(BALTIMORE – July 30, 2026) – I ask this question with love—and it hurts me to ask it.
I am an alumnus of three historically Black colleges and universities: Morehouse College, Morgan State University, and Coppin State University.
These institutions helped shape the man I became. They strengthened my mind, deepened my understanding of Black history and surrounded me with people who expected me to succeed. I would not be the journalist, businessman, author, or scholar I am today without the HBCU experience.
That is precisely why I must ask:
Have HBCUs become too expensive for the Black families they were created to serve?
This question came to me as I examined what happened at Howard University, where 502 incoming first-year students were unenrolled shortly before the beginning of the fall 2026 semester.
Howard said the students had not satisfied their financial obligations by the university’s July 10 deadline. They had not paid the required amount, established an approved payment arrangement or provided acceptable documentation of scholarships and other anticipated financial aid.
Students and parents told a different—and sometimes disturbing—story. Some said they were waiting for outside scholarship money to appear on their accounts. Others said they had been communicating with Howard employees and believed they were following the instructions they had received.
Howard has since reinstated more than 200 of the 502 students after reviewing their individual circumstances. Interim President Wayne A.I. Frederick said some produced documentation of outside scholarships, while others submitted payments after the deadline.
That raises an unavoidable accountability question:
If more than 200 students could be reinstated after individual review, why were those reviews not completed before all 502 students were removed?
Howard must answer for its communication, its internal coordination, and the timing of its decision. Removing hundreds of young people from an incoming class shortly before move-in is not a routine administrative adjustment. It can alter the direction of a student’s entire life.
But Howard’s administrative breakdown may be sitting on top of a much larger crisis.
Why did 502 students accepted by one of America’s greatest HBCUs reach July without an affordable, documented path through its doors?
An Acceptance Letter Is Not the Same as Access
For generations, Black students struggled to gain admission to institutions of higher education. HBCUs were created because most of America’s colleges would not open their doors to us.
Today, the barrier is different.
A Black student may be academically qualified. The student may be accepted. The family may celebrate, purchase college merchandise and begin making plans for move-in day.
Then the financial-aid package arrives.
The question is no longer simply whether the institution will admit the student. It is whether the student’s family can produce enough money to keep the admission from disappearing.
An acceptance letter without an affordable financial package is not genuine access.
Consider the costs at the three HBCUs I proudly call my own.
Morehouse estimates the total cost of attendance for an on-campus student during the 2026–27 academic year at $59,430. That includes $31,026 in tuition, $4,258 in student fees and additional expenses for housing, food, books, transportation and personal needs. At the published rate, four years can approach a quarter-million dollars before future increases are considered. Morehouse College
Morgan State estimates the 2026–27 cost for a Maryland resident living on campus at $34,396. A Maryland resident living at home has an estimated cost of $28,569. For a non-Maryland resident living on campus, the figure rises to $45,726. Morgan State University
Coppin State remains one of the more affordable options, particularly for Baltimore residents able to commute. Its 2026–27 tuition and mandatory fees for a Maryland resident are approximately $7,524 annually before health insurance, housing, food, books, transportation and other living costs are added. Coppin State University
These are three different institutions operating under three different financial models. Morehouse is a private college. Morgan and Coppin are public Maryland universities receiving state support.
Therefore, there is no single price for “an HBCU education.”
But affordability is not determined by price alone.
It is determined by the difference between the cost and the resources a student’s family can actually access.
Culturally Priceless—and Financially Unaffordable
Morehouse is sacred ground to me.
The tradition is real. The brotherhood is real. The expectations are real. The network is real. The impact Morehouse men have had on America and the world cannot be reduced to a financial spreadsheet.
But an institution can be culturally priceless and financially unaffordable at the same time.
The same is true across the HBCU community.
We cannot respond to every question about affordability by reciting our history. That history is exactly why we must address the financial barriers confronting the next generation.
Black families generally possess less inherited wealth than White families. We are less likely to have large college savings accounts, substantial home equity, stock portfolios, or relatives who can quietly write a five-figure check when a financial-aid package comes up short.
That means even an HBCU charging less than a comparable predominantly White institution may be less affordable to the family attempting to pay the bill.
A wealthy university can publish a price approaching $90,000 but use its enormous endowment to give a low-income student enough institutional assistance to attend almost free.
An HBCU can publish a considerably lower price but lack the endowment necessary to close a student’s remaining $5,000, $10,000, or $20,000 gap.
