National
Financial Problems, Low Enrollment Loom at Cheyney University
Humphreys Hall, Cheyney University of Pennsylvania (Courtesy Photo)
(Philadelphia Tribune) – For Qualyn Meade, Cheyney University is a “school for second chances.”
After an old knee injury sidelined a cheerleading scholarship offered at Kutztown University, he took a year off before enrolling at Cheyney in Delaware County, one of the nation’s more than 100 historically Black colleges and universities.
“I know it’s crazy, but I cried when I first got to campus,” said Meade, now 20 and about to enter his second year at Cheyney. “I always wanted to go to an HBCU. Cheyney gives students who maybe aren’t the brightest, aren’t the strongest, a chance to thrive and succeed. Finally having that opportunity to start school and be able to do well. … It was overwhelming.”
Meade, a Pittsburgh-area native, is walking in the footsteps of thousands of others who have attended Cheyney since it was founded almost 200 years ago to “instruct the descendants of the African Race in school learning,” as founder Richard Humphreys wrote in his will. One of 14 state-owned universities in the State System of Higher Education, it began offering higher education degrees in the early 1900s.
