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Now, however, Heard and many others believe that higher education in the South is emerging "from the shackles of its inheritance." One major reason: the region is no longer burdened by a polarized biracial society, which Heard feels was the root cause of its economic, cultural and educational problems. The rapid economic growth of the region should also help contribute to its universities' welfare. Says Heard: "Over the long haul, the most important single determinant of academic quality is the financial strength of the institution." The faculty salaries at Southern four-year colleges for all ranks of teachers average $15,500—$2,000 under the national level.
Another plus for today's South, says Heard, is a freer "market of intellectual talent than before. Southerners are moving all over the country and non-Southerners are moving into the South." One intellectual who has returned is Sheldon Hackney, 42, a Southern historian who became provost of Princeton, then moved to New Orleans to become president of Tulane. He and his wife, Hackney says, "always knew we would like to come back to the South and see what we could contribute."
Positive Signs. One way that the South can help to reverse the brain drain to the North, suggest both Hackney and Heard, is to better integrate its universities. At Tulane only 5% of the 5,000 students are black; at Vanderbilt the percentage is even lower: 4% of 6,900 students. At both universities the black students are unwelcome in fraternities and sororities and do not join the mainstream of campus life. Yet even that degree of integration represents a revolutionary change in race relations over the past decade.
One of the ironies of integration is that it has weakened the black colleges. Even though many blacks can now go to white schools, Howard University's James E. Cheek argues that the nation still needs predominantly black institutions "through which blacks can have a means of expression and which can serve as cultural centers for black communities." For seven years the president of the nation's most prestigious largely black university, Cheek, 43, has become something of a Southern chauvinist. He believes that "Southerners are more willing to talk candidly about race and to identify bigotry as bigotry," and adds, "I have always found that a reconstructed white Southerner on matters of race is committed. It's not for show." Like Heard and Hackney, Cheek sees positive signs for education in the South's more open racial dialogue.