A new study finds that one-on-one coaching dramatically increased student retention and re-enrollment at dozens of HBCUs, resulting in a gain of $26.9 in tuition revenue.gettyA new five-year study by InsideTrack, a national, nonprofit student success organization, has found that sustained, one-on-one coaching resulted in dramatically improved retention and re-enrollment of students at dozens of the nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities. The report, Empowering Student Momentum at HBCUs, tracked various student outcomes from Fall 2021 through Spring 2026, during which InsideTrack coaches supported more than 43,800 students at 39 public and private HBCUs. Those students received three types of interventions — enrollment coaching, helping prospective students navigate their point-of-entry into college; retention coaching, assisting currently enrolled students remain in school; and re-enrollment coaching, enabling stopped-out students chart a path back to college. The report focused on the latter two types of coaching which touched 11,815 enrolled students who were facing various barriers to persistence, such as work and family responsibilities and financial challenges; and 23,886 students who had stopped out before completing their degrees. The coaching provided students advice on goal-setting and navigating financial, academic and personal obstacles to staying or re-enrolling in college.The study found that re-enrollment coaching yielded a 6.9% re-enrollment rate — 2.5 times the national average — helping 1,343 stopped-out students return to their institutions. Currently enrolled students were retained at an 83.8% fall-to-spring rate. Active coaching engagementwas associated with even stronger fall-to-spring persistence: students who met with a coach had a 90.4% retention rate, compared with 82.4% for students who did not complete a coaching meeting.For participating campuses, this improved retention also resulted in increased revenue. The additional students retained beyond each school’s historical retention baseline represented an estimated $15.9 million in additional tuition revenue and a 102% return on the initial coaching investment. Increased re-enrollment also added more revenue. Of the 30 HBCUs reporting outcomes, returning students accounted for an estimated $11 million in recovered tuition revenue. In other words, the combined results of the program increased tuition revenue by $26.9 million.MORE FOR YOUMuch of the initiative’s outreach focused on students who are often overlooked by traditional retention efforts, including adults, who made up nearly 40% of the coached population, and Black male students, who made up about a third. Among a subset of 13 public HBCUs, Black male students who met with a coach re-enrolled at a rate of 15.1% — 10.8 percentage points higher than their peers who didn’t meet with a coach from the same cohort.“Effective partnership with HBCUs starts with respect for the history, culture, and leadership already present on each campus,” said Henri A. LaSane, Ed.D., associate vice president of HBCU programs at InsideTrack, in a statement. “Our role was to add capacity in ways that strengthened, rather than replaced, those institutional relationships. These results show that this approach can help more students stay connected to the support, momentum and sense of belonging that keep completion within their reach.”The five-year program was supported by a several funders and partners, including Blue Meridian Partners, UNCF’s Institute for Capacity Building, the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, and Ed Advancement. The coaching work was led by an InsideTrack team of seven partnership directors and 28 trained success coaches, nearly all of whom were HBCU alumni.Although HBCUs make up only 3% of the nation’s colleges and universities, they are responsible for nearly 20% of all Black graduates, and they have recently received a strong vote of confidence from several philanthropic sources, including record-setting investments from MacKenzie Scott. "HBCUs are powerful engines for social mobility. By supporting institutions with tools like reenrollment coaching from InsideTrack, we've helped more students enroll, persist, and graduate,” said Jim Runcie, co-founder and CEO, Ed Advancement. “As a result, more students are on a path to economic opportunity, and more institutions have built internal capacity to support re-enrollment”InsideTrack is now working to make coaching support extend beyond the five-year initiative. Through a follow-on program, 21 HBCUs are building coaching capacity with their own staff in an attempt to make sure they maintain these kinds of student success efforts.