August 3, 2025
The university is explaining the issue as a technical problem caused by switching to a new payment system.
Howard University is facing criticism after it sent approximately 1,000 students notification that they had a few weeks to pay thousands of dollars in tuition or risk having their accounts sent to a collection agency and possibly also having their degrees withheld. The university is explaining the issue as a technical problem caused by switching to a new payment system, but some students say the university has not responded to their attempts to contact them.
According to The Washington Post, in June, some students who were affected by the error caused by the new payment system received emails that informed them that they had until the end of that month to make payment arrangements, and university administrators also placed a block on their accounts, meaning that they couldn’t register for classes until payment or payment arrangements had been made.
“Right now, it says I owe that $57,540-something, like I owe the whole thing,” Alissa Jones, a first-generation student at Howard, told NBC 4. “If you have any type of hold, you can not register for class, but with these, obsessive amounts of money that they’re saying we owe, it’s almost like, that’s not one semester’s worth of tuition, at all. That money has been there, but where? And why are we just now finding out about it?”
She concluded, “I don’t really have any next steps; I’ve been praying; I have a lot of faith. Hopefully, it works out in my favor.”
“To prevent your account from being sent to collections, payment arrangements must be made,” at least one email obtained by the Post informed students.
In other emails, Howard University set up non-negotiable payment plans, students are required to pay a set amount for 12 months.
The Washington Post talked to at least six students who believed that they had been up to date on their bill from the university, only to find out that they were thousands of dollars in debt with only a few weeks to make payments.
Some of those students reported that they had been unsuccessful in their attempts to contact the school’s Bursar office, which handles financial affairs for the students at the school.
This pushed some of the students, like Taliana Singleton, to pressure the university into addressing the issue by leveraging the only thing that universities care about: their public perception.
To that end, when the university published social media posts purporting to treat their students with love and unity, she took the chance to put the institution on blast in the comments section.
“Howard University is always so concerned with their online image,” Singleton wrote in a comment on the university’s Instagram story. “They pay more attention to their Instagram than the students. Let’s give them something to pay attention to.” After her comment, the count of comments on that story rose from eight to more than 180.
“We just want to make it a better place for the freshmen coming in,” she told the Washington Post, regarding the nascent “Who’s Howard is it?” movement that she and other students have formed to bring attention to the issue. “We are forcing the administration to pay attention to its students.”
According to Howard’s chief communications officer, Lydia Sermons, whom the movement has said it wants removed from her post, the university is working with students to fix the issue.
“We recognize the challenges our students are facing and continue to offer our support,” Sermons stated. “We are working actively to improve communication, expand payment options, and provide timely support through the Bursar and Financial Aid Offices. Students who enroll in payment plans or submit formal resolution requests remain in good standing and are not referred to collections.”
She continued, “A definitive time for sending accounts to collections has not been determined. Our focus is on exhausting all efforts for account resolutions.”
Despite the assertions of Sermons, students like Makiah Goodman, who owes approximately $5,400 to the university, are calling for the university to do more than to extend its deadline for students to Aug. 8.
Goodman told the Washington Post that the university lost one of her checks and has not been transparent with her when she has asked them for clarification.
“They just shrugged and said there was nothing they could do,” Goodman told the outlet. “Then I saw all these miscellaneous fees and charges on my account. I asked why but there are no viable explanations. It’s very disheartening.”
Other students have used the fundraising platform GoFundMe to bring attention to their plight, while the “Who’s Howard is it?” student group has been encouraging students to call the university’s student affairs office and the president of the university in an attempt to “inconvenience the very leaders and offices that inconvenience students daily through their inadequate leadership, poor communication, and lack of accountability.”
To that end, they created a phone bank script that calls on the administration to be transparent and to create a policy that appoints two student representatives on every hiring committee for the university’s senior roles.
“We expect leadership to stop ignoring students’ lived realities,” the script demands, “and to start aligning their actions with Howard’s mission of truth, service, and collective uplift.”
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