(Bloomberg) -- Applications to Spelman College, the historically Black women’s college in Atlanta, surged by almost a third between 2020 and 2024, bucking the national trend of declining enrollments that’s forced some small colleges to close.

The growth, including 13% in the last year, follows the Supreme Court decision last year that curtailed using race in college admissions. Spelman President Helene Gayle mostly attributed the spike over time to interest in students attending historically Black colleges, or HBCUs, after the murder of George Floyd in 2020.

“It has changed the way young people feel about being in an environment that’s nurturing, that they know that they are valued, that they see people that reflect who they are, understand the cultures that they came from,” Gayle, a physician and Spelman’s president since 2022, said in a Bloomberg TV interview from Atlanta. “The Supreme Court decision had a chilling effect, whether or not it’s yet had the time to have a practical impact.”

Colleges are in the process of sharing admissions decisions with applicants in the first application season since the Supreme Court decision over race. Some colleges are also operating in a period of financial constraint, due to enrollment drops and demographic declines.  Birmingham-Southern College, a private school in Alabama with less than 1,000 students, said this week it will close in May. 

Spelman, with about 2,500 students, recently received $100 million from longtime trustee Spelman trustee Ronda Stryker, the granddaughter of the founder of Stryker Corp., a Michigan-based medical device company.  The majority of the gift from Strkyer and her husband William Johnston, chairman of Greenleaf Trust, will go to endowed scholarships for future students. It was the largest gift in Spelman’s history. 

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