President's Report 2007 - Benedict College

BENEDICT
COLLEGE
Michael Roberts is a rising senior who plays on the football team, is
a part of Benedict’s ROTC program and a member of the Alpha Phi
Alpha, Inc. fraternity.
SUPPORTING THE MISSION OF
CREATING NEW LEGACIES
The College’s open enrollment policy combined with its
intervention strategies serve to provide and sustain opportunity
for its students. This opportunity is the legacy of Benedict College,
a 138-year tradition of opening higher education doors for men
and women aspiring for a college education. Of Benedict’s 2006
freshman class, 95 percent were first-generation college students.
Maximizing this opportunity can be a difficult task, as financial
and academic challenges often go hand-in-hand. Our HOPE
and LIFE Scholarship recipients receive regular check-ins
on their classroom performance, which serve as constant
measures of success from freshman orientation to senior
commencement.
Backed by a committed staff, these support programs achieve
resounding, measurable success. Retention rates for HOPE
Scholarship recipients increased more than 200 percent these
past few years, resulting in ten times the funding to support
future scholarship beneficiaries. Similar figures underscore
LIFE Scholarship students; a nearly 150 percent increase in
student retention plus $600,000 in available LIFE funds.
Posted on Tue., May 29, 2007
At black colleges,
door open for whites
By KATRINA A. GOGGINS
Associated Press Writer
Michael Roberts has done more than study finance at historically
black Benedict College. He’s played football for the college, joined a
fraternity and proposed to his girlfriend.
Pretty typical, except that Roberts is one of the few whites who
attend one of the nation’s traditionally black colleges.
“When I tell people I attend Benedict, they comment, ‘Well, you’re
not black,’” Roberts said. “But it’s still a school, I’m still getting an
education. You don’t have to be black to attend.”
Officials for the nation’s historically black schools say Roberts’
experience is not that unusual. White students are being actively
recruited, and attracting them has become easier for a variety of
reasons, including the offer of scholarships and lower tuitions than
those paid at non-black schools.
Private, historically black schools cost an average of $10,000 less per
year than their traditionally white counterparts, according to the
National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education.
The head of the association says lower costs are not the only
thing the schools have to offer. Whites who attend the schools are
preparing for an “increasingly black and brown world,” said Lezli
Baskerville, the association’s president and CEO.
“If you want to know how to live in one, you can’t grow up in an
all-white neighborhood, go to a predominantly white school, white
cultural and social events, go to a predominantly white university
and then thrive in a world that is today more black, more brown than
before,” Baskerville said.
White students say they’ve taken valuable experiences from their
time at black colleges. Skin color, the students say, is much more of a
factor away from the campuses than it is on them.
“You should get to know people based on who they are,” Roberts
said. “You can’t judge a book by its cover.”
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