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With less than a month before fall semester begins, over 500 incoming Howard University freshmen received emails from the private HBCU telling them they’d been unenrolled because of missed payment deadlines, the Washington Post reports.
The emails went out while many impacted students were preparing for early move-in. Howard — which also came under scrutiny last summer for threatening to send students to debt collection or withhold degrees until they made tuition payments — claims the unenrolled students didn’t meet their payment arrangements or scholarship-reporting deadlines after months of reminders. “We understand that the enrollment update … is difficult and disappointing for students and their families,” the university said in a statement, per the Post. The university acknowledged students with pending external scholarships and financial aid “may have been impacted” by the mass unenrollment and said it will “consider relevant circumstances” on a case-by-case basis.
But many impacted students maintain that they did report their scholarships ahead of the deadline and were assured they were good to go. The Post said a number of students expressed frustration about the university’s “unresponsive” financial-aid and enrollment offices with one individual saying they were left on hold for an hour — and ultimately weren’t connected to speak with anyone.
Howard has reportedly reinstated some of the revoked admissions, though it’s unclear how many, and some students aren’t seeing their financial aid reflected in that reinstatement. Isabella Williams, an external scholarship recipient who was scheduled to move to campus this weekend, was notified on Wednesday that she had missed a payment and could apply as a transfer student in the future. Howard was her dream school, she said in a tearful video posted to Instagram. Her student portal is finally showing her enrollment in fall classes, but now her bill is $30,000, which she can’t afford to pay.
“I’m just gracious and lucky enough that I was able to get my classes,” Williams told 7News DC. “But now I don’t have any of my scholarships.”