Five years ago, Reed Hastings, the co-founder and CEO of Netflix, and his wife, Patty Quillin, donated $120 million to two historically Black colleges, Spelman College and Morehouse College, and the United Negro College Fund. “HBCUs have a tremendous record,” Hastings and Quillin said in a news release announcing their gifts.

I wrote about the optimism at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU’s) at that time, when they seemed to be on a roll with large grants from philanthropists and a commitment to improvement.

Five years later, however, graduation rates remain dreadful, leaving many Black students, particularly Black men, with abandoned dreams, college debt and no degree. And without that degree, the default rate of borrowers is three times as high as it is among those who graduated.

There are 104 HBCUs in the United States, of which 78 are “ranked”, been placed on a specific list by a third-party organization, such as U.S. News & World Report. The average four-year graduation rate for first-time, first-year students at the ranked HBCUs in 2025 was an abysmal 23.2%. The average six-year graduation rate for students at ranked HBCUs in 2025, 32%, was better, but still dreadful.

In contrast, the average four-year graduation rate for US colleges in 2025 was 50.8% and the average six-year rate was 60.1%, almost double the rate at ranked HBCUs.  

It should be noted, however, the graduation rate at HBCUs varies widely. According to U.S. News & World Report, the top five HBCUs for graduation rates, based on 2025 data, were:

In contrast, the 4-year graduation rate at LeMoyne-Owen College, a private, historically black Christian college in Memphis, Tennessee is 7% and the 6-year graduation rate is 18%, while the 4-year graduation rate at Alabama State University in Montgomery, Alabama is 14% and the 6-year rate is 28%. Additionally, the retention rate stands at 60%, which is also below average, ranking in the bottom 15%.

That raises questions about why philanthropist MacKenzie Scott recently pledged $38 million to Alabama State and made pledges to some other HBCUs with abysmal graduation rates, such as the University of Maryland Eastern Shore (4-year graduation rate – 19%; 6-year rate – 37%) and Morgan State University ( 4-year graduation rate – 13%; 6-year rate – 37%).

A  report from the Center for Minority Serving Institutions at Rutgers University included the observation that “philanthropists should consult data to make better informed decisions around giving, considering the donations to both high performing institutions to reward growth and lower performing institutions to stimulate growth.” The problem with that approach, however, is it can endorse propping up failing institutions that are failing their students.

They are not doing their students any favors if they end up leaving so many with debt and no degree.

One issue for Black HBCU’s is that some have an almost blanket acceptance rate. That leads to unready students, which inevitably leads to the low graduation rates. For example, LeMoyne-Owen College has a 97% acceptance rate and Alabama State University has a 98% acceptance rate. 

Too often, high acceptance rates are accompanied by low scores in college readiness tests. 

A key standardized college admissions test that assesses high school students’ academic readiness for college is the ACT test. A student’s Composite score, ranging from 1-36, is the average of a student’s English, math, and reading test scores. 

Some American universities look for students with scores in the 30s, others may consider scores in the mid-20s as competitive. According to ACT, the average score is 34 for admitted students at Harvard University and 23 for admitted students at University of Massachusetts Boston. 

The average ACT composite score of students admitted to Spelman College is 26; for Howard University, 24. In contrast, the average ACT composite score of students admitted to LeMoyne-Owen College is 16, to Alabama State University, 18. The ACT college readiness benchmarks range from 18 for English to 23 for Science.

Johnny C. Taylor Jr., former president and CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, a Washington D.C.-based, nonprofit organization that represents 47 public HBCUs, has attributed much of the high non-completion rate to the HBCUs accepting a lot of students with low standardized test scores and GPAs, students encountering time-management and behavioral issues, and a lack of financial literacy.

Many Black HBCU students also have to deal with being first generation college attendees, who tend to graduate at much lower rates across the board than continuing-generation students.  

The United Negro College Fund (UNCF) has also found that students at HBCUs borrow more than students from non-HBCUs because African American families generally have lower assets and incomes that limit their ability to contribute toward college expenses. 

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median income of Black households in the United States in 2024 was $56,020, significantly lower than the $92,530 median income figure for non-Hispanic White households. ”With only minor fluctuations, the racial gap in median income has remained virtually unchanged for more than a half-century,” the Bureau noted. 

High HBCU drop-out rates compound the problem of paying off college debt as drop-outs earn less. 

Too many Black students at HBCUs also come from failing high schools with a below-average teaching environment involving inexperienced and less qualified educators and benefit from easy college admission standards at some of the less-competitive HBCUs. 

A recent UNCF report pointed out that poor high school preparation often means Black students  are more likely to need remedial college courses than other student groups, and the lack of preparedness  hampers their success. “Increasing the number of African Americans receiving college degrees depends in large measure on whether students receive a quality K-12 education that prepares them for college coursework and college success,” the report said.

In the midst of all this, there are some hopeful positives. Some HBCUs have been seeing record enrollment growth and overall HBCU enrollment for the 2024-2025 school year rose by 5.9% compared to Fall 2023, the third year of increases. It’s worth noting, however, that enrollment growth at some HBCUs is occurring as the Associated Press has just reported that new enrollment figures from 20 selective colleges provide mounting evidence of a backslide in Black enrollment. On almost all of the campuses, Black students account for a smaller share of new students this fall than in 2023. At Princeton and some others, the number of new Black students has fallen by nearly half in that span.

In the fall of 2025, North Carolina A&T State University held down the #1 spot as the largest HBCU for the twelfth straight year with 15,275 students, up 6.7% from the previous school year. In the same vein, Spelman College increased its 2024 enrollment by 24% in 2025, Winston-Salem State University had a 4.7% enrollment increase and Shaw University in  Raleigh, North Carolina, founded in 1865, saw a 45% increase in new students in the fall of 2025,

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports, however, that HBCU enrollment growth is not shared equally across all the nation’s HBCUs. For example, enrollment fell at eight of the 10 HBCUs in North Carolina over the last decade, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, and overall enrollment at HBCUs has yet to rebound to its 2010 peak of 327,000. In addition, enrollment growth will need to be accompanied by increases in graduation rates in some cases. For example, the 4-year graduation rate at Shaw University is only 9% and the 6-year graduation rate is just 16%.

As was the case five years ago, if philanthropists and HBCUs really want to help Black college students, they will put money and effort into ensuring they get a K-12 education that prepares them for college and that HBCU students graduate with a good education. HBCUs that fail this test are still doing their students no favors, undercutting the very people they claim to champion.