As president of Morris Brown College, a small unaccredited institution in downtown Atlanta, Dr. Stanley Pritchett knows he has a tough job convincing parents and students to enroll. His problem is compounded by the fact that he has little money in the budget for marketing.
So when he gets the opportunity to talk to prospective students, he has a pitch prepared: The college offers a quality education at about 50 or 60 percent the cost of most colleges in the area. The class sizes are small. Its graduates are generally successful. One was even accepted to law school. Several others have gone on to graduate school. And many are gainfully employed. The college is moving toward reaccreditation. It has the resources to operate successfully. It maintains a balanced budget.
The pitch is hitting home with a few. This fall, according to Pritchett, 30 freshmen will enroll at Morris Brown, bringing the school’s student body to 90. Pritchett says 20 of these freshmen are recent high school graduates.
It is an amazing feat for a school that lost its accreditation seven years ago for a wide variety of academic, financial and administrative reasons. Students at unaccredited colleges do not qualify for financial aid from the federal government. Many employers will not hire graduates of unaccredited schools. Many colleges will not accept their credits. And graduate and professional schools at accredited universities rarely admit them as students.
Yet several historically Black colleges and universities that have either lost their accreditation or face the threat of losing accreditation remain in business. Through a combination of rebranding, reinventing themselves, revamping the curriculum and good salesmanship that communicates vision and a genuine interest in educating young adults, they still attract students. They sell the small class sizes and, in some cases, lower tuition rates. Others explain to students that they will have to pay something out of pocket and then the colleges go out and raise funds to make up the difference. And some are quick to stress that the factors that led to their accreditation problems are financial and not academic.
However, they are not thriving. In its heyday decades ago, for example, Morris Brown had approximately 2,800 students, according to Pritchett. Paul Quinn College in Dallas once boasted between 900 and 950 students. Before it lost its accreditation in 2004, Barber-Scotia College in Concord, N.C., had 600 students. The college had 24 students last year and expects between 40 and 50 this year, according to Barber-Scotia’s president, Dr. David Olah.
But they are surviving and managing to attract true believers in the form of students, parents and donors — however few.
