Student numbers up at FAMU after school lost $19.8M in tuition and fees due to enrollment decline

At the 2017 Florida A&M University Homecoming Convocation, Interim President Larry Robinson announced that the school has reversed its enrollment decline.

FAMU enrolled 9,913 students in Fall 2017. That’s the biggest number of students the school has had since Fall 2015, when there were 9,920 students.

The university had 9,614 students in Fall 2016.

FAMU lost $19.8M in total tuition and fee loses due to the enrollment decline between 2012-2013 and 2015-2016. The Florida auditor general report with the tuition and fee loss numbers from 2016-2017 has not been released yet.

FAMU’s enrollment increased between the fiscal years that ended in 2009 and 2011. But FAMU and many other HBCUs were hurt by stricter eligibility requirements for the federal PLUS Loan program that went into effect in October of 2011 and Pell Grant changes that began that same year. Those changes resulted in thousands of low-income HBCU students being denied this critical source of financial aid and either having to withdraw from school or delay their entry into college.

The federal financial aid program overhaul led FAMU to lose about 2,000 students. Declining state support and rising fees have made the situation even worse for many potential FAMU students.

Former President Elmira Mangum defended the enrollment decline during her time in office by saying that “Quantity does have to be sacrificed in order to get quality.”

But the enrollment trends at North Carolina A&T University, North Carolina Central University and Jackson State University showed that Mangum’s claim isn’t true. All three succeeded in growing their enrollments and raising their average freshman GPAs at the same time. Those three universities had enrollment bumps with freshman classes that had 3.0+ average GPAs in 2015-2016.

NCA&T just enrolled 11,877 students in Fall 2017 with an average freshman GPA of 3.51.