Since campuses closed in spring amid the COVID-19 pandemic, higher education leaders have been wringing their hands over fall enrollment numbers. But amid the pandemic, Cheyney University, the nation’s oldest historically Black university, is actually growing.
The institution saw a 46% increase in first-year students who put down deposits, one of the highest fall enrollments in the last five to seven years, according to Jeff Jones, Cheyney University’s executive director of enrollment management.
“We’re going in such a positive direction that I think the public is looking at us a lot more closely than it did in the past,” he says.
On the whole, HBCUs, like the rest of the higher education sector, are experiencing drops in enrollment as the coronavirus continues to create uncertainty. But in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests this summer, some HBCUs are attracting higher numbers of students. Like Cheyney, HBCUs like Winston-Salem State University and Claflin University also saw enrollment trend upward, The Washington Post reported.
This uptick in prospective HBCU students follows a pattern, says Dr. Janelle Williams, associate dean of graduate studies and extended learning at Widener University. She co-authored a report last year titled, “A Response to Racism: How HBCU Enrollment Grew in the Face of Hatred.” The study analyzed interviews with 80 students at four HBCUs where applications and enrollments increased after President Donald J. Trump’s election.
“Social and political events do impact the choices of students, real and realized,” she says. She called the protests over George Floyd — a Black man killed in police custody in Minnesota — the “second wave” of the Black Lives Matter movement. The first wave, when activists founded Black Lives Matter in 2013 — coupled with anti-racist protests at the University of Missouri in 2015 — also led to a spike in HBCU enrollment, she noted.
Safe space
