Gov. Josh Shapiro should fast-track admissions decisions for students unenrolled by Howard
Pennsylvania’s state-run colleges, which have struggled to diversify and grow enrollment, would benefit from welcoming the students Howard University abandoned over payment notices.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore has offered expedited admissions decisions to state-run colleges for incoming freshmen who were abruptly unenrolled by Howard University, as has New York Gov. Kathy Hochul. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro should follow suit.
This could be a win-win situation for both the students and the Keystone State.
Everyone who knows me recognizes how much I love Howard, which is my alma mater. To call the four years I spent on the campus in Washington, D.C., life-changing would be an understatement. It was the former leader of HU’s journalism department, Lawrence Kaggwa, who set me on my career path, informing me that I was going to work in the newspaper industry.
But I can’t defend Howard’s unceremonious unenrolling of 502 incoming freshmen just weeks before classes start Aug. 17 because they missed a payment deadline last month.
The first-time college students — some in tears — responded by posting videos on social media about their plight. They were hard to watch. Some went viral and even made the national news.
School officials defended what happened, saying payment notices had been going out since March about deadlines and enrollment requirements. Some students said they didn’t get them, or else received a notification on the same day their bill was due.
Nikiyah Clark told ABC News, “I was so scared because Howard University is my dream school, like, my grandma went there.” She hopped on a bus from Fairport Harbor, Ohio, to D.C. to advocate for herself in person. It paid off, because she has been reinstated into Howard’s first-year class.
But now Clark faces perhaps an even bigger hurdle: paying for tuition. Tuition plus room and board is $66,000, according to Howard’s website.
HU’s interim president, Wayne A.I. Frederick, called for an internal investigation into what went wrong, but it’s going to take a lot more than that to heal the damage to the school’s reputation.
“If another school in the city said that things had to be paid at a certain point, I think people would do that,” he told the Washington Post. “Nobody would make a fuss about the fact that somebody was suggesting a bill be paid on time.”
And the fact is, HU needs the money. Trump administration officials ended a series of annual payments meant to support the construction of the university’s new hospital. That move resulted in a cut to the historically Black college or university’s (HBCU) annual federal appropriation for the current fiscal year of about $64 million, or more than 20%. The Chronicle of Higher Education reported on Thursday that HU has offered buyouts to 600 employees.
Still, that’s no excuse for how the first-time college students were treated. We expect more of institutions like Howard, which was founded in 1867 to educate newly emancipated Black Americans.
“HBCUs are known for being nurturing and family environments,” said Marybeth Gasman, who runs the Rutgers Center for Minority Serving Institutions. “That’s why this comes off as being kind of shocking to parents and students and some alumni, and some people in the HBCU community and beyond.”
As I pointed out earlier, expediting admissions here could be a real win-win both for the students unenrolled from Howard and Pennsylvania’s state colleges and universities. Incoming freshmen could further their educations, and state institutions — which have struggled with diversifying their student bodies and declining enrollments — can take a step toward changing those narratives.
No matter what President Donald Trump would have you believe, diversity matters.
“In higher education, we do a better job as teachers and as researchers when we work in a diverse environment,” David Oppenheimer, a leading scholar on issues of discrimination and equality, told InsideHigherEd.com earlier this year.
Oppenheimer, who is the author of The Diversity Principle, added: “Students learn more. In a science lab, scientists make more significant discoveries when the scientists working in the lab are diverse. It’s a real thing. It’s not just a psychological argument.”
Following all of the public outcry, Howard has readmitted more than 200 of the freshmen who had been dropped, but it’s unclear what all of the other students will do.
Shapiro should recognize that there’s a real opportunity here — and that Pennsylvania should take advantage of it.
