How a Little Known HBCU Paul Quinn College Became Financially Solvent

By Ayana Jones

When Michael J. Sorrell became president of Paul Quinn College in 2007, the institution was struggling financially and on the brink of closure. During his first two and a half years at the helm, the college lost about 80% of its student population.“The board's charge to me was to identify a path toward transforming the institution,” Sorrell recalled. “We set about a course of action with the goal of becoming one of America's great small colleges. No one knows what a great small college really looks like. We defined that for ourselves.” The Dallas, Texas-based HBCU set out to become fiscally sound and instituted cost-saving measures such as eliminating its football program and outsourcing non-core business units.

One move that was instrumental in its transformation was when Sorrell partnered with PepsiCo to turn the college's football field into a thriving farm back in 2010. Since then, the We Over Me Farm has produced more than 60,000 pounds of organic vegetables, the majority of which is sold to the Dallas Cowboys, grocery stores and restaurants. Ten percent of the food is donated to the community and nonprofit organizations. The farm played a role in helping save the college while combating food insecurity in the area. “We believe that institutions of higher education should turn their selves outward and address the issues of the day – address the needs of the communities that they serve,” Sorrell said.The college also engaged in environmental activism when the City of Dallas voted to expand a nearby landfill into one of the largest garbage dumps in the southwestern region of the U.S. Students of Paul Quinn organized demonstrations and inspired a permanent injunction against the city's proposed trash ordinance.

To help make tuition more affordable for students, Paul Quinn was designated as the first urban work college in 2017.Since then, it has reduced tuition and fees by almost $10,000, lowered the average debt of its graduates by more than $30,000 and has improved student retention and graduation rates. The Urban Work College Model aims to effectively integrate work and higher education.

Paul Quinn's transformative efforts have been successful and the institution now serves as a model for urban higher education.“We want to remake all of higher education,” Sorrell stated.“What we know is that 75% to 80% of college students today are already working 24 hours or more a week. If they are already working, why don't we make it easier for them and make the work part of their academic experience? So that's what we've done.”

Last year, Paul Quinn received $1 million from the nonprofit Strada Education Network, to expand its urban work college program to Plano, Texas. The college has also tweaked its academic model and is offering what is referred to as “reality-based education.”“When people graduate from Paul Quinn, they have three forms of education,” he explained.“They have subject matter mastery based on what they majored in. They have experiential learning mastery based upon their work program where they've spent four years working and they have digital mastery, in which each year they pick up one or two digital certificates that are then used to help them get jobs.”

Sorrell holds the distinction of being the longest serving president in Paul Quinn's 147-year history. He has received special recognition for his work, having been named by Fortune Magazine as one of the World's 50 Greatest Leaders and selected as 2018-2019 President of the Year by Education Dive. He is also a three-time award winner of HBCU Male President of the Year by HBCU Digest.Sorrell graduated from Oberlin College with a bachelor's degree in government. He earned his law degree and master's degree in public policy from Duke University and his doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania.“It's unmistakable that my experience at Penn has been extraordinary for me and helpful to me because I think it validated in some ways what it was that we were doing because Paul Quinn wasn't a school that people had heard of,” Sorrell said.

One of the reasons why Sorrell decided to return to school for his doctorate is so that he could better relate to his students, many of whom are Pell grant recipients. Paul Quinn currently has 520 students.“I came from an upper middle-class family, bordering on affluent and I didn't know the lives that my students were leading. Sorrell revealed.I believe in the authenticity of leadership – that you have a responsibility of really delving into the lives of your students and speaking from a place of familiarity. I wasn't going to be a Pell grant student but what I could do is understand what it was like to work and go to school full time.”

Ayana Jones is a Philadelphia-based journalist. She earned her bachelor's degree in humanities with a concentration in journalism and mass communications from the University of the Virgin Islands.