Almost a year later, the students and staff of Howard University still have questions and concerns about the school’s ever growing student population.
Last year, Howard celebrated its largest incoming class. Howard’s Vice President and Chief of Communications Lydia Sermons previously told The Hilltop in a statement that this large incoming class was “in line with the goals set by the university’s administration.”
While the milestone marked a big moment in Howard’s history, many students from that record class now say the university was unprepared for the challenges that came with it — from housing shortages to financial aid delays.
Dylan Frye, a sophomore international business major from Atlanta, Georgia, was part of the record-setting class. Although he began his first year with excitement, he said his outlook shifted as he watched classmates struggle to access resources.
Frye said Howard needs affordable off-campus housing options, transparency from the Office of Financial Aid and a system that effectively accounts for the rising number of students enrolling.
“I think Howard needs to take accountability and realize if you’re going to keep raising prices, you need to make our experience just as comparable,” he said. “We come to Howard to feel like there is a place for us but Howard themselves have to also show it — that we deserve to be here.”
As enrollment numbers grew, so did concerns from some freshmen students after they settled into the university, including overcrowded spaces, financial aid challenges and a lack of student housing.
Nearly a year later, faculty and students remain concerned about the same issues as enrollment continues to rise. According to the Howard Forward Five-Year Plan 2019-2024, enrollment is expected to surpass 15,000 students by the year 2030. After the last academic year concluded, the university reached a total of roughly 14,890 students.
Financial History
In the past 10 years, the university has received criticism about financial aid, management and housing.
In 2018, the university faced a scandal after a whistleblower alleged that almost $1 million in financial aid grants were misdirected by university employees.
Students formed a movement in response, declaring transparency from Howard. HU Resist was one of the student advocacy groups, with one of the many demands being an end to “unsubsidized tuition hikes and complete access to administrative salaries.”
During the scandal, Wayne A. I. Fredrick, former Howard president who will soon be returning as the interim president, released a statement that confirmed the misappropriation of funds. This led to six employees being fired.
After a review of Howard’s finances, the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) placed the university on the highest level of monitoring — Heightened Cash Monitoring 2 (HCM2).
Through HCM2, universities are no longer able to receive money in advance or use institutional funds to make disbursements to students. This means that the university no longer gets funding under the Advance Payment.
Fredrick issued policies and strategies to “strengthen Howard’s internal controls for the awarding of financial aid” in the statement.
To be removed from the HCM2 list, the university must adhere to federal aid regulations and the issue that placed them on the list must be resolved.
Howard was removed from the list in 2019.
The 2018 scandal caused a time of uncertainty for many Howard students but as the recent financial challenges in the university grow, students are noticing a familiar pattern.
Impact of Finances on Students & Alumni
On May 10, Mario Howard, a senior English major, walked across the stage with post-graduate plans seemingly secure.
He was accepted into the English and African American Literature graduate program at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (NCAT) and offered a teaching assistantship. But financial issues at Howard soon placed those plans in jeopardy.
When Mario Howard sent over his final transcript to NCAT following graduation, they told him that his transcript was missing his final grades and his official degree had not yet been conferred.
NCAT gave him 8–10 weeks from graduation to submit the required documents, advising patience since transcript delays sometimes occur.
On May 22, Mario Howard contacted Howard’s Office of Undergraduate Studies, which referred him to the Office of the Registrar. There, he learned news that shocked him: Howard University was still auditing degrees from 2024.
“We’re in a whole different school year,” Mario Howard said. “So if you’re still doing those, when are you gonna be ready for mine?”
Without his completed transcript and conferred degree, Mario Howard remained unable to enroll in his graduate program and accept his role as a teaching assistant until nearly four months later, his degree was conferred on July 30.
When Mario Howard started his undergrad studies, his class was the largest freshman class to date. Now that the class of 2028 has surpassed the class of 2025 and with the issues he has personally faced, Mario Howard worries for the currently enrolled students.
“We have all the tools we need to be great, but we are basically not. [Howard has] this image, but we don’t live up to it,” he said.
Kelby Hughes, a senior chemical engineering major from Oakland, California, said he loves the Howard community but has faced challenges with the university’s communication during his senior year.
“We need to start holding the school accountable,” Hughes said.
In the past five years, student enrollment has grown by over 46 percent, going from about 7,800 undergraduate students to over 11,500. In this same timeframe, the average cost of attendance has gone up from $51,345 to roughly $64,700 – an almost $14,000 increase.
Hughes added that he knows students who had to transfer from Howard due to the tuition increase.
“The people that I know that transferred, they were hard-working individuals,” said Hughes. “They were student leaders, they were academic scholars and they had every reason to be at Howard.”
Onyinyechukwu Ikeako, a junior nursing major from Baltimore, Maryland, said she has grown so much love for Howard but in the face of rising enrollment, Ikeako is now questioning if she’ll be able to keep the community she’s built for herself.
