(Bloomberg) -- All Cadence Patrick had to do was say yes.
She had just landed a highly coveted seat at Harvard University, one of several acceptances she held from colleges across the nation.
Harvard’s invitation virtually assured her a path into America’s elite, but when Patrick decided to enroll at Spelman College — a historically Black all-women’s school in Atlanta — it took her family and friends by surprise.
“I had people from both sides asking me how is this even a difficult decision,” she said.
Patrick, and thousands like her, are behind a surge of interest at historically Black colleges and universities that’s helped them fend off the grim financial pressures besetting smaller institutions across the US. Enrollment at HBCUs has bounced back strongly since the pandemic and many are anticipating another record influx of applications this year — leaving them grappling, instead, with how to contend with the explosion of growth.
At Howard University, Vice President Kamala Harris’ alma mater, applications topped 36,000 — a record for the 2024-2025 school year. Spelman says it’s on track to shatter its application record for the upcoming academic year, which it last broke in 2022. And North Carolina A&T State University, Morehouse College, Hampton University, Alabama A&M University and Morgan State University have all hit new highs in enrollment, applications or waitlists.
Now a senior, Patrick said she chose Spelman because she was swayed by the growth of Atlanta as a tech hub, a full-ride scholarship and, of course, the chance to follow in the footsteps of generations of other Black women. The deepening conversation around race in America was also a factor.
Figures for this year’s freshman class are the first since a historic Supreme Court decision effectively barred schools from weighing race in admissions. The decision persuaded some Black students to seek out institutions for not only their academics, but also for a place where their cultural identity is affirmed.
“I wanted to be myself and be supported as a whole person,” Patrick said.
HBCUs have become more visible on the national stage in recent years, serving as hubs for community activism during the Black Lives Matter movement of the 2010s and the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder in 2020. While on her presidential campaign trail, Harris repeatedly discussed how her time at Howard helped shape her world view.
“More and more prominent figures in the modern era are paying their dues to HBCUs,” said Jaylin Hasan, a freshman at Morgan State University in Baltimore, which has seen its enrollment grow nearly 40% since fall 2019. “That’s a big reason why people see their prominence instead of just a relic.”
For decades, HBCU enrollment mirrored the national trend line – climbing to a peak around 2010 before beginning to drop.
But since 2020, HBCUs have rebounded as overall numbers have continued to decline, according to federal data available through 2022. More recent preliminary data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center only captures about a third of all HBCUs, but shows the surge continuing.
Even as Black colleges and universities report record application and enrollment numbers, for some, it’s proving challenging to handle the appetite. The growth is adding a new, even if welcomed, challenge on an already fragile system fraught with a century’s worth of chronic underfunding.
Last year, federal agencies found over a dozen states have underpaid certain HBCUs, known as land-grant universities, in per-student funding when compared to their non-HBCU peers. The group’s endowments are also smaller and some research has shown HBCUs historically paid higher interest rates to finance capital projects.
Additionally, President-elect Donald Trump has previously floated plans to eliminate the US Department of Education, which oversees the federal student aid program, including the distribution of Pell Grants. Experts say these changes could disproportionately affect Black universities.
“The challenge we face with this growth aligns with the challenges our institutions face from the beginning: inequity of funding for these institutions and making sure they have infrastructure in place to handle it,” said Harry Williams, president and chief executive of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. “That is a major concern.”
‘Growing Pains’
The fervor is pushing the limits of some HBCUs’ capacity.
Howard University welcomed its largest class this fall, among them was freshman Michelle Fagbola. She said it had been her dream to attend Howard since she was a sophomore in high school, but noted Howard’s rapid expansion has created some logistical hiccups.
“Howard is going through growing pains – a lot of changes happened all at once. They have a lot more students, and since I’ve been here, there has been construction going on constantly,” she said. Class sizes are crowded, and four out of the six classes she’s currently taking are partly taught on Zoom, she added. At least eight students at quickly growing HBCUs voiced similar concerns.
“Enrollment will solve a lot of problems, but it won’t fix infrastructure,” and other systematic issues that have persisted for decades, said Emily Wadhwani, senior director and higher education sector lead at Fitch Ratings.
At Alabama A&M University, junior Georghetta Conaway had planned to live on campus all four years, but due to the school’s growth — roughly 30% in three years — some students have had to consider off-campus options. Conaway ended up leasing an off-campus apartment that costs her about $2,000 more each semester than the dorm she was planning to live in, she said.
“I turned to a bunch of external scholarships to help me pay for it so I don’t have to take out a loan or come out of pocket,” she added.
Morgan State University in Baltimore has seen its student body grow about 40% since 2019, which expedited the need to build new housing. The newly constructed Legacy Hall opened this fall, as did two newly renovated buildings. This year was the first in several that they didn’t have to house students in a hotel.
“We are not actively trying to grow anymore at this point, we want to stay stable,” said Kara Turner, Morgan State’s senior vice president for enrollment management and student success. She said growth stems from capital investments, including an effort to diversify its recruiting beyond core areas like the Mid-Atlantic and various infrastructure projects.
The newfound appeal is making some more selective. Spelman officials said they aren’t looking to grow much more, but applications are already 6% ahead of last year and may break a record, even though they recently tightened requirements to apply.
As a result, since 2020, Spelman has slashed its acceptance rate by more than half, admitting only one in four applicants who applied to the class of 2028.
“We’ve noticed a trend of students who might have been more interested in a top 25 or Ivy League now seriously considering HBCUs,” said Chelsea Holley, Spelman’s director of admissions.
Some schools have capitalized on the growth to invest in themselves. Fort Valley State University, a public land grant HBCU 100 miles south of Atlanta, has also seen applications “skyrocket” since 2020, said Alex Thomas, executive director of recruitment and admissions.
The school has raised its GPA cutoff to 3.0 from 2.25, and improved retention and graduation rates. Thomas credits a stronger applicant pool and more tuition revenue that allowed the school to invest in technology and student programming.
“I don’t think certain people thought we would grow so quickly,” said Valerie Kinloch, the president of Johnson C. Smith University, a private HBCU in North Carolina, which exceeded its enrollment goal. “It’s gonna take all of us, from housing to meal plans,” to accommodate the influx of students, she said. “It’s a lot, but this is a good problem to have.”
--With assistance from Peyton Forte and Norah Mulinda.
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.