This study investigates two undergraduate curriculum programs at Bishop College in Dallas, in an effort to determine their effects upon selected groups of graduates, as measured in selected areas of their achievement before and after graduation. Conclusions of this study are as follows: 1. Neither curriculum program has attained a statistically significant degree of greater efficiency over the other in areas of students' undergraduate academic achievement, concepts of self and undergraduate academic experiences, and career involvement after graduation. 2. More stringent measurement than that of this study could possibly reveal that the Experimental Curriculum attained greater results to a statistically significant degree in more areas than did the Regular Curriculum. 3. Through achievement of a higher percentage of student retention, the Experimental Curriculum has attained greater effectiveness than the Regular Curriculum. 4. A need exists for increased relevancy of curriculum experiences to community problems. 5. A need exists for increased emphasis upon the student's development of effective self-expression and adequate self-confidence.

This work is a study of the origins, development, and contributions of the black religious colleges of East Texas. The central purpose of the study is to reexamine the role Wiley, Bishop, Texas, and Jarvis colleges have played in black higher education. Although prior to 1960 most studies of Negro institutions of higher education described such schools as total failures in their effort to uplift American Negroes, since that time many scholars have published works which pointed up the achievements as well as the problems of those colleges. In addition to their efforts to provide the Negro community with capable leaders, the black religious colleges of East Texas also directed public service projects. Especially beneficial, these efforts, which included farm demonstration programs and home demonstration classes, were designed to help black people at whatever level needed. Wiley, Bishop, Texas College, and Jarvis have not been total failures. Although always academically weak, they have served the black community well. However, in spite of the valuable service they have rendered, unless these schools can generate new and larger sources of revenue, they stand little chance of remaining viable institutions. Each of these colleges desperately needs more money. Ironically, it may be that black colleges will decline in the future primarily not because their raison d' etre has been eliminated, but because the public and government agencies have concluded that such institutions no longer warrant their support.