In the fall of 2022, Wilberforce enrolled 478 students. As of fall 2025, 811 students were enrolled.
“Over the past three years enrollment has almost doubled and revenues have increased significantly,” said Wilberforce President Vann Newkirk.
The reversal is also significant because the university was taken off the watch list of the Higher Learning Commission, the university’s accreditor, in November 2024. The university is fully accredited without any annotations as of January 2026.
In April 2022, the university’s faculty voted “no confidence” in the university’s former president, Elfred Pinkard, as well as the board president and financial officer at the time. Newkirk came in after Pinkard left in June 2023.
Newkirk said since coming in, there have been changes to how the university is run and managed, including tuition hikes, more faculty hired, better data collection and improved debt management.
Money management
The university’s debt has been reconfigured as the university has been able to raise tuition and increase revenue.
As of 2024, Wilberforce has about $17.8 million in liabilities, according to the university’s 990 filing, a federal tax form that nonprofits must fill out. (Completed 2025 tax forms are not yet available.) That is significantly less than 2020, when the university reported $39.5 million in liabilities.
In 2024, the university received about $21 million in revenue, according to the same 990 filing. In 2023, Wilberforce noted $12.2 million in revenue.
Part of that revenue increase came from both raising tuition to better reflect cost and increased enrollment, Newkirk said.
“Between 2012 and 2023 the university did not increase tuition,” Newkirk said. “This meant that the university failed to take into account rising costs associated with utilities, staffing, technology and daily maintenance.”
Wilberforce’s tuition in 2025 is $14,902. Newkirk noted that the total cost for tuition, books, and room and board is the second-lowest among Ohio’s private universities, at $26,242.
Compared to other area private universities: Wittenberg University, the fifth-highest cost, totals around $59,536, and Cedarville University’s costs are around $48,342. These costs do not factor in grants, scholarships or other aid.
Faculty
In the fall of 2022, the university employed fewer than 20 full-time faculty, Newkirk said. Now, there are more than double, at 42 full-time faculty. About 89% of faculty now hold a doctorate degree compared to 38% in 2022
In 2022, many of the faculty did not hold the requisite credentials to lead the majors in which they taught, Newkirk said.
“In response, the university merged several majors such as accounting, management, and marketing into a new major called business, management, and technology,” Newkirk said. “This allowed the university to improve the credentials of full-time persons leading the areas.”
Salaries for faculty have also gone up, he said, and faculty are paid above market rate.
Other changes
The university has changed the ways that it gathers, analyzes and reports issues, including hiring a director of institutional research, Newkirk said.
The university reopened its Career Placement Office and began offering more activities to students, Newkirk said.
This has also helped retain students, with retention rates around 74% as of 2025, Newkirk said. As of fall 2024, Wright State’s retention rate was about 68% among full-time students.
He said he thinks the university is now able to offer students something different than other Ohio private colleges as the only private Ohio Historically Black University. It also offers four engineering programs, a three-year degree in kinesiology and several other programs.
“Such offerings are rare among other small privates in Ohio,” Newkirk said. “In addition, the university is the only private HBCU in the state of Ohio. The university is one of two private HBCUs that are above the Mason-Dixon line.”
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