Competing Visions of Higher Education: The College of Liberal Arts Faculty and the Administration of Howard University, 1939–1960

With the onset of the depression, it appeared in the 1930s that the task before African-American higher education was no longer that of strengthening the faculty and growing the physical plant. 1 Instead, the challenge was one of survival. In the 1930s, debates over tuition costs and organizational priorities were sources of friction among faculty and administrators at Howard University, the largest historically black college and university during the segregation period.