Temple sees 71% jump in Black students in fall’s first-year class

As a high school student in North Philadelphia, Kayla Woods took college classes at Temple University as part of a dual-enrollment program.

The 18-year-old, who aspires to become a teacher and, one day, a professor, said she wanted to see if she could be “Temple Made,” as the school slogan goes.

She learned the answer was a resounding yes. Convincing her were professors who showed they cared and fellow students who shared her goals. But she also found confirmation within herself.

“The way I persevered through it showed me I’m really made for Temple,” she said on campus this week, the fourth of the semester. “When I saw the challenge, I didn’t stop. I just kept going. That just told me that I belong here.”

Woods is one of more than 1,450 Black students in Temple’s first-year class — that’s an increase of more than 600 students over last year, or 71%. It’s one of the largest one-year jumps the university has seen and is part of a larger picture of growing diversity at the 30,000-student school in North Philadelphia.

For the third consecutive year, Temple’s first-year class comprises more than 50% students of color, with this year being the record at 62.3%. Within that jump, Latino students grew by nearly 45%, or 193 students.

Overall, Temple’s first-year enrollment stands at 4,926, a nearly 30% increase; white students by comparison, though, increased only 2%. And white students made up a slightly smaller proportion of the class than Black students.

The boom in freshmen occurred even as the school became a bit more selective — it accepted 78.9% of applicants, a two-percentage-point decline from last year — and as the average grade point average increased to 3.42.

Nationally, as more students of color go to college, other schools in recent years also have reported growth, though some of the elite institutions, including the University of Pennsylvania and Haverford College, saw a decline in those from underrepresented groups, following the U.S. Supreme Court decision last year that banned race-conscious admissions.

» READ MORE: Philly-area colleges see dips in Black, Latino students post Supreme Court decision on race-conscious admissions

Temple officials attributed the growth to more in-person recruitment efforts, including a 90% increase in high school visits, new software that enables the school to better stay in touch with prospective candidates, and new financial aid efforts targeted to students who most need it. This is the inaugural year of the Temple Promise program, which makes tuition and fees free for first-time, full-time college students from low-income families who live in the city of Philadelphia.

Nearly 500 students received Temple Promise aid this year, the university said.

The university also is talking to the Philadelphia School District about working with younger students, possibly as early as seventh grade, to broaden the pipeline to Temple, said Jose Aviles, Temple’s vice provost for enrollment management.

“There are so many students here with tremendous talent that we would love to have at Temple,” he said.

» READ MORE: Temple aid to help make tuition free for low-income Philadelphia families

Some of the effort is just in convincing students they belong. Gregory N. Mandel, provost, cited the case of a city school student with a 4.0 GPA who didn’t think it was possible to go to Temple.

“It’s incumbent upon us to not only make sure the opportunities are available but to get out the word so that the pipeline becomes a reality,” Mandel said.

Temple, in recent years, had come under criticism for a declining percentage of Black students as the university expanded its enrollment and strove for a higher academic profile. In the mid-1990s, Black students made up 28.4% of Temple’s undergraduates. By 2016-17, though, the African American share had bottomed out at 12.6%.

» READ MORE: A million miles away Temple, Philadelphia’s ‘diversity university,’ has seen a plummeting share of Black students over the last 25 years, even as it rapidly expanded enrollment.

Since then, it has been climbing slowly. This year, 18% of Temple students identify as Black, the school said.

Sean Vereen, president of Heights Philadelphia, an organization that helps students from city schools get to and through college, said Temple’s recent efforts to bring in more public school students from the city — including the Promise program — is notable and welcomed.

The first-year class includes 1,101 students from Philadelphia, a 68% increase from last year.

“That strategy that goes back to its historic roots,” he said, “is not exclusivity but actually how do we create as much opportunity as we can for the people who are here in the city and the region and for populations that have been historically excluded from higher education.”

But Temple’s Black students aren’t just coming from Philadelphia. In fact, 55% of them are from other states, part of a record percentage of out-of-state students this year making up 43.5% of the class. Maryland, Washington, D.C., New Jersey, New York, and Delaware were among the biggest contributors.

Woods, who is one of Heights’ students, received Temple’s Cecil B. Moore Scholarship, which covers full tuition at Temple for public school students in eight zip codes in North Philadelphia.

Since beginning classes, she said, she has enjoyed making friends from other states but is still adjusting to the heavy workload while having to commute to campus.

“My analytical reading and writing class is killing me right now, but I feel like I can get through it,” she said.

She’s aware of the teacher shortage and especially the shortage of Black teachers and wants to be part of the solution, she said. One day, she said, she would like to become a professor — and so far she likes Temple so much that she’d like to teach there.

Bringing the students in isn’t the only challenge. Colleges also must retain them. Temple’s overall retention rate and its rates for Black and Latino students are above the national average, but like many schools during and since the pandemic, they have lost some ground in recent years.

In 2019, 83% of Black students at Temple made it to their sophomore year; in 2023, the percentage had dropped seven points, to 76%. Retention rates for white and Hispanic students also dropped, but not by as much, university data shows.

Mandel said Temple recognizes that more students are coming to college with greater needs. The percentage of students who qualify for federal Pell grants geared toward low-income families increased this year to a record 46%, up from 38%.

And the school is preparing for that. A task force with representatives from across the university has been meeting since the spring semester, looking at not only providing academic support but also paying greater attention to mental health and well-being, Mandel said.

“We’re looking at doing a better job of gathering all sorts of data to identify students who are at risk … earlier and deliver stronger support,” he said. “We feel confident that the model we are implementing now is going to help bring our retention rates back to where they were pre-COVID.”

Aviles said the university wants to get students connected to staff members before they have a problem.

“It’s incumbent upon us to get out in front of them,” he said.

Many students are already strong supporters, Mandel said. More than half of the 530 students in Temple’s competitive honors program are students of color, he said.

Faith Swan, 18, of Philadelphia, said she chose Temple in part because of the opportunity to participate in the Fox Business School’s honors program. She also liked the “walkable” campus environment, and it was familiar. Her sister is a Temple senior, and her mother and aunt also went to Temple, she said.

» READ MORE: A record number of students from this Philly high school are going to Temple. For many, this police officer is the reason why.

And, like Woods, she took dual-enrollment classes at Temple when she was a student at George Washington Carver High School of Engineering and Science, which is near the university’s campus. She is one of a record-setting 42 Carver students who opted for Temple this year.

Overall, Temple’s enrollment this year declined 1.7%, a much smaller drop than last year, possibly signaling that the school might be turning a corner from multiyear decreases. Mandel noted that the university graduated 8,850 students in May, one of its largest classes in history, which meant that even such a large freshmen class wasn’t enough to counter an overall reduction this year.

He anticipates overall enrollment will begin to increase again, possibly next year.

“We think that comes from the hard work we’ve been doing,” Mandel said.