Black Colleges Enjoy Renaissance : Education: A Southland couple sells campus tours to prospective students. The revival comes at the expense of mostly white colleges, where black enrollment is dropping.

As the time approached for Ayanna Woodard to graduate from high school, the 17-year-old spent her time like many other seniors: poring over brochures and touring schools in search of a college that would fit her needs.

She was concerned about the cost of tuition, distance from her home in Sylmar, and the college’s size. Woodard also wanted to find a college that would fill a void in her high school education, which she said failed to recognize the contributions of African-Americans in science, literature, history and every other area of study.

“By the time you finish high school all you know about is slavery, how we got chased off our land and stuck here,” the Kennedy High School graduate said. “They don’t teach you about your background at all--you have to go home to your black colleges for that.”

Now 18, Woodard is a student at Tuskegee Institute, a black college in Tuskegee, Ala., thanks in part to a business in Sepulveda that takes prospective students on tours of black colleges.

While the percentage of African-Americans attending college has plummeted during the past decade, enrollments at many of the nation’s 104 historically black colleges and universities are on the rise, creating what Christopher F. Edley, United Negro College Fund president and chief executive officer, called a black college “renaissance.”

The reasons vary from lower tuition costs to a concern about racial incidents on predominantly white campuses.

“I believe in these schools,” said Yasmin Delahoussaye, who with her husband, Greg, runs Educational Student Tours in Sepulveda. “The sense of warmth, the sense of belonging, the sense of history and heritage is what’s attracting students to black colleges,” she said.

Yasmin Delahoussaye was a junior high and high school teacher and counselor in the San Fernando Valley for nearly 15 years and now is a college counselor at Pierce College. Greg Delahoussaye teaches at Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies.

In her search for a college, Woodard and her parents consulted the Delahoussayes. Believed to be the only service of its kind in Southern California, Educational Student Tours introduces students to traditionally black colleges through consultations and visits to campuses.

Started last year, the company has taken about 100 students on tours of such schools as Howard University in Washington, Morehouse College in Atlanta and Hampton University in Hampton, Va. For about $700--which includes air fare, room and board--students tour for five to six days, visiting the schools and talking to students and faculty.

TaRessa Stone Stovall, a spokeswoman for Spelman College in Atlanta, said businesses such as Educational Student Tours have helped increase awareness of black colleges and universities. “While we work hard . . . you can never truly do enough,” she said.

Stovall said the tours point out the diversity among the campuses. “We are not a homogenous and predictable group,” she said.

The tours can be a deciding factor for some students, said J. J. Johnson, a spokesman for Tuskegee Institute who has worked with the Delahoussayes. “We like what they are doing and we hope they continue doing it.”

Jeri Holden, a guidance counselor at Kennedy High School, has had four students attend tours with the Delahoussayes. Holden said the tours helped fill a void and inspired the students to achieve. “There’s not a lot of information available about the schools,” Holden said.

The Delahoussayes opened their business at a time of both promise and despair for black students in higher education.

According to the American Council on Education’s annual status report on minorities in higher education, the percentage of low-income black high school graduates going to college plummeted from 40% to 30% between 1976 and 1988, and the enrollment rate for middle-income blacks fell from 53% to 36%.

Those trends have widened the gap between white and black college attendance. Even so, enrollment at some black colleges is up.

The United Negro College Fund reports that applications have increased at two-thirds of the 41 fund-affiliated institutions. Between 1986 and 1989, enrollment at the schools increased 13%.

Franklyn G. Jenifer, president of Howard University--known as one of the leading black schools--said the rise was the result of events in the mid-1980s that made life uncomfortable for black students at predominantly white institutions.

During the Reagan Administration the amount of federal grant money declined drastically while the cost of college tuitions increased, Jenifer said.

The average cost of the 41 United Negro College Fund institutions is 38% less than for comparable private colleges in the South and is about half that charged by private four-year colleges nationally.

After going on a tour with the Delahoussayes, Woodard won a scholarship to Tuskegee. She said she was attracted to the small classes, homey feel of the campus town and history of the institute--once home to noted scientist George Washington Carver and scholar Booker T. Washington.

The Delahoussayes said there are no black colleges in California and few students even know the schools exist.

Many of the black schools were established after the Civil War by churches and other institutions to educate freed slaves. The schools became the primary educators of blacks in this country, graduating such influential figures as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and author Ralph Ellison.

Many of the students are inspired by their first visit to a black college.

“I’ve never been in an environment like that,” said 16-year-old Eryn Houston of El Camino High School in Woodland Hills.