HBCUs are trying to spare graduates from crushing student loan debt. It’s not easy.

Melinda Allen could easily have fallen through the cracks at any college or university. She took time off from school when her parents died, exhausted all of her federal grant aid, owed unpaid tuition and became a mother when she was two years shy of graduation.

Allen’s academic advisers and professors at Dillard University in New Orleans refused to let her walk away from her education, she said. As she approached the limit on borrowing from the federal government in the fall, a ­financial-aid officer at the historically black university urged Allen, 29, to apply for a school grant designed to keep students like her from flaming out.