'We need you': Fewer Black men are enrolling in HBCUs. Here's what is lost

The absolute number of Black men enrolled at Historically Black Colleges and Universities is the lowest it's been since 1976.

That's according to recent analysis from the American Institute for Boys and Men, which crunched data from the Department of Education.

In fact, Black men now currently account for only 26 percent of the students at HBCUs — back in 1976, that figure was 38 percent.

All Things Considered host Juana Summers spoke to Calvin Hadley — assistant provost for academic partnerships and student engagement at Howard University — about what's happening, what's lost when Black men don't attend HBCUs, and how he is trying to close this gap.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Interview highlights

Juana Summers: I want to start by talking about Howard, which, of course, is one of the foremost HBCUs in this country — a long, long list that I cannot recite of incredible alumni, including Vice President Kamala Harris. Let's start there. Are you seeing this decline among Black male students where you are?

Calvin Hadley: I am. I'm a Howard alum, and so I remember as a student, the numbers were also pretty stark at that time. I think we were around 33-34% when I was a student, between 2004 and 2008. Now, as you announced in your introduction, Howard University is around 25% male total. And I think a recent statistics said around 19% Black male. And so that is felt on campus, that is felt, I think, in our social clubs, it's felt on the yard. And I think many of our male students have commented that in some of their classes, they're the only male in their class.

Summers: So I will just say, I did not attend an HBCU. I attended a PWI — a predominantly white institution — but I have so many friends and family members who attended HBCUs. They talk to me about what that experience has meant to them, not just while they're on campus, but when they go out into their professional lives. They stay connected to the HBCU experience. They stay connected to communities like the Howard community that you represent. So I just want to ask you, when there are fewer Black men on campus, walk us through: what does that mean? What do we lose when those Black men are not as robust a presence on campuses like yours?

Hadley: By the time students actually come to college, we're dealing with the males that have actually transcended what we call the “belief gap” — this gap in between what students can actually achieve and what their professors, teachers, counselors believe they can achieve. For Black males, that gap is the largest. When they get into the campus, the campus experiences are significantly impacted by the imbalance, right?

At every educational institution, we want a diversity of experience. And so when you don't have as many males in the classroom, that diversity of experience is significantly impacted. It gets even more scary when we trace it forward, right? I think we're dealing with some really unique statistics right now. Black males are graduating at a much lower rate than Black females.

Summers: And that's across all colleges.

Hadley: Across all colleges, not just HBCUs. And so this drop in the past decade has been seen more drastically. But the reality is, this is not a Howard problem. This is not an HBCU problem. This is not a PWI problem. This is an American education problem.

Summers: I want to shift gears a bit and talk about what happens when these Black men are graduating from high school and they're deciding what comes next, what that next step is. The study that we've been talking about, it notes that since 2010, as you point out, Black male enrollment has gone down across all colleges. And it also points out that HBCU enrollment has also decreased on the whole, but the decline of Black male enrollment at HBCUs outpaces those trends, if only slightly. Can you just explain to me how you understand that gap?

Hadley: So I want to take a small step back. In 2013-14 we had 2990 male applicants for Howard University specifically. In 2022-23 we had 9705. A significant, significant increase.

Summers: And what does that say to you?

Hadley: That the Howard University education, and the HBCU education, is highly sought after, right? And there are a number of really important things that happened between 2012 and 2022 — one of those was the election of President Donald Trump, another was the murder of George Floyd. I think when those things happen in the United States of America, the HBCU experience, which had already been known to many of us, had now become a much more attractive proposition. You notice a significant increase in those male applications.

What I didn't provide you was the number of female applications that accompany that. While we received 9700 male applications in 2022-23, we received upwards of 30,000 female applications. And I want to take a step aside and say Black women are ripping it up. All the statistics show, from high school to college to college graduation, that the Black women is successful today, and the trajectory is going straight up. Unfortunately, when you look at the Black male, the exact opposite is the case. And so for those Black males that are now being left out of the college equation, that also means they're being left out and stratified out of a certain portion of our society.

What we now will have is an imbalance in the community that has a significant impact on our ability to create whole families, I think. On the ability for us to ensure that our generations after us have additional success, and really to have additional mobility.

Summers: I want to end on this: You are a product of Howard University, as you point out. You now work for the university. And you're raising two young Black boys. What's your pitch for why a young Black man who might be hearing our conversation in 2024 should choose to attend an HBCU?

Hadley: Wow. Thank you for that. You attend an HBCU for an education and not a degree, and as an assistant provost, that's not a popular thing to say. The education that you receive in an HBCU transcends the classroom experience. It transcends the relationship that you have with your professor. The education exists in between the lines of the pages. HBCUs inundate you with the sense of belief. We talked about the importance of that belief on the front end, the belief gap that exists in K through 12.

HBCUs are created to instill you with the belief that you can be even larger than you can dream. Howard University and the HBCU community has provided me — and many other people, like our vice president — with the sense that I am enough. I can be successful academically. But my world is not simply academics. I can be enough and I can contribute to this society, in this space, in a way that allows me to feel whole and allows me to contribute to something much larger than myself. The HBCU community needs you. And so when I'm talking to that young man in 2024: Come because we need you. Come because you're important. Come because without you, our community is hurt.

Copyright 2024, NPR

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