the absolute number of black men enrolled at historically black colleges and universities is the lowest it's been since 1976 that's according to recent analysis from the American Institute for boys and men which crunch data from the Department of Education in fact blackmen now currently account for only 26% of the students at HBCU back in 1976 that figure was 38% Calvin Hadley is invested in closing this Gap he is assistant Provost for academ Partnerships and student engagement at Howard University and he is here in the studio with me now thanks for being here thank you so much for having me I want to start by talking about Howard which of course is one of the foremost HBCU in this country a long long list that I cannot recite of incredible alumni including vice president Kamala Harris Let's Start there are you seeing this decline among black male students where you are there at Howard just down the road from us I am I am and thank you for having me to to disc discuss this really important topic I'm a Howard Alum and so um I remember as a student the numbers were also pretty Stark at that time uh I think we were around 33 to 34% when I was a student between 2004 and 2008 now as you announced in your introduction Howard University is around 25% male total and I think a recent statistic said around 19% black male and so that is felt on campus um that is felt I think in our social clubs is felt on the yard uh and I think many of our male students have uh commented uh that in some of their classes they're the only male in their class so I will just say I did not attend an HBCU I attended a pwi a predominantly white institution but I have so many friends and family members who attended HBCU they talk to me about what that experience has meant to them not just while they're on campus but when they go out into their professional lives they stay connected to the HBCU experience they stay connected to communities like the Howard community that you represent so I just want to ask you when there are fewer black men on campus walk us through what does that mean what do we what is what do we lose when those black men are not as robust a presence on campuses Like Yours by the time students actually come to college uh we're dealing with the males that have actually uh transcended what we call the belief Gap this Gap in between what students can actually achieve and what their uh professors teachers counselors believe they can achieve for black males that Gap is the largest when they get into the camp campus the campus experiences significantly impacted by the imbalance right at every educational institution we want a diversity of experience and so when you don't have as many males in a classroom that diversity of experiences is significantly impacted it's even gets even more scary when we trace it Forward right I think we're dealing with some really unique statistics right now black males as we will dive deeper into this in a moment are graduating at a much lower rate than black females across all colleges across all colleges not just HBCU and so this uh drop in the past decade has been seen more drastically but the reality is this is not a Howard problem this is not a HBCU problem this is not a pwii problem this is an American Education problem I want to shift gears a bit and talk about what happens when these black men are graduating from high school and they're deciding what comes next what that next step is the study that we've been talking about it notes that since 2010 as you point out blackmail enrollment has gone down across all colleges and it also points out that HBCU enrollment has also decreased on the whole but the decline of blackmail enrollment at HBCU outpaces those Trends if only slightly can you just explain to me how you understand that Gap so I want to take a small step back in 2013 2014 we had 2,990 male applicants for Howard University specifically an ftic is a firsttime in college student in 2022 23 we had 9,75 significant significant increase and what does that say to you that the Howard University education and the HBCU education is highly sought after right and there are a number of really important things that happened between 2012 and 2022 one of those was the election of President Donald Trump and another was the murder of George Floyd I think when those things happened in the United States of America the HBCU experience which had already been known to many of us now uh become a much more attractive proposition you notice a significant increase in those mail applications what I didn't provide you was the number of female applications that accomp that while we received 9,700 male applications in 2022 23 we received upwards of 30,000 female applications and I want to say I want to take a step aside and say black women are ripping it up all the statistics show from high school to college to college graduation that the black women the black female is successful today and the trajectory is going straight up unfortunately when you look at the black male the exact opposite it is the case and so for those black males that are now being left out of the college equation that also means they're being left out and stratified out of a a certain portion of our society I think you have an imbalance in the community that has a significant impact on our ability to create whole families I think on the ability for us to um ensure that our Our Generations after us have additional success and really to have additional Mobility I want to end on this you are a product of Howard University as you point out you now work for the University and you're raising two young black boys what's your pitch for why a young black man who might be hearing our conversation in 2024 should choose to attend an HBCU why should they wow wow thank you for that you attend an HBCU for an education and not a degree and as an assistant provos that's not a popular thing to say the education that you receive in an HBCU transcends the classroom experience it transcends the uh relationship that that you have with your professor the education exists in between the lines of the pages HBCU inundate you with the sense of belief we talked about the importance of that belief on the front end the belief Gap that exists in K through 12 HBCU are created to instill you with the belief that you can be even larger than you can dream Howard University and HBCU Community has provided me and many other people like our vice president with a sense that I am enough I can be successful academically but my world is not simply academics I can be enough and I can contribute to this society and this space in a way that allows me to feel whole and allows me to contribute to something much larger than myself the HBCU Community needs you and so when I'm talking to that young man in 2024 come because we need you come because you're important come because without you our community is hurt Calvin Hadley assistant Provost at Howard University thank you thank you