Huston-Tillotson seeks to expand to California, open first undergraduate HBCU in West Coast

Huston-Tillotson University, a private historically Black college in Austin, is expanding to California in an effort to make HBCU education accessible to students on the West Coast and to further bolster the workforce in Texas.

The faith-based university plans to secure approval for a branch campus from the necessary California agencies by August 2025, President Melva Wallace told the American-Statesman, but it has received approval to start offering coursework remotely to California students, which it plans to start doing in January.

California has no historically Black undergraduate colleges. Texas has 10 such institutions, and Huston-Tillotson is the closest undergraduate HBCU in the nation to California, Wallace said.

Texas has seen an influx of former California residents, and Melva said she thinks this partnership will help strengthen the workforce pipeline even more.

“If it’s working for the corporate and workforce, why don’t we take the lead on building the pipeline for workforce by training more California students to enter into the workforce here?” Wallace asked. “Being the first undergraduate HBCU in California, it’s just an amazing thing.”

The university is partnering with the San Diego Unified School District and National College Resources Foundation, a nonprofit organization that aims to boost higher education completion rates for underrepresented groups, to make this possible. The nonprofit approached Huston-Tillotson to help the group expand HBCU education offerings in California, Wallace said, and they are both still looking for locations in which to put down roots.

Huston-Tillotson California will offer a bachelor’s degree in business administration and an associate degree in liberal studies to start, she said. Once the foundation and university select a space, Huston-Tillotson will know how many students it can accept, Wallace said.

Wallace said that, as a private university, Huston-Tillotson had the capacity to invest in expansion faster than the public HBCUs. Huston-Tillotson and Austin are also both in a moment of growth: Austin and Central Texas are increasingly becoming a hub for technology and manufacturing; and the university enrolled its largest number of first-time students in its history, was ranked the top private HBCU in Texas for 2025 by U.S. News & World Report and accepted its highest number of international students, Wallace said.

Prospective faculty members in California are already showing interest in teaching at a future campus, and “there’s a lot of energy” behind making it a reality, she said.

“There’s a scroll of things longer than I-35 that could possibly fail, but we are focusing on all of the ways that we can make this happen for those kids out there who want to attend an HBCU and just don’t have access,” Wallace said.

An HBCU education has become more desirable to applicants after the U.S. Supreme Court banned affirmative action in 2023, and many states adopted anti-diversity, equity and inclusion legislation limiting supports and resources tailored to students of color, creating a reportedly hostile environment for some underserved communities. HBCUs were founded to help address disparities in education opportunities for Black students, and in 2022, 9% of Black college students, who make up 3% of college student demographics, choose to attend them, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Huston-Tillotson, the first higher education institution in Austin, offers a holistic, personalized education while being a close partner to Austin’s businesses and workforce needs, Wallace said. The university looks forward to reaching more students, she said, and living out the goals set in its strategic plan, which was launched last summer, “From First to Foremost.” It will celebrate its 150th anniversary next year.

“We want to be leaders in providing talent who are not just prepared to come in and sit at the cubicle and do a job, but that they can think critically,” Wallace said about students. “They come with a brightness about them. They come with a joy.”

In the future, Wallace would consider expanding the California campus, and even consider expanding internationally, she said.

“We’re only limited by our imagination,” she said.