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Capturing the spirit of 15 years

Capturing the spirit of 15 years

When Black Issues In Higher Education started in 1984, Nelson Mandela was enduring a life sentence in a South African prison.  Today, he is not only the former president of South Africa, but he holds an honorary doctorate from Harvard University. 
In the United States, back in 1984, “PC” was beginning to be associated with computers, but had yet to become shorthand for “political correctness.” Today, PCs are as essential to incoming freshmen as dictionaries once were, and describing someone as “PC” is widely perceived as an insult.
In 1984, Tiger Woods was an eight-year-old child prodigy. Today, he is a multimillionaire, Stanford University “stop-out.”
The average yearly undergraduate tuition at four-year institutions in 1984 was around $10,000 at private institutions, and $4,000 at publics. In 1999, the average yearly undergraduate tuition is around $18,000 at private institutions and $7,000 at publics.
In ’84, Black studies was fighting for respectability in the academy. Today, though the fight continues, a burgeoning of scholarship by and about African Americans is reshaping curriculum, and campuses that once defined diversity in terms of Black and White are learning to embrace people from a broad range of cultural and academic experiences.
Indeed, much in higher education has changed in the past 15 years. Yet, some of the same issues that spawned the creation of this magazine, persist even to this day.
In the following pages, you will find an eclectic assortment of words and images arranged in a manner that we hope captures the spirit of the past 15 years. Some will make you laugh and others will make you sigh. Surely, there are omissions — there simply aren’t enough pages in this magazine to cover everything. However, as you flip through this edition, we hope the reflections we’ve amassed will inspire you to persevere in your part of the journey. For, pursuing a more just and equitable system of higher education — one that reflects the rich diversity and intellectual vigor of our still-young nation — continues to be among the most noble and necessary of professional pursuits. It is in honor of those who’ve committed their life’s work to this cause that we proudly present this
15th Anniversary Edition.   



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