Pulling Back the Veil: What Determines HBCU Campus Enrollments

Historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are among the least researched sectors of American higher education. This article addresses a portion of this knowledge deficit by focusing on the determinants of the full-time equivalent enrollments of 50 HBCUs between fiscal year FY 2005 and FY 2018 and then comparing them to a broad sample of 182 non-HBCUs. The most noteworthy specific results generated by our analyses are: (1) increased recruitment of white students by HBCUs may not hold the key to HBCU enrollment success; (2) the incomes of the households from which students emanate have a major positive influence on HBCU enrollments; (3) HBCU campuses whose resource allocations pay more attention to the instruction and student services have higher enrollments; (4) intercollegiate athletic expenditures in general and the operation of an Football Championship Subdivision (FBS)-level football program, in particular, are massively important determinants of HBCU enrollments; and (5) the predicted FY full-time equivalent enrollment (FTE) of an HBCU is less than one-half of what would hold true for a comparably situated non-HBCU