WASHINGTON— At a policy forum organized to have minority-serving institutions (MSI) share their success stories with policymakers and education access advocates, the Obama administration’s top official for federal initiatives with historically Black schools on Thursday urged MSI leaders to broaden their focus on educating policymakers about their record of achievement.
For too long MSIs have cajoled Congress with the cautious violin-playing they hoped would inspire funding, said Dr. John Silvanus Wilson, executive director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, during the “What the Higher Education Community Can Learn from Minority-serving Institutions” forum sponsored by the Lumina Foundation and Education Sector, a Washington-based independent education policy think tank.
But it’s time to bust out the trumpets: “We have to tell our story better,” Wilson said about MSIs, which grant degrees to a majority of students of color yet are chronically underfunded.
Too often, Wilson said, MSIs have been overlooked as schools where pedagogical innovation is taking place because of the ignorance associated with their brand. Though the Obama administration has elevated the stature of these institutions with historic funding and attention, he said MSIs can take a louder, more prominent space in higher education.
“We are not asking for this investment because we want [the government] to do the right thing, this is about the future of this nation,” Wilson said, adding the strength and security of the country should be part of the argument for increased funding. “We are moving from plaintiff to partner.”
The money is justified because MSIs have devised the best practices for the nation’s most vulnerable groups for more than a century, forum panelists said, the same population that will comprise the bulk of the nation’s college-age community
“We don’t think of MSIs as trendsetters, but they are ahead of the curve for what our higher education system will look like,” said Deborah Santiago, vice president for policy and research at nonprofit, advocacy organization Excelencia in Education. “It behooves us to stop looking at these institutions from a deficit perspective.”
