The low enrollment of Black males in college has remained a concerning statistic for as long as I can remember. It often seems overlooked in serious discussions and is only mentioned when emphasizing the advantage black men in college have over black women in forming romantic relationships. When I began considering college options back in middle school, I was discouraged from choosing my HBCU, Fort Valley State University, due to concerns about the “male-to-female ratio.”
“You won’t be able to focus because of all the women on campus,” one young woman who was enrolled in college herself at the time told me, instead encouraging me to go to the University of Georgia, another school that was on my radar. She wasn’t attending nor had attended an HBCU at the time, clearly only forming her opinion off of hearsay instead of the actual experience.
When I enrolled at Fort Valley State and began my journey in student leadership, there were many discussions about the shortage of men in leadership roles. As a freshman orientation leader for four years, as I finished my four-year college journey in December 2019, my role was to help introduce new students to college life during the university’s official orientation week.
Alongside a group of about 10 to 20 other male leaders, I served as one of the male representatives of the campus, welcoming hundreds of incoming freshmen. The number of female student leaders in that group far outnumbered the male leaders, and overall, female students greatly outnumbered male students each orientation week.
The numbers increased even further when the school year began, and I found myself in classes filled with women, with only three or four men present. My circle of friends became predominantly women, as connecting with other Black men on campus was difficult. The already small number of men on campus dwindled even more in areas like student leadership, making the connections even harder.
As student leaders, we often discussed how to encourage more men on campus to participate in school activities and explored strategies to recruit more male students. As student leaders, we knew our efforts were limited, but we were fully aware of the challenges and did our best to address the issue in our own way.
As a Black man who attended and graduated from an HBCU, I noticed the lower enrollment of Black men compared to our female peers and the impact it had on the institution’s social environment. That’s why the article “At Black Colleges, a Stubborn Gender Enrollment Gap Keeps Growing” in the New York Times, written by Clyde McGrady, resonated with me so much. In crafting the article, McGrady said the quiet part out loud, shouting it from the mountaintops in the hopes that our university stakeholders follow the lead of institutions such as North Carolina A&T and Morgan State in finding a way to buck against the trends and fight to increase black male enrollment at our institutions.
Since his article was released on March 30th, it has sparked several important conversations. Many Black men are choosing not to attend college due to rising costs. As tuition continues to climb at many institutions and the current political climate raises concerns about the future of scholarships, grants, and loans, access to higher education may become even more challenging. Public institutions still offer great value at a competitive cost, but some black men still find these prices unaffordable, especially if they feel as if there isn’t a career path in college that interests them.
Some black men that skip the four-year college experience might elect to go to community college or trade school, attempting to learn a specific skill in the hopes of making a way for themselves. Some decide to take to an entrepreneurial spirit, believing that the rigor of college will take away from the hustle and bustle of business. What I often believe is that we’ve not done enough to promote college, specifically HBCUs, as a social experience that builds you up not just economically but mentally, spiritually, and socially.
I believe that every black man within college age should seriously consider going to a four-year college. I think that our institutions should work to create a value proposition that speaks to the young black men of this era who would want to make them enroll at a higher education institution.
At the collegiate level, we need to rethink what college truly is. Many people view it purely as an academic experience or a “grown-up version of high school”, but college is just as much about personal and social growth as it is about academics. There’s so much to gain beyond the classroom—valuable life lessons, connections with peers, faculty, and even distinguished guests who visit campus. These experiences can play a pivotal role in shaping your future and setting you up for success.
In the black community, a college degree has always been seen as the foundation of economic freedom and prosperity. In posts on her X account discussing McGrady’s article, media magnate Jemele Hill raised the brilliant point that “88 percent of millionaires went to college. 70-80 percent of billionaires have at least a college degree” in the selling of the value of a college education. The true value isn’t limited to the classroom—it’s equally found in what happens beyond it.
For Black men, the appeal of college might be the combination of a valuable learning environment, the social experience of college life, and the opportunity to become a high earner with a degree. Experiences often play a key role in choosing institutions, as highlighted by some young men interviewed in McGrady’s article. To reverse this trend, we need to focus on promoting that aspect of college life when recruiting Black men to our institutions.
I don’t believe that the decline in black men attending college is simply due to a general reluctance to continue their education. Instead, gaining a deeper understanding of the challenges and experiences they face could be the first step in reversing this trend in the future.
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