of diversity, offering larger financial aid packages and slicker facilities while atoning for their role in racist systems. In this time of precarity, some HBCUs are getting crafty to stay afloat, using a grab bag of transformative shifts to boost
enrollment, finances and the attractiveness of their curriculums.
Some schools have turned to crowdfunding. Bennett College, an all-women's HBCU in North Carolina, was on the brink of closing in December after losing accreditation because of its financial instability. So the college began a #StandWithBennett campaign. It raised $8.2 million by February and regained accreditation, for now. But crowdfunding campaigns are a Band-Aid for wounds that needs surgery.
In 2017, after almost shuttering, Paul Quinn College in Texas, led by its president Michael Sorrell, turned the campus football field into a farm and the school into a work college, the first HBCU of that kind. Work colleges require residential students to do graded work — think helping to build a new dorm or answering phones in the admissions office — to offset the cost of tuition. It has worked so well for Paul Quinn that the school is looking to open a second site.
Tennessee State University and Morgan State University in Baltimore have placed their bets on boosting their international student enrollment by the hundreds. For the past decade, most of their students from abroad have come from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and pay full tuition plus room and board for the precious commodity of