According to a recent study on the underfunding of HBCUs recently released, the typical historically Black college and university received 178 times less funding from foundations than the typical Ivy League institution in 2019.
The eight Ivy League schools collected $5.5 billion from the 1,000 largest US foundations in 2019, but the 99 HBCUs only garnered $45 million, according to the survey by the philanthropy research organization Candid and the charity ABFE. Even without accounting for inflation, foundation financing for HBCUs fell by 30% between 2002 and 2019.
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According to Susan Taylor Batten, president and CEO of ABFE, “We were not surprised by the findings because philanthropy generally funds Black-led nonprofit organizations disproportionately less than other similarly situated organizations.” She continued, “However, we were surprised by the data that indicated the enormity of the disparate funding between Ivy League colleges and HBCUs.”
Systemic racism was cited as the cause of the underfunding by several research participants. Others claimed that it was due to the weak ties that existed between philanthropists and HBCU administrators.
In any event, experts claim that the inequality is even more troubling because HBCUs have established their efficacy in educating Black pupils.
The majority of Black judges, physicians, and attorneys are graduates of HBCUs, according to the UNCF, the biggest private supplier of scholarships and other educational support to Black students in the country. According to studies, Black graduates from HBCUs earn $900,000 more over the course of their careers than Black graduates from schools with a predominance of white students or Black employees without college degrees.
In the racial reckoning that followed the police assassination of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, those ideas could have gained greater credence. According to preliminary figures, foundation funding for HBCUs increased that year by 453%.
Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott provided $550 million to 22 HBCUs that year, including $50 million to Prairie View A&M University in Texas, which is not included in the $249 million in gifts mentioned above.
The interest in HBCUs in 2020, according to Candid’s head of research Grace Sato, made it possible for her company to work on the report that was made public on Tuesday. Candid had been looking for a partner to assist finance the project for five years, despite being interested in examining contributions to HBCUs.
She noted, “I think understanding the context for the historic disinvestment sheds new light on this new funding and also calls into question whether that new funding is going to be sustained or is just a blip followed by declines.”
In addition, she remarked, “Shining a light on the issue of underfunding is important and necessary.”
HBCU funding has increased since 2020, but Lodriguez Murray, UNCF’s vice president for public policy and government relations, issued a warning that this does not necessarily indicate that HBCUs are no longer underfunded. Murray stated, “We consider this to be a drop in the bucket and the need is still extremely severe,” adding that the study did not expressly take into consideration the efforts of UNCF and other organizations that grant scholarships to HBCU students in order to reduce the costs of the institutions. She noted that even though funding has increased, there are still more demands.
