HerStory: Dr. Malveaux’s Tenure in Her Own Words

When I went to Bennett College for Women in 2007, I declared that I was “on fire” for the institution.  I still am.  And I also yield to the biblical verse that says for everything there is a season, a time for everything unto heaven. 

I had a season to build four buildings in four years, to increase enrollment, to influence curriculum shifts, and to assemble an awesome senior team, to engage with most of my students, and to influence young lives. I also managed the development of a new strategic plan, and I’ve been privileged to be a national Bennett brand advocate. 

I’ve maintained a speaking schedule partly because it enhances Bennett’s visibility, and wherever I go, I meet potential students, parents, and others, that want to engage me in Bennett matters.

I most value the ways we have looked at our campus foci – entrepreneurship, leadership, global studies and communications. If a young sister masters these, she can operate in almost any arena.

The number of students who have traveled internationally has increased exponentially during my leadership.  Personally, I’ve taken students with me to Copenhagen, Haiti, and Nigeria, as well as to many sites in places in the United States.

I am also grateful to have had support for the development of our entrepreneurship program. Given the job market, there is a point in time when many of us will be entrepreneurs, whether we want to be or not.  I have had a team to develop this concept and to integrate it into Bennett’s curriculum.

So why go? 

Things are going well. We had a bump and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools put us on probation when a major donor defaulted on a large pledge, and when we had to pay (go figure – and that’s another column) the government more than a million dollars on a prepayment penalty.  We overcame that in just six months and are in the clear with SACS until 2014, when we have a five-year review.  We celebrated the removal of SACS probation in January and it was, indeed, an exciting moment.

Why go? Because it’s time. Because leading the college is easy and fun, but raising money is hard. In order to move into the next phase at Bennett, somehow we need to both enhance our endowment and raise enough [momentum] to implement the strategic plan I led.  Do I have the stomach for spending 80 percent of my time raising money?  When asked the question, I had to go into deep prayer and meditation.  The answer?  No.

External forces work against HBCUs

President Obama has been great in managing to keep the Pell Grant level, but it needs to be larger.  In North Carolina, private colleges have been excluded from state lottery funds, reducing the money Bennett students can bring to the college. 

Key stakeholders committed for four years and may or may not renew commitment.  The United Negro College fund has slashed its appropriations to private colleges by more than 50 percent. 

When I looked at the factors in play, I saw an uphill climb.  And five years of working at full speed, wearing myself down, convinced me that I didn’t have the energy for another uphill climb.

 ‘Sprinting marathon’

When I first came to Bennett, a valued staff member chuckled at my pace. It’s not a sprint, she said, it’s a marathon.  I replied that it is a sprinting marathon. 

Now I yield to her wisdom. Impossible. You can’t run at the pace that I tried to run without paying a price.  I did.  I so fully appreciate the difference between being 53 and being 58. I fully understand the toll that stress, sleeplessness, and diabetes can take on one’s life.  

I fully understand that while I talked about balance, I never practiced it.  And I fully understand that my need to go is as much a result of my own exhaustion as anything else.

I am not an HBCU graduate, and had I been, I would likely have been a very different person. At my undergraduate college, African-American students fought to establish their intellectual chops, while at Bennett, the development of intellectual chops is applauded and encouraged.

Without being an HBCU graduate, I am an HBCU fan, and my experience at Bennett convinces me that I will always be.  I love my college so much that I hate to leave it, but it’s time.

When I say that I have never had a job for more than five years, I’m being flip. I wrote for “Black Issues” for 15 years, have been affiliated with USA Today newspaper since 1986, and have written columns (my first love) since 1984. But I am a free sprit that rebels against structure, and when I accepted the structure of leading a college, I realized that conformity would be a stretch goal.  I stretched for five years.  Now I need to exhale.

A season completed

There is a Japanese haiku that my sister, Mariette, shared with me.  “My barn has burned down, now I can see the moon.”  Bennett has been the space that I chose to come to because I am committed to African-American people, to our education, to college access. 

I thrived at the college, and yet I am mindful of the concept of season.  My barn has burned down, and the moon that I see is spaceless and endless.  Bennett will always have a piece of my heart, and yet, for so many reasons, this is the season for my departure. 

I am leaving my college with satisfaction with my accomplishments, and with a sense of poignant reflection on that which has been done, and that which might have been done.  I leave my college enriched, informed, and regarded in the fight for social and economic justice. 

I am leaving my college – it will always be my college – because it is time, because God is good, after you’ve done all you can, you just stand. I’m standing in the power of education.  Standing in the power of access.  Standing in the energy of HBCUs. Standing grateful and strong. 

Standing, ready for the next chapter of my life.

 By: Dr. Julianne Malveaux

Broke Cities should Awaken Nation

What is happening in a handful of municipalities across the country doesn’t bode well for the nation’s economic health, either. Two municipalities have filed for bankruptcy protection in the past 60 days, and two others filed earlier this year. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s capital, and Jefferson County, Ala., which contains Birmingham, are saying they cannot pay their bills. A federal judge has voided the Harrisburg bankruptcy case, so the state will take over the city’s finances.

In Jefferson County, a large sewer system needed rebuilding and was funded with municipal bonds. More than $3 billion of the county’s debt resulted from that project. Harrisburg is facing a debt of more than $400 million that was largely incurred when the city’s incinerator needed to be rebuilt.

