Students at a pep rally at Virginia State University in Chesterfield County, which saw a 7% increase in enrollment in 2021 (Photo courtesy Virginia State University)
Tamantha Monsanto is the matriarch of her blended family of five children, two of whom are in college, but the 48-year-old thought that, for her, higher education wasn’t an option. An average student growing up, Monsanto didn’t receive encouragement from counselors or family members to pursue higher education, she says. The day of her high school graduation in her hometown of Halifax, she felt unsure about the future.
“I remember so clearly the day of my graduation in my high school gymnasium,” Monsanto says. “After all was said and done, I remember thinking, ‘What am I supposed to do now?’ ”
But decades later, Monsanto began to dream of a brighter future when her daughter, who attends Hampton University, brought home a flier for a Virginia College Access Network partnership with Virginia State University. The scholarship helps students with limited finances living within 25 miles of VSU’s Chesterfield County campus — all requirements met by Monsanto, who lives in Prince George County — attend the historically black college tuition free, with assistance from federal Pell grants. VCAN is geared toward recent high school graduates, but Monsanto is one of many nontraditional students who have received the scholarship. Now in its second year, the VCAN program has already helped 300 students, says Alexis Brooks-Walter, associate director of institutional effectiveness at VSU.
A hairstylist for more than 20 years, Monsanto desired a new career after experiencing carpal tunnel syndrome and plateaued earnings, and she decided to give applying to VSU a shot.
She and her daughter “were like, just throw it out there, the worst they could say was, ‘No, you don’t qualify,’ ” she says.
Monsanto is now a first-year sociology student with the goal of continuing on to graduate school and eventually a career in education or child advocacy. Monsanto is part of a trend of rising enrollment at historically Black colleges and universities nationally. High-profile HBCU graduates, such as Vice President Kamala Harris, and the Black Lives Matter movement have renewed focus on the role of HBCUs in building generational wealth and improving access to higher education. Increased philanthropy, also spurred by BLM, has led to increased funding for scholarship programs and debt-slashing initiatives. And federal pandemic relief funds, used by some HBCUs to pay off student balances, have enabled students to continue their educations.
Removing cost as a barrier to higher education was one of the biggest factors in this growth, says Hakim Lucas, president of Richmond’s Virginia Union University. Devoting substantial funds to the affordability problem also just makes good business sense, he says.
“Our business model is driven by the student,” Lucas says. “If the federal government, state or philanthropist gave me a dollar, I gave that dollar to the student. That to me becomes [a] scholarship … that would convert into revenue” for the university.
In Central Virginia, both VSU and VUU have experienced enrollment boosts in 2021 — a 12% increase at VUU and 7% at VSU.
The growth is particularly remarkable for VSU, which had prepared to weather a $26 million budget deficit for 2021 due to a predicted 10% enrollment drop that didn’t happen, Brooks-Walter says.
We planned that if there was a dip in enrollment, we would have the reserves to cover it, and we did not have to utilize our worst-case scenario — not even close,” she says. “Our students are resilient. We had a slight dip in enrollment [in 2020], but they have come back this year in record numbers.”
Most of VSU’s improved numbers are due to an increased retention rate — the number of first-time, freshman students who continue at the school the next year — of 76%, its highest in more than two decades. VUU experienced the most enrollment growth at the graduate level, 34%, with eight new programs added in 2019.
Funding for programs such as VCAN has helped retain low-income and first-generation students, a population widely served by HBCUs. And although the use of pandemic relief funding to forgive student debt was a one-time action at many schools, erasing balances improved enrollment numbers by preventing students from dropping out, Brooks-Walters says. Typically, a student is required to pay the cost of attendance for a semester before it begins. If they can’t, the student and the college may agree to a payment plan for the student to satisfy the balance during the semester, but this can leave students behind financially.
“When we think about overall enrollment growth, it is the retention data and the persistence data that has really helped our overall total enrollment,” Brooks-Walters says.
Students on Virginia Union University’s North Side campus, near Pickford Hall (Photo courtesy Virginia Union University)
Nearly $8 million combined at both universities was used to pay off outstanding balances for students enrolled during the pandemic — $1.4 million in federal pandemic relief at VSU, and $6.35 in philanthropy and federal relief at VUU. Both VSU and VUU also received federal funding to help offset economic losses due to the pandemic.
In addition, the universities received substantial increases in giving — including VSU’s $30 million gift from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott.
But the schools still face potential hurdles. The pandemic continues to be a threat to future enrollment. Meanwhile, VSU has struggled with perceptions of safety following two fatal shootings involving students — one more than eight years ago and the second in December — at the same apartment complex near campus.
Overall, the future seems sound for HBCUs and students such as Monsanto. She says she is grateful that she doesn’t have to worry about how to pay for school, but being a student and a mother to her two school-aged daughters is hectic. On weekday nights, Monsanto is often logged into Zoom for classes while watching her daughter, who is in the eighth grade, compete in wrestling matches. When the young athlete isn’t wrestling, she is gearing up for travel soccer. Her older sister, also a busy athlete, plays high school basketball. Monsanto’s life is a dance of shifting priorities, which include substitute teaching and serving on the student council at VSU.
“It is hard being a mother, a wife, a soccer mom and going to school,” she says. When she received a graded paper with a note from her freshman composition professor reading, “awkward phrasing,” she realized going back to school wasn’t going to be easy. But learning and embracing new opportunities at midlife has been rewarding, Monsanto says.
“The struggle is real … but it’s in a good way,” she adds. “And just having the scholarship acceptance just made it easier for me because paying for college is hard.”
