Students should research universities

Losing, or the lack of, accreditation has become a common problem for many historically black colleges and universities.

But this is insignificant when considering the thousands of students who don’t find out about this problem when they step onto the respective “yards”.

A lack of adequate research may lead to a person’s degree being placed in jeopardy because his or her college or university is not accredited.

Thirty percent of all African-American students with business degrees have graduated from a historically black college or university.

Despite this large percentage, only a handful of these 102 HBCUs were accredited.

Grambling State and Southern University are among the few tertiary educational facilities that are trying to preserve their accreditation.

The students at these respective universities were probably enraged to find out that all their hard work and hours of studying could go to waste if the universities lost accredited status.

It can’t be true that HBCUs do not desire accreditation, but they are not taking the correct steps toward the achievement of this goal.

For most college students, it’s a bit late to be researching their college’s accreditation status.

But for those planning to transfer or go on to do graduate studies at an HBCU (or any other school for that matter) they should do a little more research.

Students can and should go online and do research at a number of websites.

Two that are very common not only for providing background information on a school, but also for general college preparation are www.princetonreview.com and www.collegeboard.org.

Both of these organizations also publish books and reference materials to investigate higher education facilities.

If schools aren’t accredited then they’re nothing but a burden on the economy.

They are here to serve students and need to step up to the plate to fulfill their roles.

Dominique Drake for the Editorial Board.