Colleges rush to admit students disenrolled from Howard University

Some students say they never received Howard’s tuition deadline notices

Howard University said 502 students did not submit tuition payments by the school’s July 10 deadline, despite a notification process that began in March. The students — all first-time-in-college enrollees — were informed in late July that their spots for the upcoming semester were no longer being held.

Colleges and universities nationwide have begun opening late admissions windows to accommodate the displaced students. The University of the District of Columbia extended its undergraduate application deadline to Aug. 7.

On July 27, Hochul announced that affected New York residents could seek admission at the City University of New York and the State University of New York for the fall semester. Students will be offered expedited late admissions review at SUNY campuses in Buffalo, Albany, Buffalo State University, Binghamton, Oneonta, Stony Brook, and New Paltz, with other campuses assessing capacity.

“Hundreds of students, including New Yorkers, are scrambling and scared since they’ve been disenrolled from their intended college just a few weeks before classes are set to begin,” Hochul said in a statement. “New York is home to the nation’s finest systems of public higher education, and we are ready to welcome these talented students with the opportunity they deserve.”

Some students have shared on social media and in interviews that they never received Howard’s notifications about the payment deadline. Saniah Collins told the AP that Howard sent her an email the week of July 21 notifying her she had missed the deadline.

“I worked like crazy to get into this school,” Collins said. “Howard has been my everything. My whole senior year, my whole summer I worked consistently on scholarships. We tried to make ourselves 10 steps ahead to make sure we were on the right page.”

Keana Johnson, 17, said she had been looking forward to starting at Howard as a way out of the New York City shelter where she lives. She told the AP she may consider the University of the District of Columbia or historically Black colleges and universities in the South, but said her options are limited with time running short before the semester begins.

The disenrollment follows a similar situation last year, when hundreds of students were unable to register for Howard’s fall 2025 classes due to long-overdue balances. At the time, Howard had transitioned from its BisonWeb platform to a new BisonHub system, which the university said caused a delay in about 1,000 student account updates between January and June 2025.

In early September 2025, Howard told the Guardian that only 150 students had not registered for fall 2025 classes after most accounts were resolved. The university said at the time that “past due student balances are not the result of delayed account updates” and that “each long overdue balance should have been well understood and resolved by the student.”

Students created a movement called “Whose Howard Is It” last year to demand better financial aid support from the university.