New Scholarship Hopes to Boost Black Male Enrollments in College

Readers of JBHE are well aware of the fact that black women greatly outnumber black men in college enrollments. Also, black women are significantly more likely than black men to graduate from college once they enroll.

In an attempt to address this problem, the Spangler Foundation of Charlotte, North Carolina, has created an endowment that will offer a $1,000 college scholarship to every black male who graduates from West Charlotte High School. The money can be used to pay tuition at Central Piedmont Community College or at any campus of the University of North Carolina system. A second donation of $50,000 to the high school will pay the college application fees for students of any race.

C.D. Spangler Jr. is a construction company executive who is white. He served as president of the University of North Carolina system from 1986 to 1997. On the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans, Spangler is a 1954 graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and he earned an MBA at Harvard Business School.

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