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Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) constitute a vibrant sector within the American system of higher education – one with a unique and vital mission. Moreover, this sector comprises many diverse segments, each with their own particular characteristics, challenges, and opportunities. To be successful in our present postsecondary context and beyond, HBCU leaders must understand their institutions' positions within the larger sector and actively manage key dimensions of institutional performance. In support of these twin imperatives, this chapter will begin by offering an overview of the HBCU sector, its mission, and the characteristics of its institutions. The chapter will next present trend data for four critical areas of postsecondary organizational management: institutional resources, market demand, access, and affordability. The chapter will conclude by considering the implications of the trend data for the future and articulating various strategies campus leaders should pursue to ensure long-term institutional survival and success.

This chapter will focus on Warde's (2009) use of phenomenological and qualitative analyses employed in “The Road to Tenure: Narratives of African American Male Tenured Professors” and focus on five African Americans at various stages of the professoriate with significant tracts of those tenures at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) which encountered significant executive turnover (i.e. more than two executive resignations/terminations in a 6.5 year period, equaling twice the national average according to the American Council on Education's 2017 study “The American College President”). The interviews brought light to ways that presidential turnover and constant flux in leadership at fragile institutions lead to predictable outcomes with regard to retention and tenure-track advancement, as well as provide a snapshot on the myriad ways African Americans must often adjust their career paths in order to pursue professorial employment at institutions often thought of as the most likely to support their efforts to earn tenure.

The decline in attendance at historically Black colleges and universities and their existence is as much about the theoretical frameworks of social knowledge that exist within a putative post-racial society as it is about the systemic destabilization of educational institutions that produce a critical mass of Black and Brown professional through, inter alia, neoliberal narratives of individualism. What impact does framing have on erroneous beliefs about the efficacy of HBCUs? In the context of America's historical and current sociopolitical environment, HBCUs are more than educative spaces for Black students. HBCUs are places where the transformative practices of rhetorical criticism and collective action can uproot attitudes and theories that lead Blacks students to believe the marginalized outcomes they experience are their own fault over systemic racial discrimination.