- Black men are disappearing from college classrooms: Black male enrollment has fallen sharply over the past decade, while their share of enrollment at HBCUs has dropped from 38 percent in 1976 to 26 percent in 2022.
- The problem is bigger than admissions: Black men are not necessarily losing interest in ambition, work or financial success. The question increasingly is whether traditional higher education still looks like the most direct path to those goals.
- Benedict offers a different example: While many colleges struggle to attract Black men, Benedict College has produced majority-male incoming classes for two consecutive years through deliberate recruitment, mentoring and community engagement.
For decades, historically Black colleges and universities have served as some of the country's most important institutions for educating Black America.
But a troubling question is becoming harder to ignore:
The issue is not simply that fewer Black men are graduating from college. Increasingly, fewer are enrolling in the first place.
Nationally, Black male college enrollment declined significantly between 2010 and 2022. At HBCUs, the change is even more striking. Black men accounted for about 38 percent of HBCU students in 1976. By 2022, that figure had fallen to 26 percent.
For institutions whose missions have historically included creating educational and professional pathways for Black Americans, the trend represents more than an enrollment statistic.
It raises a fundamental question about the future of HBCUs.
Black men, he has said, are not disappearing from the workforce, entrepreneurship or the desire to build wealth. Instead, some are increasingly questioning whether a traditional four-year college degree is the best route to the life they want.
That distinction matters.
A young man who chooses a skilled trade, entrepreneurship, technology, sales or another career path instead of college has not necessarily rejected education or achievement.
He may simply be making a different calculation about time, cost and opportunity.
College, meanwhile, has become increasingly expensive, while young people have more access to examples of entrepreneurs and professionals building successful careers without traditional degrees.
For HBCUs, that creates a difficult challenge.
They aren't competing only against other colleges.
They are competing against an entirely different set of ideas about what success looks like.
Men accounted for 54 percent of Benedict's incoming class in 2025 and 53 percent in 2026.
The numbers are notable because they did not happen in isolation.
Under President Roslyn Clark Artis, Benedict has made a deliberate effort to reach young Black men through schools, churches, mentors and community networks. The strategy extends beyond simply persuading students to apply.
The college has also emphasized academic assistance, mentoring and leadership development once students arrive on campus.
That distinction may be important.
Recruiting Black men is one challenge.
Giving them reasons to stay, succeed and see themselves as future leaders is another.
Benedict's experience offers an emerging case study in what an HBCU can do when the recruitment and support of Black men become an intentional institutional priority rather than simply an admissions objective.
It also suggests that the work may begin well before a student fills out a college application.
But like other HBCUs, FAMU must contend with a changing calculus among young Black men. Just 34 percent of FAMU's student body is male.
The question is not simply whether FAMU can admit more Black men.
It is whether the university can make the value proposition compelling enough that young men choose FAMU over the increasingly broad range of alternatives available to them.
That means understanding what young men want from college — and what they believe college can do for them.
Today, that proposition is more complicated.
Students see the cost of tuition. They see student-loan debt. They see entrepreneurs building companies without traditional credentials. They see skilled workers earning solid incomes. They see technology creating new careers that did not exist a generation ago.
And they have more information than ever about all of it.
HBCUs therefore face a communications challenge as much as an enrollment challenge.
They have to explain not simply why students should go to college, but why a particular HBCU is worth the investment.
For Black men especially, that argument may need to extend beyond a degree.
It may have to include mentorship, professional networks, internships, entrepreneurship, leadership development and a clear connection between what happens in the classroom and what happens after graduation.
Benedict's approach points in that direction.
The bands, rivalries, pageantry and traditions matter. Football can introduce prospective students to a campus and create a powerful sense of identity.
But athletics cannot be the entire enrollment strategy.
Not every student will play football.
And even for athletes, college eventually has to become about something beyond Saturday afternoon.
If HBCUs want to reverse the decline in Black male enrollment, they may have to create multiple pathways into the institution — through academics, entrepreneurship, technology, professional preparation, leadership, the arts and community engagement.
The goal is not simply to get Black men onto campus.
It is to give them a reason to remain in college.
A generation with fewer Black men moving through college also means fewer Black men participating in those networks.
For HBCUs, the stakes are particularly high because these institutions have historically provided something that goes beyond classroom instruction: community.
That may be one of the most important lessons in the numbers coming out of Benedict College.
The college's recent experience does not erase the national trend. But it provides an example of how intentional outreach can produce a different enrollment mix — and how recruitment can be reinforced with mentoring, academic support and leadership development.
The broader challenge for HBCUs is determining how those lessons can be adapted to their own campuses and communities.
The answer may not be a single recruitment campaign.
It may be a much larger effort involving churches, schools, families, alumni, mentors, employers and the colleges themselves.
Because the question facing HBCUs is no longer simply how to enroll more Black men.
It is whether they can convince a new generation of Black men that college — and the HBCU experience in particular — still has a place in the future they are trying to build.