Administrative Control of Public Negro Colleges

Despite the fact that the Negro is a member of a segregated, underprivileged, minority group in American life, his state-supported institutions of higher education have been externally controlled in accordance with principles designed for the group at large. Whether or not this is as it should be is the question raised by the writer. The issue seems to have four aspects, namely: (1) that of ascertaining the existing plans of control for state-supported, higher-education programs for Negroes; (2) that of discovering the practices associated with the different plans of control; (3) that of evaluating the existing plans of control with particular reference to Negro-education; and (4) that of determining the most desirable scheme of control for state-supported, highereducation programs for Negroes. Evidences of a specific need for investigating the issue are at least four in number: (1) theories that the Negro is inherently different from others, hence, that his education should likewise be different; (2) the exclusion of the Negro phase in almost all studies similar to the one at hand; (3) ignorance of, or indifference to, the Negro-education situation; and (4) peculiarities of control of higher-education programs for Negroes as characterized by: (a) external control by governing agencies none of whose members is of the racial group for whom the programs are designed, and (b) the existence of patterns of control not found in the higher-education programs for other (racial) groups. The problem of control of these institutions for Negroes has been treated incidentally in seventeen investigations. Of these projects two have been state educational surveys, three have been national educational surveys, and four have been special studies. The educational surveys were made in Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. The special studies were made in North Carolina, Kentucky, and Texas. In the state and national educational surveys generally, the treatment of the Negro phase of the various issues is less analytical and more brief as compared with the same for the white phase

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