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Yvettep
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 2982
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 19, 2008 - 10:16 am: | 
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As African-American studies disciplinarians celebrate the expansion and 20-year anniversary of African American doctoral studies this year, some are wondering when there will be a similar development at historically Black colleges and universities.
“It is one of the nastier sores in the curriculum belly of Black colleges,” says Dr. Molefi Kete Asante, creator of the first Ph.D. program in African-American studies at Temple University.
This year, Temple is commemorating its 20-year anniversary and two more doctoral programs have been established at Indiana University Bloomington and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Adding in Brown University, which will soon launch a program, to a list that includes Michigan State University, Northwestern University, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the University of California-Berkeley, Harvard University and Yale University, then there are now 10 African-American studies doctoral programs at traditionally White institutions (TWIs). Meanwhile, there are still zero programs at HBCUs.
“We should be leading the way,” says Dr. Mayibuye Monanabela, a professor of Africana Studies at Tennessee State University. “We should be the citadel.”
HBCUs have yet to build bastions of African-American studies doctoral programs because of a lack of vision, resources and doctoral programs in general — and an uncertainty about whether HBCUs are even in need of them, disciplinarians posit.
The question is whether “HBCUs are Black universities and Blackness, or the perspective of Black people is built into the curriculum because if it is, then you can not proceed with the development of master’s and doctoral programs,” says E. Ethelbert Miller, the director of Howard’s Afro-American Studies Resource Center, who teaches in its Afro-American Studies department. “What has happened since we have not answered that question is that other programs have developed at White institutions now reaching the doctoral level.”
Monanabela already knows the answer.
“When we look at the curriculum at HBCUs, they are still 95 percent Eurocentric,” he says. “Education should connect the student, the learner to himself, to his past, to his people, to his community. If it doesn’t do that, then you have to raise some questions about it, and most of the curricula at HBCUs do not connect us to ourselves"...
Full story: http://diverseeducation.com/artman/publish/article_11305.shtml |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 6971
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 20, 2008 - 01:30 pm: |
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Look. Despite what some people may think I love Afrocentrism. I wish everybody in the world had to take Black Studies courses.
But unless you are going to teach black studies, a degree in Black Studies is not good enough to wipe your behind with.
All the young black people I run across I tell them don't even look at a degree in Liberal Arts unless they are contemplating some sort of graduate school
Black studies should be taught by our churches families and community organizations. There should be electives but Black people need to concentrate in degrees that mean something--accounting, engineering, business administration, medicine, stuff like that. |
Yvettep
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 2984
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 20, 2008 - 01:39 pm: |
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unless they are contemplating some sort of graduate school
And they should think long and hard (and then think some more) before contemplating grad school, too! LOL |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 6975
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 20, 2008 - 01:47 pm: |
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And they should think long and hard (and then think some more) before contemplating grad school, too! LOL
(If you want to do Law, Medicine, MBA or to go the academic route there is no substitute) |
Yvettep
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 2989
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 20, 2008 - 02:16 pm: |
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I run into many many undergrads who say they are "thinking about graduate school" largely because they do not really know what they want to do next. My advice is that almost any other endeavor will be time/money better spent than graduate school if someone is so ambivalent about what road they want to take. Grad school is a long road, a huge "opportunity cost" in terms of lost wages (at least in the short run), and a major intellectual investment. Also, the structure of academia has changed so that most universities are actually downsizing their ranks of tenure track professors.
Medicine and law, of course, do not require graduate school. (These programs are in what is commonly called "professional school," not graduate school--where you'd get, for example, a PhD.)
If someone does take a couple of years after undergrad working, or traveling, or painting, or joining the Peace Corps and they still have a passion to go to graduate school, then they should go for it! |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 6984
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 20, 2008 - 04:54 pm: |
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If someone does take a couple of years after undergrad working, or traveling, or painting, or joining the Peace Corps and they still have a passion to go to graduate school, then they should go for it!
(First I was grudgingly with you, but then you had to go blow it.
I would consider screwing around like that worse than going to grad school or professional school or whatever you want to call it.
You need to get into that crap when you're young and get it over with while you can still stand having some pencil neck geek who has never been out in the world lord it over you.
Passion ain't got nothing to do with it. You need to go to Grad school if you need the paper.
This is America. People don't go to school to learn. They go to get the paper so they can get them peachy jobs) |
Yvettep
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 2993
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 21, 2008 - 09:51 am: |
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This is America. People don't go to school to learn. They go to get the paper so they can get them peachy jobs
You are 100% correct. My point, however, is that those "peachy jobs" are quickly going the way of the dinos. The landscape of white collar employment is changing--with, for example, highly trained/degreed tech people at risk of losing their jobs in certain economic situations. As I said, academia is changing. At Big U everywhere, research is the word, and much of the teaching is being done by grad student TAs and contingient faculty. |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 6992
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 21, 2008 - 10:37 am: |
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My point, however, is that those "peachy jobs" are quickly going the way of the dinos
(So everybody who goes to college will be poor?
Let me ask you--as far as searching for jobs--ANY jobs--would you rather have a college degree on your resume or be an 8th grade drop out?) |
Yvettep
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 2997
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: 
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, June 21, 2008 - 04:53 pm: |
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Ah. I thought you were still talking about graduate degrees, not undergraduate degrees. A bachelors degree has become what yesteryear's high school diploma was--The bare minimun needed to have much hope of entry to or maintenance of a middle class existence.
"Peachy" academic jobs are harder and harder to come by. But very definitely what jobs are to be found are a long way from "poverty." |
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