A steady increase since 2017 in federal funding for historically Black colleges and universities and their students is a sign that lawmakers are becoming more informed about how HBCUs disproportionately graduate African-Americans and impact economies, according to participants in a media briefing Tuesday about a new study by the United Negro College Fund.
Lodriguez Murray, UNCF’s vice president for public policy and government affairs, cited a fiscal year 2018 budget increase of more than $78 million – a double-digit-percentage hike that came a few months after the UNCF’s 2017 impact study – plus a $25-million increase six months later for the fiscal 2019 budget and legislation in Congress now that would increase current allocations by more than 30 percent for the next fiscal year.
“We were able to tell at the national level, at the statewide level and at the city and locale level that our institutions individually and collectively were having a positive impact on their states and on the nation,” said Murray. “So, legislators were able to understand the need to increase funding. We were able to show the economic-impact report and the stats about the numbers being educated by HBCUs in those locales, and show the institutions in a light they had not been shown recently.”
The UNCF hopes its newest research report, HBCUs Punching Above Their Weight, will fuel the momentum that is helping the typically small and chronically under-resourced colleges and universities continue to outperform other schools in educating and graduating African-American students.
According to the study, conducted by UNCF’s Frederick D. Patterson Research Institute, the approximately 100 HBCUs in 21 U.S. states and territories enroll and degree Black students in outsized numbers despite the institutions’ smaller sizes and financial challenges:
• HBCUs in Virginia represent 11 percent of the state’s colleges and universities but account for 29 percent of the state’s Black college students and 32 percent of its Black college graduates.
· Florida HBCUs, which are 4 percent of the state’s four-year colleges and universities, enroll 9 percent of the state’s Black undergraduates and award 18 percent of all bachelor’s degrees earned by Black college graduates.
