Nashville’s Fisk University Welcomes Its Biggest Freshman Class
With HBCU enrollment increasing, Fisk University is celebrating their largest freshman class in 40 years.
According to Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, as overall HBCU enrollment is increasing throughout the nation, Fisk University is celebrating its largest first-year class in 40 years.
The incoming freshman class numbered 400, bringing the university to 1,050 students. Not since 1982 has the university seen these numbers. The National Center for Education Statistics reported last month that Black students enrolled at HBCUs fell from 18 percent in 1976 to 8 percent in 2014 and then increased to 9 percent in 2020.
Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, has seen an increase of some 60% in 2020 from the previous year, Data USA reports. The New York Times reported Howard University saw an undergraduate enrollment of 21%.
Fisk also had to turn away students due to its promise to remain an affordable university. Sheila Smith, associate vice president for enrollment management, said, “This year, we turned away too many students whose future should have begun at Fisk, but the financials simply did not compute.”
Fisk also made history last month by becoming the first HBCU to launch an intercollegiate women’s gymnastics team.
