How these HBCU presidents fixed their colleges’ financial futures

Post-pandemic, colleges nationwide are facing an imperative: Change trajectory. Enrollment is down and falling, and Pew’s 2023 Parenting in America survey found that only 41% of parents say it’s important for their children to have a college degree – down from 94% in 2012. Even before COVID-19, smaller colleges from Green Mountain to Mount Ida already were closing or being bought out by larger institutions that wanted campus real estate but not their professors or students.

But for the 101 accredited Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the United States, this moment is particularly portentous. Undergrad enrollment is up 2.5%, compared with a decline of 4.2% for colleges overall – one of the only bright spots noted in the 2022 National Student Clearinghouse. While the pandemic dealt blows to some colleges that have never recovered, HBCUs say they were able to make use of the shared relief to do everything from covering lost wages to forgive their students’ debt. 

And although HBCU funding is not a monolith, several presidents interviewed for this