[TECH AND FINANCIAL]
Imagine trying to complete your senior research project without access to a stable internet connection. Or consider how difficult it might be to do work on a group project if you’re constantly getting kicked off your Wi-Fi. That’s the reality for many students at historically Black colleges and universities.
Dr. Dwaun J. Warmack, president of Claflin University, shared a story about an email he received a few years ago from a student facing that very scenario. The student wrote: “It is my prayer that Claflin’s passion for education aligns with its compassion. I am currently typing my senior research paper at the local McDonald’s that I drive to nine miles every day to do this work because my town doesn’t have Wi-Fi bandwidth.” She said she would sit in the parking lot for four hours daily to work on her senior thesis.
Shortly after receiving this email, Claflin University partnered with the Student Freedom Initiative to help provide students with broadband access.
According to a 2021 McKinsey report, 82% of HBCUs are located in broadband deserts. These broadband deserts are areas that either severely lack access to adequate internet or have little internet at all. Despite this, broadband programs aimed at closing the digital divide in the US are currently in retreat.
In May, President Donald Trump announced the termination of the Digital Equity Act, calling it “racist” and “unconstitutional.” This $2.75 billion program was part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law from 2021. It was established to help close the digital divide by increasing broadband adoption. This program was also essential to funding digital literacy initiatives for public schools and colleges, with some states and local governments already beginning to receive grant rewards. With the untimely end of the DEA, those funds never reached their destination.
In 2020, students at Claflin University and the surrounding areas in Orangeburg, South Carolina, struggled with inadequate internet access because they lived in a broadband desert.
“The only way for students to actually get access to content was to come together in areas that provided [broadband] access, which created a problem,” said Keith Shoates, the president and CEO of the Student Freedom Initiative. He highlighted that at a time when students were supposed to be in quarantine, they were forced to come out of isolation and put themselves and their peers at risk just to do their schoolwork.
The Student Freedom Initiative is a nonprofit organization that seeks to reduce the wealth gap through education. In 2023, SFI partnered with technology company Cisco, providing 5G internet service across campus. While the Orangeburg community still faces challenges from being in a broadband desert, Claflin University has since transformed its broadband desert into a thriving space for students.
A long history of HBCUs in broadband deserts
Access to an adequate internet connection equips students to do better in the classroom and beyond. But many HBCUs are in broadband deserts.
These broadband deserts are located primarily in the Black Rural South of the US. According to a report from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, the Black Rural South consists of more than 152 counties in 10 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. This information pretty much matches data from the Student Freedom Initiative.
As seen from the map above, the Student Freedom Initiative currently works with more than 25 HBCUs in broadband deserts, all located along the Black Rural South in the US. These include Tuskegee University, Florida A&M University, Xavier University of Louisiana and Hampton University. Knowing the history of HBCUs helps one better understand these broadband deserts and how they exist.
HBCUs are among the most underfunded institutions in the country because of the effects of historical and present-day systemic racism and practices like digital redlining. The term redlining dates back to the New Deal era in the 1930s when banks denied residents from “at-risk” neighborhoods, predominantly from Black communities, to qualify for loans. During this era, government agencies created color-coded maps, highlighting which neighborhoods are least to most risky in terms of loan-worthiness.
Digital redlining is a discriminatory practice that involves internet providers excluding their services in certain locations. If you take a look at a map, you can see the distinction between areas with broadband and those without. According to data from the US Census Bureau (PDF), residents in urban areas were more likely than those in rural areas to have broadband internet subscriptions. Moreover, more than 90% of households in the urban south had broadband access in 2021, versus 85% in the rural south. For example, Mississippi, New Mexico and West Virginia ranked the lowest in broadband access.
From the 2021 report, Online Isn’t Optional. Student Polling on Access to Internet and Devices.
Yvette Thomas, SFI’s program director of Institutional Transformation, said that HBCUs face persisting challenges because of the lack of high-speed broadband and the digital gap, which restricts students from accessing resources and online professional opportunities.
Thomas spearheads the execution of HBCU capacity building, including modernizing the Information Technology infrastructure.
“When kids come to college, they usually come with at least five to six devices for the network and it slows the network down,” Thomas said.
Without access to a high-speed internet connection, students can fall behind in the digital landscape, especially in the new era of artificial intelligence.
“There’s gonna be this 26-mile marathon and they’re gonna be on mile two … and that puts them at a competitive disadvantage,” Shoates said.
He added that broadband access is imperative to students as it equips them with the proper digital literacy skills they need in the workforce.
Claflin University has since transformed its broadband desert into a space that provides 5G internet for students but what about the other 82% of HBCUs still living in these internet deserts? Who’s to say that there aren’t others with similar experiences to that Claflin student driving to a McDonald’s parking lot for Wi-Fi just to complete work? Without the federal backbone support, the work of SFI, its corporate partners and generous donations from philanthropists are vital to help reduce the broadband gap in the meantime.
