New York offers college admission for residents unenrolled from Howard University

Historically Black institution withdrew more than 500 first-year students for missed tuition payments

New York residents who were unenrolled from Washington DC’s Howard University have been offered a reprieve after the historically Black institution withdrew more than 500 first-year students for missed tuition payments in late July. On 27 July, Kathy Hochul, New York’s governor, announced that affected New Yorkers can seek admission at the City University of New York (Cuny) and the State University of New York (Suny) for the fall 2026 semester.

Students will be offered expedited late admissions review at the Suny campuses at Buffalo, Albany, Buffalo State University, Binghamton, Oneonta, Stony Brook and New Paltz, with other schools 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. To every student who is worried that their educational future has been disrupted: New York is ready to support and empower you.”

Howard University said that 502 students did not submit their tuition payments by the school’s 10 July deadline, despite notifications that began in March. But some students have shared on social media that they never received the notifications.

“I worked like crazy to get into this school,” Saniah Collins told the AP . The school sent her an email last week notifying her that she had missed the payment deadline. “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.”

The disenrollment follows a similar predicament last year where hundreds of students were unable to register for Howard University’s fall 2025 classes due to long-overdue balances. Most of the accounts were resolved in the following months; in early September 2025, Howard University told the Guardian that only 150 students had not registered for fall 2025 classes. At the time, Howard had transitioned from its BisonWeb platform to the new BisonHub platform, which caused a delay in about 1,000 student account updates between January and June 2025.

“Past due student balances are not the result of delayed account updates. The past due balances occurred when students did not resolve their balances by the specified date,” Howard University said in a statement to the Guardian in September 2025.

“Each student’s financial situation is unique, and we recognize that many of our students are doing everything they can to remain in good financial standing. Because of the system changeover, the university understands that there may have been some legitimate misunderstanding of amounts due to resolve long overdue balances. However, each long overdue balance should have been well understood and resolved by the student.”

Last year, students created a movement called “ Whose Howard Is It ” to demand better financial aid support.