“Every year that I’ve been a student at Howard University I have seen an increase of [the] cost of attendance payment,” Ikeako said. “I just remembered looking at that $55,000 [for the 2023-2024 school year] just being like God please help me.”
When Ikeako saw that costs and the number of students were increasing again, she was in complete disbelief.
“It shocked me because not only was it a $10,000 increase, but it was an increase of students. [Students are] exhausting all resources [to pay for school] to the point they’re going on LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook [and] Instagram just asking for help.”
She said that she’s come to a point where being a Howard student, or a college student in general is “looking at your peer and assuming that they have or had a GoFundMe in the past, or looking at your peer and asking yourself ‘What did they have to do to be here with me today?’”
Overcrowding
Frye still remembers arriving at Howard and being unexpectedly reassigned residence halls from College Hall South to George W. Cook Hall. What began as a shock and disappointment became one of the best parts of his freshman experience, forging a bond with his roommate and community in the historic dorm.
“Once I moved in I realized it had this weird old feeling about it, but it was historic in a sense,” Frye said. “It was a really cool place to live, so I started to enjoy it more and more.”
To make space for the class of 2029, George W. Cook Hall, historically an all-male dorm, was converted into co-ed housing. Frye, who also served as the 2024-2025 Mister Cook Hall, shared mixed emotions about the changes in student housing.
He said having another co-ed dorm could “advertise that this campus is connected” and even attract more male students to apply to Howard. However, he also had some personal challenges with the change.
“I had joined this legacy and had such a great time,” said Frye. “I thought it was going to continue with me and now it might look a little different. So it [is] a bit jarring.”
Frye also expressed frustration with how the increase in students is impacting his overall Howard experience – particularly when it came to trying to maintain a positive student experience while dealing with housing issues.
He said that with the rise in students and limited space for on-campus housing, many students are left trying to find suitable housing options in a small timeframe.
“As a student leader it hurts to see the work and community we had built is being broken simply by Howard’s mistakes,” he said.
Danica White, Howard’s teaching, learning and engagement librarian said that the rising number of students contributed to an overpacked environment for both her and her colleagues.
While she is responsible for helping undergraduate students take advantage of all that Howard’s libraries have to offer, she noted that their department had to quickly adapt in order to still be able to accommodate the rising number of students.
“We felt an obligation to help other departments that needed space,” said White. “I feel like a lot of programming was affected.
Faculty across departments said the class of 2028 tested the limits of classroom space and staffing, and many expect the class of 2029 to push those limits even further.
Ingrid Sturgis, chair of the Department of Media, Journalism, Film & Communication, discussed the structural changes the School of Communications has had to make in recent years.
A lot of those changes involved moving classroom locations.
“We came from the CB Powell building then we went into a building that was not even a block [long] and now we’re in three separate buildings,” says Sturgis.
Sturgis said the class of 2028 impacted the class size of lower-level courses like Intro to Mass Communications and Digital Media Literacy. With the class of 2029 already larger, she predicts the strain on these required classes will intensify.
With so many students trying to register for the same required course with limited availability, the school had to adjust some of its course requirements entirely.
“There was a tension with the pre-requisite, but now a lot of those courses are not necessarily pre-requisites, they’re co-requisites,” she said. “We had to make a shift in being able to have the students progress in their program without having that kind of bottleneck.”
Behind the Scenes Support
The Howard University Student Association (HUSA), whose mission is to be the spokesperson for the students at Howard, has been trying to deal with student issues as they come.
Naesoj Ware, a senior philosophy and political science double major from Boston, Massachusetts, and the 65th HUSA president, said HUSA adopted a case-management system that lets students submit a form so concerns can reach Student Affairs and the offices of the Bursar, Financial Aid and Residence Life through weekly and biweekly meetings.
“We’re making sure that they have additional support and that those solutions are expedited through access to these different university offices,” said Ware.
Ware also explained how HUSA is seeing the tuition increase affecting the student body.
“We already have seen a number of students unfortunately transfer and I think that number will continue to increase,” she said.
According to an article from BestColleges the financial situation of a student is one of the top reasons why a student may transfer.
Next Steps
In the midst of this change, those within the student body have begun to research solutions to help their classmates.
Frye and his peers on the Residence Life Royal Court have compiled a list of affordable and close to campus, off-campus listings for students either struggling with housing or looking for other options.
Multiple student organizations have released statements regarding the housing crisis and student balances that have risen this past summer. Following some statements, resources were shared with the student body via social media so that students could have a platform to express their needs. This included Google Forms for those with housing and financial concerns, as well as listing out Howard students’ GoFundMe’s for potential donors
Frye suggests that holding an event once a month for students to speak about their concerns, confusion and frustration would be an authentic resource for people uncertain of what’s next.
“I guess from a HUSA perspective, our worry is that even if these students do get help now, that this will continue to be an issue semester after semester,” said Ware.
Copy edited by D’Nyah Jefferson – Philmore