The last large municipal meltdown was when Orange County, Calif., filed what was then the biggest municipal bankruptcy case in U.S. history in 1994 — $1.6 billion — because of investments in risky derivatives. Orange County is still in bankruptcy protection and won’t pay off its debt until 2017. Instead of raising taxes, the county cut its budget by 41% and axed 3,400 jobs.

Cuts like that might be fine in a county that is relatively wealthy, but in Jefferson County, with a poverty rate at more than 16.5%, cuts will be felt deep and wide. Harrisburg, where the population is two-thirds minority, is already struggling to pay for essential services.

Cuts are inevitable in Jefferson County and Harrisburg, although a state or federal bailout would lessen some of the pain. But with federal and state funds tight, that is unlikely, and probably unwise. After all, why should taxpayers in other municipalities bear the burden for ill-advised decisions by another?

Yet, the two bankruptcy cases are being closely watched by other municipalities facing financial crises. In the past, municipalities resisted bankruptcy filings for fear of losing their good credit rating. But recently, more municipalities are filing for protection in efforts to get concessions from debt-holders.

Nationally, our growing debt crisis also bears watching in light of the deadline Congress failed to meet to cut $1.2 trillion over the next decade. Now that the deadline has been missed, cuts — split evenly between domestic and defense — will automatically go into effect by January 2013. As Orange County and Greece have learned, there is no quick fix for decades of fiscal irresponsibility. And that’s a lesson that the United States might have to learn as well.

By: Dr. Julianne Malveaux

Debt Deal won’t Help Close Wealth Gap

The wealth gap between African-American households and white ones has always been high, but by 2009 it was at its highest level since data have been collected in 1984. According to a Pew Foundation report, whites had 20 times the wealth that blacks had in 2009.

The flagging economy has widened this gap. Blacks and Hispanics are more likely to be unemployedand experience long periods of joblessness. Blacks and Hispanics are also more likely to have much of their wealth concentrated in their homes, which made them very vulnerable to the housing downturn. While whites had significant wealth in their homes, their assets are more diversified, giving them greater protection from declining housing values.

While the wealth gap made news, the real news is that the gap is likely to widen. The debt-ceiling deal that Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., described as a “sugar-coated Satan sandwich” cuts spending by $2.1 trillion and preserves tax cuts for the wealthy. If the economy continues to flounder, the most vulnerable Americans are likely to accumulate even less wealth.

Already, unemployment is ravaging our communities. One-third of unemployed blacks have been looking for more than a year. Though unemployment is not confined to any one segment of society, of course, blacks have the highest rate of any group. Yet with U.S. unemployment still topping 9% nationally, an extension of unemployment benefits and the payroll tax holiday were lost in the debt deal. The jobless rate gap contributes to the income gap (blacks earn, on average, 63% of what whites earn) and to the wealth gap.

Finally, the wealth gap is important because wealth is access. Even the burden of unemployment is cushioned when people have something to fall back on. But black and Hispanic families have a lot less than others. The median wealth of white households was $113,149 in 2009, compared with $78,066 for Asian Americans, $6,235 for Hispanics and $5,677 for blacks. And those with little to fall back on just witnessed the shredding of the safety net that once caught them in hard times.

The only good news about the debt-ceiling settlement is that now, perhaps, Congress can focus on ways to create more jobs. If lawmakers can figure out a way to reduce unemployment, then perhaps we will see a narrowing of the wealth gap.

By: Dr. Julianne Malveaux

More Female Grads, but what about pay?

Today, it’s no secret that women are more likely to earn college degrees than men. Since 1996, we’ve been earning more bachelor’s degrees. Now, the 2010 Census shows that more women (10.6 million) hold master’s degrees than men (10.5 million) do. In the academic year 2008-09, the Council of Graduate Schools reports that by a bare majority, women also earned more doctoral degrees, 50.4%. 

One would be mistaken, though, to assume equality in education has translated to equality in the workforce. Women still earn less than men, roughly 77 cents for every dollar a man working full-time earns. In some sectors, such as financial services, women earn as little as 65 cents to a man’s dollar.

Even in higher education, equality in the upper ranks of academia is still lacking. Women are more likely to be found among the untenured than the tenured, and in adjunct instead of full-time teaching. Last year, a study by the National Center for Education Statistics showed that even when men and women hold the same academic rank, pay gaps remain. Female college presidents remain a minority (23%) among academic leaders, just as women are far less likely to head Fortune 500 companies, be elected to public office or hold other positions of power in our society.

This is not to say the headway women are making in education won’t one day reshape gender and family dynamics. Women, for example, have had lower jobless rates than men in this recession (in April, the unemployment rate for women was 7.9% vs. 8.8% for men). When women’s degrees lead to higher earnings and more jobs, perhaps we’ll begin to see more stay-at-home dads, too. In the African-American community, women’s higher educational attainment is often associated with lower marriage rates and less childbearing. Will the same become true for other communities?

Indeed, you know the nation has changed when people have even suggested that the continuing gender gap in college admissions —57% women to 43% men, according to the American Council on Education— might necessitate affirmative action for men. But before we declare victory and go there, remember that not all that long ago, the nation was concerned that schoolgirls were lagging far behind boys. So let’s cheer our gains in education while understanding that the problem has not been adequately solved until women receive pay equal to their educational attainment.

By: Dr. Julianne Malveaux