If applications are any indication, enrollment will surge again at Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach this fall, continuing a national trend that has seen more students going to historically Black colleges and universities and Christian colleges.
Year-over-year, B-CU has seen an almost 9% uptick in applications in 2024. And 74% more students have committed to attend the university this fall compared to the same time last year.
BCU’s Executive Director of Strategic Initiatives Camaille Shepard said a number of factors are at play, including the fact that the school is a faith-based institution.
“So for us, our faith-based institution as well as our student life has really been a driver in terms of why families come to the institution and of course, most importantly, is the legacy and history of our founder, Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune,” Shepard said.
Shepard said in order to prepare for an uptick in students, school leaders are looking at ways to update the campus.
B-CU recently received a $1.4 million dollar grant that will be used to renovate buildings and facilities on campus. The newly updated facilities will be known as the L. Gale Lemerand Academic Multiplex and the L. Gale Lemerand Football Complex after the benefactor of the grant.
“As we're looking at the numbers, we are working with our housing because we need to make sure we have beds for students. But there have been plans underway over the past year in terms of our facilities, not only expanding those, but improving those. So it's really a collaborative conversation across the institution,” Shepard said.
Nationally, HBCU enrollment increased by 7% between 2020 and 2023 according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Evangelical colleges had their best enrollment numbers ever last fall.
B-CU was founded in 1904 by Mary McLeod Bethune as the Daytona Literary and Industrial Training School for Negro Girls.
In 1923, the school merged with the Daytona Cookman-Collegiate Institute, and almost a decade later, it was accredited by the Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools of the Southern States. Its name was then changed to Bethune-Cookman College. More than 19,000 students have passed through its halls since 1943.
For her efforts in founding the school, as well as her legacy as an educator and activist, Bethune's statue stands in the U.S. Capitol's Statuary Hall.
