‘This Is a Good Fit’: Inside Enrollment Gains at Historically Black Colleges - Column

Columnist Danielle Douglas-Gabriel writes:

When Anthony Davis became president of Livingstone College in October 2022, the historically Black school in Salisbury, North Carolina, had a freshman class of 220 students. Back then, it was common for only half of Livingstone’s freshmen to return the next academic year. Davis planned to disrupt that trend. By connecting students with academic support centers and engaging them before they could consider leaving, the new president and his team raised the retention rate at the private HBCU from 50 percent to 78 percent.