WASHINGTON — When Howard University Television crackled onto the airwaves here in November 1980, hundreds of people representing the city, university and broadcasting industry turned out to celebrate the first of its kind: a public television station owned and operated by a historically black institution.

Thirty-five years later, the station, WHUT, which now reaches roughly two million households in the Washington area, remains the only black-owned public station in the country and one of only a few black stations anywhere on television.

That may soon change.

Howard, which has struggled financially in recent years, is expected to announce as soon as this week whether it will enter a Federal Communications Commission auction to try to sell off its rights to the spectrum on which it broadcasts.

The sale has the potential to earn Howard hundreds of millions of dollars that proponents say could help bolster other parts of the university. But it could also spell the end of WHUT. That prospect has ignited a debate here on the school’s campus and among alumni over where the university’s responsibilities lie and how to best measure the network’s symbolic and strategic value.