Boards of trustees are once again at the center of dangerous times for HBCUs

Few remember the sale of a Saint Augustine’s University (SAU) -owned golf course in 2016 under former president Everett Ward, which released a valuable asset from the university’s holdings. It was a terrible idea and real estate developers said as much for the price of $2.9 million - even to stabilize school finances that less than ten years later, cost the school its accreditation.

Three years later the university entered an agreement with Georgia-based real estate development company Carter which was announced as a $75 million deal. Then SAU board vice-chairman Brian Boulware, an SAU alumnus and Georgia-based real estate developer who was named to the SAU board in 2018, said this about the partnership.

“I am excited to see the impact that this development venture will have on SAU and the city of Raleigh. This venture is a great opportunity for the institution to expand its revenue stream while enhancing housing options for the city. The Board, along with the SAU administration, continuously seek opportunities that strengthen the institution and advance our mission,” Board Vice Chairman Brian A. Boulware (’95) said.

It is unclear today how or if the partnership has yielded financial benefit for the college, which has lost its accreditation, failed to make payroll, and is now the object of outward efforts by Raleigh’s business community and local media to press the school into merging with nearby Shaw University.

In 2020, Boulware was implicated in alleged wrongdoing to change official minutes from a board of trustees’ meeting, specifically regarding construction deals held by the college. In the years following, Boulware, former board chairman James Perry, and other trustees have been regularly in the news for lawsuits, financial liens and unpaid contracts, and allegations of mismanagement and other leadership improprieties.

Most people looking at the saga of Saint Augustine University’s demise may think that this is a scenario that has only been a few years in the making. In truth, those who power Raleigh’s business community have been eyeing ways to scout and usurp the campus for more than a decade. Instability in leadership has grown the impatience of the white men with money who see a future behind the school that stands in the way of millions to be made in real estate development, and the black folks who have or can realize their own profits or benefits from such a deal.

Boulware is the name that bookends a number of stories about financial dealing and eventual downfall involving this institution. When history tells the story of how schools typically shutter, it is usually one person making a series of bad decisions in concert with board approval driven by promises of financial windfall that drives the moral behind the madness.

Saint Aug’s is the loudest soloist in a growing chorus of HBCU instability that begins with board agenda driving and lack of higher education intuition among board members. Hampton University, South Carolina State University and Texas Southern University have hired former military generals when skilled and experienced administrators are needed to grow competitiveness with nearby predominantly white institutions.

Howard University and Tuskegee University are quietly facing the socio-economic challenges of being high-cost HBCUs in the face of falling college attendance, an affordability crisis and a college choice marketplace that is trending towards community colleges and earning industry-specific credentials. Neither community has confidence in the new presidents and their ability to identify these challenges, let alone resolve them.

Dillard University, Talladega College, Lane College are all suddenly seeking new presidents, North Carolina’s public HBCUs aren’t allowed to choose their own presidents, Huston-Tillotson University’s board is becoming a hotspot for conservative business people and Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s wife, and Florida A&M University’s board seemingly has forgiven and forgotten one of the great philanthropy debacles in the history of higher education.

Good presidents who have toiled to grow experience and skill at smaller HBCUs do not want bigger jobs because of the boards and the stakeholders who don’t monitor them. HBCU boards should be working overtime to bring some of our seasoned veterans out of retirement for service in fixing these issues and training their successors. They hesitate because former presidents aren’t the sexiest of hires, and what comes with them is a culture of doing things that absolutely must be done; including telling the board to be quiet and to stay out of campus operations, and cussing out or firing unqualified staff members who promote mediocrity in those operations.

While HBCUs have a unique habit of shuttering but not actually closing, predominantly white institutions facing their own struggles are actually shutting down for the same reasons at a pace of one per week; years of boards picking the wrong leaders and interfering with the right ones who know how to confront the issues of today and tomorrow.

What these trustees don’t realize is that much more is at stake than their personal agendas and underdeveloped understanding of higher education; what once for them was a benefit to increase their visibility and sociopolitical clout is now becoming a game of thrones between industries that drives billions and shapes the generational wealth of families and the cities and states in which they live.

There are too many colleges, not enough paying students, and the land upon which they sit is too valuable to play silly games about who is in charge and what can be gained from being in authority. While the board members at SAU jockey to be relevant, people with far more money and far less time will inevitably lobby government to take the land from a unaccredited school with no students and which can’t pay its employees.

Whatever board members were getting from their trustee status will not make them rich enough to justify the seizure of an institution that creates life-changing benefit for those who attend and graduate from it.

Whatever the boards at other HBCUs are thinking about hiring and firing presidents, they don’t realize that there is a dwindling talent pool of administrators eager to embrace the challenge of their foolishness and the complexities of higher education trends and industrial shifts. With every bad or selfish choice boards make, they are drawing closer to other industries encroaching upon their land and their operations.

Very little separates Saint Augustine’s, Cheyney University, and Talladega from becoming ghost HBCUs. Huston-Tillotson is likely to lose a president in the name of playing conservative politics. The only remedy is leadership, sound, unselfish, and knowledgeable in doing the most good for the greatest number of people.

HBCU presidents and boards were once experts at building and repairing their respective planes while flying them. That is how they survived so many volatile periods of racial tension, political antagonism, and financial strife. Now they are working to build while their planes are crashing, and the wreckage will be more severe and widespread upon impact than we could have imagined.