Scholarship in composition and rhetoric has certainly addressed issues of African American economic inequality (Gilyard) and institutional austerity (Welch and Scott), yet the field has failed to address how both are united in the site of the contemporary HBCU. In particular, composition scholars have not explored how the shifts of the new economy…

For decades, Catholic schools, particularly inner-city Catholic schools, have seen declines in enrollment and an increasing need for subsidies from their dioceses. Many dioceses, however, have been unable to shoulder that burden, forcing schools to close. In response to difficult financial circumstances, the archdioceses of Indianapolis, Miami,…