Black Colleges Struggle to Keep Students

University of Virginia student Jessica Page leans up against a column on the lawn in front of the school's Rotunda in Charlottesville, Va., Thursday, Sept. 21, 2006. Page is part of a steady trickle of talented black youths slipping away from the nation's most prestigious black schools. Experts say aging campuses, shrinking prestige, changes in what black students value and increasing competition from white educational powerhouses are stripping some of the nation's historically black colleges of the best and brightest students. (AP Photo/Steve Helber) (Steve Helber - AP)

Twenty-six of 87 black schools profiled by the department recorded enrollment declines between 1995 and 2004.

Alabama's Talladega College topped the list, losing nearly 54 percent of its students. The University of the District of Columbia, which boasted 9,663 students in 1995, had 5,168 in 2004. More troubling to some, enrollment was down at black powerhouses like Fisk and Tuskegee during the same period. (As for some other elite black schools, enrollment was flat at Morehouse between 1995 and 2004, and was up 11.5 percent at Spelman.)

Experts say one explanation is that predominantly white _ and often elite _ colleges and universities have been working hard to attract and keep black students.

At Virginia, for instance, incoming black students are paired with black upperclassmen who can give them guidance. Last year, the school expanded a financial aid program. And when black students enroll, they are presented a stole of bright African cloth in a ceremony called the "Donning of the Kente."

Valerie Gregory, director of outreach at the Charlottesville school and a Hampton graduate, said she is seeing more students like her daughter _ independent-minded black youths who don't feel as if they must be surrounded by other blacks.

"Students are more apt to want to be in an integrated environment and now aren't as shy to look and see if there's a possibility," said Gregory, whose high schooler is weighing mostly white James Madison University in the Shenandoah Valley against Spelman.

Black colleges are trying new strategies, including stepping up marketing and working to improve in certain academic areas. The United Negro College Fund is encouraging schools to take recruitment beyond bordering states and into territory like the Midwest.

Kassie Freeman, a dean at Maine's Bowdoin College and author of the book "African Americans and College Choice," said black schools have been focusing too much on mining black high schools for freshmen.

She said those students are typically ready for a more diverse environment. But many students who are attending predominantly white high schools "would much rather go to an environment where they can find their roots."