H I G H E R E D U C AT I O N
Dillard University’s campus in New Orleans, La.
ON THE UPSWING HISTORICALLY BLACK COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES ARE SEEING A STEADY INCREASE IN APPLICATIONS AND ENROLLMENT. BY KATTI GRAY
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hirty days into her new presidency at Dillard University, Dr. Rochelle Ford remarked on how the New Orleans campus had been ahead of the curve, creating online courses after Hurricane Katrina’s destruction made in-person learning impossible. This was years before the COVID-19 pandemic prompted a global surge in virtual instruction, setting off a frenzy for less-prepared institutions, says Ford. She credits those online classes with helping to place Dillard among a relative shortlist of colleges that, against the tide of declining U.S. college enrollment in recent years, have seen an uptick in their enrollment. “The fact that we are holding steady is a positive,” Ford says of Dillard’s current roster. The university has 1,252 students, up from 1,213 students a year ago. She expects the enrollment numbers to increase this fall. “Some of our students are still your 18- to 21-year-olds, but many also are working full time,” she observes. “Some of them are parents. The valedictorian in the cohort that just graduated, one of our top students, was a working mother in that online and evening program. Many students need that greater flexibility. And we are accommodating the whole student." Ford and other observers contend that such accommodations, alongside a general embrace of Blackness, may account partly for rising enrollments some historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are experiencing. While campuses are not due to send their official enrollment data to federal statisticians until after the fall semester is solidly underway, 8 ONYX MAGAZINE
some education watchers and campus leaders are attributing HBCU enrollment spikes to, among other triggers, today’s racial turbulence. There is a multiplicity of reasons, according to Dr. Michelle Purdy, an education professor and researcher at Washington University in St. Louis. She says the social justice movement, Black Lives Matter, gained momentum as young people were deciding where to go to college. “Those who identify as Black Americans are grappling with 17 years, 18 years of what it has meant to grow up Black in the United States,” Purdy said. “They were learning about a Black president in day care, in pre-K and kindergarten and lower school. They have felt that sense of pride, of promise. These kids also have come [of] age with Trayvon, Michael Brown, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor.”
BOMB THREATS CONTINUE Among other HBCUs where enrollment has surged are South Carolina State University, North Carolina A&T University, Prairie View A&M University and Howard University, according to news reports. This, in a time when the FBI clocked bomb threats against two dozen HBCUs on a single day last February, allegedly made by white juveniles. Yet, The Washington Post wrote in February 2022 that its analysis found that several HBCUs last spring had been enrolling students at pre-pandemic rates, during a period when the head count at predominantly white schools was falling.
