White Colleges Illegally Copying Course Content From HBCUs

[journalist3072]

HBCU COURSES ILLEGALLY COPIED BY WHITE COLLEGES: Civil Rights Panel says practice poses ‘greatest threat’ to existence of black schools.

A panel was held Friday by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to examine the educational effectiveness of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs).


According to DiverseEducation.com, the consensus among panelists was that HBCUs are vital in providing the foundation for career success among disadvantaged minorities, but, their existence in a post-segregation America continues to be a source of debate.


“Historically Black colleges are the only group of institutions in this country whose right to exist is questioned daily by members of the public — that is a serious problem. Nobody questions the right of the University of California or community colleges to exist,” says panelist Jamie P. Merisotis, president of the Institute for Higher Education Policy.

Panelist Raymond C. Pierce, dean of the North Carolina Central University School of Law, says the “greatest threat” facing HBCUs is the illegal duplication of existing HBCU academic programs by nearby predominantly white institutions (PWI) - still left unchecked by many states. This PWI duplication largely leaves HBCU academic programs underfunded, violating the equal protection provisions of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

In the 1970s, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare was sued by private citizens for failure to enforce higher education desegregation and anti-duplication mandates of Title VI. Known as the Adams cases, these suits led to a series of federal court orders mandating that the agency’s civil rights unit enforce Title VI among the many noncompliant states, though to this day, Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Florida, Maryland, Texas and Kentucky still have outstanding Title VI violations, Pierce says.

“What needs to happen is the same thing that happened back in the 1970s —litigation against the federal government’s Department of Education Office for Civil Rights for not prosecuting or enforcing civil rights law — the only way it’s going to get corrected,” Pierce adds.


http://eurweb.com/story/eur26302.cfm