In a recent TikTok, former Vice President and Howard University alumna Kamala Harris ranked the top five things in her life most worth the money. An HBCU education was number one. Someone who has gone on to hold some of the highest offices in the country, decades removed from her time as a student, still placed Howard first on a list that had nothing to do with credentials.
On most college campuses, the degree is the finish line. At Howard, it’s one of several finish lines in a race with multiple tracks and crossing any one of them counts. The goal has never been solely the credentials earned, but the person a student becomes in the process. The goal is the experience itself, and when that is the case there is not just one way to achieve success.
That doesn’t mean choosing a historically Black college or university (HBCU) comes without careful consideration. For many students and families, the choice carries real financial and personal weight. Out-of-state tuition, Washington, D.C.’s cost of living and doubts about a degree’s value all raise the same question: What is a Howard degree actually worth?
Part of the Howard experience is its entrepreneurial nature. A student finds a nail tech through a group chat, or a photographer through a friend of a friend. What starts as a service rarely stays that way. Clients become regulars. Regulars become friends. The transaction turns into a friendship that happened to start with money changing hands.
Paris Ndakissa, a sophomore business management major and model from Gabon recently founded the fashion brand, PÂRIS RESERVE. With his major, he bets that combining entrepreneurial drive with an elite education will set both him and his brand up to thrive.
The runway feeds the brand, the brand feeds the business degree and the degree feeds the credibility behind it all. At Howard, you don’t have to choose just one area of focus. In Ndakissa’s case, that looks like prioritizing business, modeling, and academics without sacrifice.
“When you’re part of an environment filled with driven people, that mindset becomes contagious. Howard encourages students to think beyond earning a degree and focus on building a lasting impact,” Ndakissa said.
Ndakissa did not learn his entrepreneurial drive in a classroom. Howard simply made ambition feel normal, expected even, and let it spread from person to person until it stopped being an individual trait and became a culture instead. That kind of cultural impact is difficult to quantify. But for HBCUs like Howard, the value of an education has never been limited to what appears on a paycheck. Still, the measurable returns of a college education offer one way to understand why the degree itself remains valuable.
According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, in 2024, people with a bachelor’s degree earned around $33,000 more than those whose education ended with high school. Of course, there are exceptions. Social media, entrepreneurship and trades have all created pathways for people to out-earn traditional degree holders. But they remain exceptions.
The numbers can tell us what a degree is worth economically, but they cannot fully capture what happens when that degree is earned in an environment where students are constantly surrounded by people building, creating and betting on themselves. The true value was never just the diploma. It is the mindset that comes with it: that learning does not end the moment a student walks across the graduation stage, and that the path toward success rarely follows a straight line.
A student who graduates with a 4.0 and no side hustle has succeeded. The student who builds a business while struggling academically has succeeded too. The student who leaves without a business, the perfect transcript, or a headline-worthy achievement, but with lifelong relationships and a community that will show up for them for the rest of their life, succeeded as well.
As Harris put it, “At Howard, there is no limit to the collection of things you can do; one thing is not an exclusion to another.”
Copy edited by Jori Johnson