2022-05-19
48 分钟Educators and economists tell us all the reasons college enrollment has been dropping, especially for men, and how to stop the bleeding. (Part 4 of “Freakonomics Radio Goes Back to School.”)
In 2013, the Lewis College of Business in Detroit shut down and put itself up for sale.
The asking price was $3.2 million.
$3.2 million is not very much for a whole college.
That's what the basketball coach at the nearby University of Michigan makes in one year.
But apparently that's all the Lewis College of Business was worth.
It was a small private school, the first and only historically black college or university in Michigan.
HBCUs have been getting more attention lately.
But again, this was 2013.
The funding wasn't as supportive for HBCUs as it's been in the last few years.
And this was a smaller school, so it received a smaller piece of the pie.
That is Dwayne Edwards.
He and his family recently moved to Detroit.
As we'll hear today, he took a personal interest in the history of the Lewis College of Business.
He tells us it was founded in 1928 in Indianapolis by Violet Lewis.
She was one of three black women to found an HBCU.
One of three, right.
I didn't know about her.
I fell in love with her and her story.
She started the school on a dollar 50 loan and she borrowed typewriters to teach black women the skills to work in corporate offices because we weren't allowed to do that at that time, relocating.
The college from Indianapolis to Detroit had worked out well.