration suggests that we haven't seen the last of it.

This past week was proclaimed National HBCU Week by the president, and accordingly, Obama's administration celebrated by having Secretary of Education Arne Duncan address the 2009 National HBCU Conference on Wednesday, September 2. Duncan also spoke with Roland Martin on the Tom Joyner Morning Show yesterday to present some of the initiatives, proposals and commitments that are in line for HBCUs.

While talking with Martin, Duncan enumerated these potential HBCU developments:

1. Simplifying the FASFA form: The application for financial aid can be very difficult to navigate. Therefore, the application is being simplified to no longer serve as a barrier for prospective students to apply for financial aid.
2. Increasing Pell grants and Perkins loans to students: For instance, Duncan supports increasing Pell grants by $500 per student and the Perkins loan program funding from $1 billion to $6 billion in 2010.
3. Creating a new plan: The Income Based Re-Payment (IRB) plan will allow students who want to go into the public sector to repay their loans according to their income.

As for that $85 million in funding to HBCUs that Joyner so passionately requested, Duncan says:

On the institutional side to help the HBCUs directly, the base funding [of $233 million], we are trying to take the amount of $233 million to $283 million, an increase of $50 million, and then Congressman [George] Miller, who has provided great leadership in the House, his proposal [is] to add another $85 million to HBCUs annually for the next 10 years. That could take the support of HBCUs to $135 million a year, which would be a historic increase and the most money ever. SOURCE: TJMS

Obama's strategy is indeed historic, admirable and noteworthy. With all the negativity flying around against Obama and his administration (e.g. Van Jones and the health care reform debate), you wish strategies such as these would get the real attention. Now we will need to see whether Congress passes the Obama administration's proposed HBCU funding. Call your congressmen, people!