A lack of funds is one of the main reasons many African American students drop out of college. According to the United Negro College Fund, 65% of Black college students are balancing school with full-time work and family responsibilities. More than 80% of Black college students receive financial aid. One longtime scholarship fund for HBCU students is the Washington, D.C.-based Thurgood Marshall College Fund, founded in 1987 by Dr. Joyce Payne. She’s in Charlotte for two awards events and talked to WFAE’s Gwendolyn Glenn about the fund and its evolution.
Dr. Joyce Payne: It started out as the Black Scholarship Program and I worked on that from 1985 to 1987, simply doing consumer and economic data on how the African American community, how we were spending our extra dollars and also looked at those corporations that had been supportive of HBCUs. And turns out that South Carolina State was quite prominent at the time through the Miller Brewing Company. They had been hiring some of our students as interns and as professionals coming into the company with training and opportunities. So I created a relationship with the advancement officer there and found a champion in the name of Thomas Shropshire who was African American and the most senior person at the Miller Brewing Company and Phillip Morris. He became my champion after I sold him on the idea of creating a merit scholarship program for HBCUs.
Gwendolyn Glenn: So, when was it named the Thurgood Marshall Fund? And how much money did you have at that point?
Payne: It was named the Thurgood Marshall Fund in 1987 and we received our first half million dollars from Philip Morris and the Miller Brewing Company. So with a half million dollars and the support of the National Basketball Association with the late David Stern, and at that time Philip Morris, Sony Miller and the NBA were our primary sponsors.
Glenn: And how many students were you able to provide scholarships for?
Payne: At that particular time, the numbers were quite small, but you know, obviously we've been in business now for nearly 40 years and we have awarded over $400 million in scholarships. Not only, you know, merit-based scholarships but also financial aid scholarships.
Glenn: And these are all for students who attend HBCUs, historically Black colleges and universities.
Payne: State-assisted institutions, not privates, 47 institutions and we now have seven junior colleges and technical universities that joined us recently.
Glenn: You said it was started in 1987. What kind of impact has this had on students at HBCUs?
Payne: Right. It's enormous. I just spoke with a student a couple of weeks ago who is now working in China in the agriculture business. She had never been out of the state of Mississippi, was a graduate of Mississippi State Valley University, went to several of our professional development programs in New York, and it simply changed her life. She got her MBA from Columbia in New York, and she's now working for a major agriculture company in China. She also speaks Mandarin fluently. She's just one of many students that I could talk about, so we're supporting students who are in engineering, who are getting graduate degrees in physics and aerospace engineering. But generally, our universities like North Carolina A&T, are the predominant contributors to the profession of engineering, especially A&T, which is probably number one now in terms of producing Black engineers.
Glenn: Do you know the average amount students receive?
Payne: It's about $4,700 a semester.
Glenn: OK, that helps a lot.
Payne: Yeah, especially given the public universities. They are not the high-cost institutions. I believe North Carolina A&T’s tuition is probably somewhere between $9,000 and $12,000. And so a grant of close to $5,000 is going to make a difference.
Glenn: I'm sure you're aware of FAFSA. Those applications determine how much aid a student is eligible for, and they've had a lot of problems with the rollout of what was supposed to be a way to make the application process simpler, but technical problems and all kinds of problems have students still not knowing at many schools how much financial aid they will be eligible for. What are your thoughts in terms of how FAFSA issues are affecting some of these students who are getting scholarships from the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund?
Payne: It hurts our universities dramatically because we have more than 70% of our students who are admitted to colleges, are receiving some form of financial aid, and so our president, Harry Williams, and our government affairs staff, they've been meeting with the secretary at the Department of Education and with the leadership to try to find a way to minimize the disproportionate impact on our universities and we're also working with our schools directly to see what we can do to avoid any kind of dramatic decline in enrollment. Many of the other universities, the Johns Hopkins and the Columbias and what have you, they have sufficient endowments to fill that gap, and we don't have that level of resources.
Glenn: Well, let me ask you, you're here for a couple of events. Will you have time to visit any of the HBCUs whose students are recipients of the fund?
Payne: I won't have time during this Charlotte visit, but we're on the campuses all the time. I mean, we have Thurgood Marshall coordinators on each one of the campuses. We have talent acquisition teams on the campuses. And so,we spend a lot of time at all of our campuses. It's very important to stay grounded.
Glenn: Dr. Joyce Payne, founder of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund was in Charlotte to present the fund’s CEO Impact Award at a breakfast on Thursday to Lowe’s Companies CEO Marvin Ellison for his support of HBCU students and the fund’s Her Impact Award to Charlotte businesswoman and activist Zandra Sue Johnson.
