Prairie View A&M University, with approximately 9,500 students, is the fourth largest Historically Black College and University (HBCU) by enrollment in the United States. It was the first state-supported college in Texas for African Americans and was founded as part of the post-Civil War effort to restructure education in the state of Texas. It is the second oldest state-funded institution of higher education in Texas.
Prairie View Student Union,
Courtesy of the Quintard Taylor Collection
In 1876 the Texas legislature mandated separate higher education opportunities for African Americans. Two years later the Alta Vista Agricultural & Mechanical College for Colored Youths opened its doors near Prairie View, Texas. The school’s original curriculum was the training of teachers, but in 1887 it expanded to include agriculture, nursing, arts and sciences, and mechanical arts. The school became a land grant school in 1890 and in 1919 began offering baccalaureate degrees. In 1932, the college initiated graduate programs in agricultural economics, rural education, agricultural education, school administration and supervision, and rural sociology.
After World War II, the Texas legislature changed the name of the school to Prairie View A&M College of Texas and required that all courses available at the University of Texas at Austin be available at Prairie View as well. In 1972, the legislature changed the name again to Prairie View A&M University and strengthened the bond with the University of Texas, making it an independent unit of the Texas A&M University System.
Prairie View A&M University Marching Storm, November 20, 2015, Photo by 2C2K Photography (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Several more legislative measures, including a state constitutional amendment in 1984, strengthened the University’s standing as a part of the state-sponsored higher education system by including it as a beneficiary of the Permanent University Fund, the main source of state funding for all University of Texas schools. The legislature also recognized the special role of Prairie View A&M as a Historically Black College and University that served “students of diverse ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds.”
Prairie View College of Nursing Houston Medical Center Houston Texas (Courtesy of the Quintard Taylor Collection)
Prairie View A&M University today is a successful research institution. The school currently offers over 50 undergraduate majors, 37 master’s degree programs, and four doctoral degree programs in education, electrical engineering, juvenile justice, and clinical adolescent psychology. Prairie View A&M currently has about 7,000 undergraduate students and about 2,000 graduate students, and over the course of the university’s 130-year history, it has awarded more than 46,000 degrees.
