Letter to MacKenzie Scott

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Originally posted on Medium

I want to thank you for your generosity! Your pledge to give the majority of your wealth back to society is inspiring and reinforces the belief that an intrinsic good is part of us all, even more so, you acknowledging a dichotomy existing in our current social structure. One that is a savior to some, but a nemesis for most. I salute your team of non-profit advisors. They helped you curate a vast list of impactful organizations that deserve every dollar donated and every positive media mention that has generated in result. Thank you!

I write this letter in hopes that you give Prairie View A&M University serious consideration as a future awardee. Prairie View A&M is a historically black university in Prairie View, TX which is a rock’s throw from Houston. This HBCU is doing transformative work in Racial Equity, Gender Equity, Economic Mobility, and Public Health.

Prairie View A&M ranks in the top 3 of schools for black enrollment (over 60% women), the top 3 of schools producing black engineering graduates, the top school graduating black architects, and has one of the best nursing programs in the state of Texas. The university is led by Dr. Ruth Simmons, the first African-American president of an Ivy League institution (Brown University, 2001–2012) and also the first African-American female president of any major college or university (Smith College, 1995–2001).

With most blacks becoming first-generation college graduates, Prairie View A&M has contributed a lion’s share to the emergence of African-American representation across all STEM fields, as well as the income associated with these high-paying professions. I humbly ask that you give “the hill” a thorough look the next go-round. My time there added irreplaceable value to my adulthood, and countless others.

Divers Issues in Education Top 100 Rankings

I look forward to this letter finding you.

Sincerely,

Rashad

HBCUs Are A Better Investment Than Harvard

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Every fall season, we see various lists ranking US colleges and universities. My observation is that these lists are the same ten to twenty schools shuffled in random yet predictable order. If you conduct an internet search for “best college" or “best university”, you will see that the top five schools rarely change. The consistency in many of the ranking methodologies intrigued me. Who determines the best? How is the best measured? It’s not as if schools are in an annual tournament battling for bragging rights, crowned as champion, and hoisting a 4-foot tall trophy in front of spectators. If it were a sport, the current winners continue to write the rules.

The title, best, is subjective. I’ll focus on something purely quantitative, return on investment. ROI determines the gain or loss from an investment relative to its cost. Simply, a school’s cost of attendance is a student’s investment and future earnings are their net return.

return on investment

According to the US Department of Education, the cost to attend Harvard University without aid is $71,650 per year! This amount is more than the US average income for a two-person household. The cost of attendance includes tuition, room & board, and books. For anticipated earnings, we went to the website Payscale, which states that Harvard graduates with less than five years of experience command, on average, a salary of $74,800. Now that we have a figure for cost and a figure for potential earnings, let’s calculate the ROI.

harvard return on investment

Is the ROI more than what you expected? Is it less than what you expected? I didn’t write this blog to pick on Harvard, but its reputation as the gold standard makes it an easy target. Harvard’s list of graduates, and even its list of dropouts, include some of the most prolific people in our lifetime. That in itself creates a layer of fantasy that each future attendee is one sheet of paper away from a life on easy street. Seven of forty-five US Presidents had attended Harvard. Those are great odds! If I had to guess, I’d say that one of the next seven Presidents will have been a Harvard grad. Although promising, the chances that one will become President are far worse than any lottery in history, 1 in 300,000,000. You’re most likely to become a movie star, make it to the NBA, or even get struck by lightning than become the US President. In the present economy, some would say that Harvard’s dropouts have fared better than its degree holders.

Now, we’ll look at a much lesser-known institution of higher learning, North Carolina A&T State University. Home of the Aggies, this school’s cost of attendance is a modest $18,136. The average annual earnings for its graduates with up to 5 years of experience is $52,600. Immediately, it’s apparent that one year’s salary covers a great portion of the cost of a 4-year education at NCA&T. Using the same methodology, North Carolina A&T has an ROI of 190%!

 
north carolina a&t return on investment

Are you shocked?! Don’t be. NCA&T boasts a return on investment 43 times that of Harvard when using the average anticipated earnings and the cost of the school’s attendance, over a 4 year period. The line graph below gives you a better snapshot of what happens during this 8-year period. By their senior year, a student paying out-of-pocket at Harvard has invested $286,600 in his/her education versus their counterpart at NCA&T who has invested a modest $72,544 over the same timeline. Upon graduation, it’s off to the races. With a much less deficit, compound growth works in the Aggie alum’s favor.

I planned not to get too convoluted with attempts at discrediting some of the popular methods used to rank schools, so I’ll save that for later in this series. Do understand, many schools are propped up by weighted values, which are trivial when used as determinants to forecast a student’s future success. Here’s another bar chart with more of the world’s most known Universities compared to lesser-known, but notable ones like Prairie View A&M University, Morehouse College, Howard University, and Spelman College. A national leader in churning out STEM graduates, Prairie View A&M’s ROI is slightly above 130%.

Throughout this blog series, we’ll use data to visualize and express the understated value of historically black colleges and universities. The more you become deeply informed, the more you become cognizant of the roads not taken.