For that student, the lower-priced school may still be the less affordable one.
The Federal Government Just Changed the Equation
This crisis has become more urgent because new federal limits on Parent PLUS loans took effect July 1, 2026.
For many new borrowers, parents can now borrow no more than $20,000 per year and $65,000 over the student’s undergraduate education. Previously, eligible parents could generally borrow up to the full cost of attendance after other financial assistance was applied. Federal Student Aid
The new limit took effect nine days before Howard’s July 10 financial-clearance deadline.
That does not prove the federal change caused Howard’s 502 unenrollments. Howard has not disclosed how many affected families applied for Parent PLUS loans, how many encountered the new limit or how many were facing unrelated outstanding balances.
But the timing demands investigation.
How many of those incoming freshmen arrived at the deadline believing federal loans would close a gap that their families could not cover?
How many learned too late that the financing available to previous generations of students was no longer available to them?
How many were short by $2,500? How many by $5,000? How many by $20,000?
We cannot fully assess Howard’s decision until Howard releases that information.
We also need similar information from Morehouse, Spelman, Hampton, Florida A&M, North Carolina A&T, Morgan State, Coppin State, Bowie State, the University of Maryland Eastern Shore and other HBCUs.
How many students were financially cleared last year compared with this year?
How many incoming students failed to enroll because of an unpaid balance?
How many returning students stopped out because they could not close a financial gap?
How much emergency assistance would be required to keep those students in college?
If HBCUs do not gather and release this information, we will not know whether Howard is an isolated controversy or the first highly visible warning of a national emergency.
HBCUs Must Be Held Accountable, Too
Historical underfunding is real.
Public HBCUs have endured generations of inequitable state investment. Private HBCUs generally operate with endowments that are only a fraction of those held by wealthy predominantly White institutions. Many HBCUs serve a larger proportion of first-generation and Pell Grant-eligible students while attempting to provide the academic, social and financial support those students need.
But “we are underfunded” cannot become a shield against institutional accountability.
HBCU leaders must examine tuition increases, mandatory fees, housing charges, administrative growth, contracts, spending priorities and customer service.
They must ask whether every dollar being charged advances the education and success of the student.
They must also recognize that a bursar’s office, financial-aid office or enrollment-management office is not merely processing paperwork. Those offices stand between a student and a life-changing opportunity.
When one department tells a family to wait while another department removes the student, that is not a minor communication problem. It is an institutional failure.
Love for HBCUs does not require silence.
Love requires us to protect these institutions while also demanding that they live up to their missions.
Who Are HBCUs For?
That may be the most painful question of all.
If Morehouse approaches $60,000 a year, who can attend without substantial aid or considerable debt?
If a working Black family earns too much to receive maximum assistance but too little to write a $20,000 check, where does that family go?
If public HBCUs remain less expensive but housing, food, transportation, and living expenses still push the cost beyond what families can manage, have we truly preserved access?
If hundreds of talented Black students can be admitted and then removed because their families cannot demonstrate how every dollar will be paid, what exactly does admission mean?
The answer cannot be that Black students should simply borrow more. Too many Black graduates already begin their careers carrying debts that delay homeownership, business creation, marriage, parenthood, and wealth building.
We cannot celebrate HBCUs as engines of Black economic mobility while financing attendance in a way that weakens the economic futures of their graduates.
This Is a Call to Save the Promise
I am not writing this to tear down Howard University.
I am not writing it to diminish Morehouse, Morgan, Coppin or any other HBCU.
I am writing it because these institutions belong to us, because their missions matter and because the next generation deserves the same transformative opportunity they gave me.
But we must tell the truth.
For many Black families, some HBCUs have become too expensive.
Not necessarily because they charge more than other colleges, but because Black families have less accumulated wealth and HBCUs have fewer institutional resources available to bridge the difference.
The federal government has now made that equation even harder by limiting a major source of family financing.
Howard’s 502 students should not be treated merely as an enrollment controversy that will disappear after the news cycle moves on.
They should be viewed as a warning.
The question is no longer simply whether HBCUs can survive.
The question is whether Black students can still afford to attend them.
And if the institutions founded to open the doors of higher education to Black America are becoming financially inaccessible to Black America, then all of us—HBCU leaders, alumni, elected officials, philanthropists, businesses and members of the Black press—have work to do.
We must not wait until another 500 students receive an email telling them that the door has closed.
