Decades of Enrollment Declines for Black Men at HBCUs

By Sara Weissman

Black male enrollment at historically Black colleges and universities has fallen precipitously over the last 50 years, according to a recent report from the American Institute for Boys and Men, a research and policy advocacy center focused on men’s issues.

Released late last month, the report, which draws on enrollment data from the Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, found that Black men made up only 26 percent of HBCU students in 2022, down from 31 percent in 2005 and 38 percent in 1976. Black women, meanwhile, have continued to make up roughly half of HBCU enrollments. And growing non-Black student enrollment is making up the difference.

Out of the 101 HBCUs included in the report, only 20 had student bodies that were at least 40 percent Black men, excluding single-sex institutions like Morehouse and Spelman Colleges. All but one of the HBCUs with higher shares of Black men were small private colleges that typically enroll fewer than 1,000 students.

Richard Reeves, president of the American Institute for Boys and Men, finds it worrisome that there are fewer Black men enrolled at HBCUs today than in the 1970s, especially given the role HBCUs play in creating economic mobility for Black students and building pipelines to graduate studies, professional careers and leadership roles.

While “there are some signs of hope,” he said—including a bump in Black men’s enrollment from 2020 to 2022, recouping some of the COVID-19 losses—“there are many, many more signs that there’s a big problem here.”

A Downward Trend

HBCUs—along with much of higher ed—have experienced general enrollment declines over the last few decades, but the report noted particularly steep losses among Black men.

Total enrollment at HBCUs fell 11 percent between 2010 and 2022, while Black male enrollment at those institutions dropped 25 percent. Black male enrollment at colleges and universities over all fell slightly less, 22 percent—part of a broader decline in total male enrollment. By contrast, non-Black enrollment at HBCUs grew from 15 percent in 1976 to 24 percent in 2022.

“If you’re at an HBCU as a student, and you’re looking around and you know that you’re as likely to see a non-Black student as a Black man, that’s a very big change in the culture and the mission of HBCUs,” Reeves said.

The report also found that individual HBCUs varied widely in their Black male enrollments. For example, Black men made up just 4 percent of students at St. Philip’s College, a historically Black community college and Hispanic-serving institution in San Antonio, according to 2022 IPEDS data. But they composed 33 percent of the student body at Alabama A&M University and 29 percent at North Carolina A&T State University. Howard University’s student body was 19 percent Black men in 2022, compared to 26 percent at Morgan State University and Tennessee State University.

Calvin Hadley, assistant provost for academic partnerships and student engagement at Howard, said Black men now make up roughly a quarter of the student body at Howard, but their absence is still felt.

“That 25 percent, you feel that in every class, you feel that on the yard, you feel that at events,” he said. There are noticeably “far more females on campus than males.”

Hadley stressed that high enrollment of Black women is a trend to be celebrated. At the same time, he said, “we need to ensure, with all of these educated Black women who graduate and get out there and become the CEOs and executives they will,” that Black men keep up and see themselves as capable of achieving those goals, too.

Explanations and Solutions

The report highlighted a number of possible reasons for low Black male enrollment, including financial barriers for prospective students and the chronic underfunding of HBCUs, which might limit their recruiting capabilities and financial aid offerings.

Wesley Wells, vice president for student success at St. Philip’s College, said men from minority backgrounds often face particular pressure to go straight into the workforce to support their families. That’s why he sees St. Philip’s workforce training programs, in fields such as aircraft mechanics and construction, as a good way to recruit them. The college has also introduced efforts to retain those students, establishing the Blue Blazer Society, a mentorship program that was initially created to support men of color, and a chapter of Collegiate 100, a national organization focused on educating and empowering Black youth.

Hadley said Howard is intentionally seeking to recruit from high schools that have sizable Black male populations and find a way to introduce them to Howard’s campus. For the past two years, Howard hosted the culminating ceremony for the DC Public Schools’ Empowering Males of Color initiative, which brought upward of 150 local students to the campus. The university is also working with Prince George’s Community College to create a more robust transfer pipeline for Black male students from the nearby Maryland county.

The report also focused on challenges Black boys face at the K-12 level that might dampen enrollments down the line, including a shortage of Black male teachers as role models, inadequate preparation in some underresourced schools and a pervasive “belief gap” for Black boys, caused by negative messages from teachers and others that hurt their academic performance.

Hadley emphasized that for many Black men who do enroll at Howard, the self-confidence challenges don’t necessarily go away, making retention efforts just as important as recruitment. That’s why Howard offers a suite of supports targeted at Black men, including the one he founded, the Men of the Mecca Initiative, which is now student-led and offers informal mentorship and “barbershop talks” on masculinity and other topics. The business school and college of arts and sciences also have their own support programs focused on Black men’s success.

“For so many of our scholars, a big part of what we’re doing is 
 helping to clean the mirror, helping to clarify what you can actually be [and] how high you can actually reach, and then giving you the tools, resources and experiences to do that,” he said.

‘Ripple Effects’

The report argues that by eschewing HBCUs, Black men may be missing out on one of the institutions’ biggest benefits: economic mobility.

Notably, students who attend HBCUs have upward mobility rates—meaning they move from the lowest income quintile to the highest—about twice as high as college students over all, according to the report. Meanwhile, at least half of HBCU graduates move up at least one income quintile, a rate about 50 percent higher than college graduates over all.

Derrick Brooms, executive director of the Black Men’s Research Institute at Morehouse College, said the ripple effects of Black men losing out on the benefits of HBCUs could be far-reaching. He noted that Black students report feeling an enhanced “sense of cultural belonging” at HBCUs; they have professors that look like them in STEM programs and other fields where Black men are underrepresented, and they’re less exposed to microaggressions or racist stereotyping.

For Black students, “HBCUs outperform other institutions” in conferring degrees, he said. “We know that if we have declining numbers of Black men attending HBCUs, coupled with declining enrollment of Black men at other institutions, then in effect, we will have decreased numbers of Black men earning bachelor’s degrees” at a time when many jobs require a bachelor’s.

“That means there’s a whole cadre of employment opportunities [many] Black men won’t be qualified for,” he said, limiting their opportunities and potentially lessening their lifetime earnings, which can in turn affect their families.

He hopes to see HBCUs continue to ramp up efforts to form partnerships with K-12 schools and community organizations, exposing Black boys to the campus culture early and often.

“We can’t sit back and wait or expect that the trend might change on its own,” he said.

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