Greater Funding, Greater Needs

Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have distinguished themselves over the past two years in the face of uncertainty and difficulty. They innovated to embrace remote learning and redirected funds to provide their students with much-needed support. And they received an outpouring of funding; the federal government has allocated more than $6.5 billion to HBCUs over the past two years,  and private donors have significantly stepped up their giving. As a result, HBCUs have gained a renewed sense of optimism and hard-won resilience.

The uptick in funding over the past two years doesn’t begin to make up for decades of neglect. In particular, the federal government, for decades, has ignored its legally mandated obligations to allocate funding at prescribed levels. There’s an inherent immorality that underpins this pattern: HBCUs are the institutions that perform the best for Black students, yet they remain chronically underfunded. What’s more, this cycle feeds the perception that they aren’t worthy of support.

Read the report here.

On July 26, 2022, Lodriguez Murray, senior vice president, public policy and government affairs at UNCF held a press conference about the report on Capitol Hill. View his comments.