When President Donald J. Trump addressed the 2019 HBCU Conference in Washington D.C. last week, he told the crowd of historically Black college and university leaders that his administration’s commitment to HBCUs is “bigger and better and stronger than any previous administration, by far.”
While HBCUs have enjoyed some success under Trump’s tenure, the president’s remarks paint an incomplete picture, according to some HBCU experts.
Dr. Ivory A. Toldson, a clinical psychology professor at Howard University, said Trump’s rhetoric struck him as “a bit bombastic and overstated.” Toldson was the executive director of the White House Initiative on HBCUs under former President Barack Obama. He now serves as the president and CEO of Quality Education for Minorities Network and is editor-in-chief of The Journal of Negro Education.
While Trump has maintained policies that benefit HBCUs, it’s hard to quantify a president’s success in this area, Toldson said. Congress and federal agencies like the Department of Education are largely responsible for policies that fund these institutions.
“With presidents, the only thing they can do is not obstruct Congress and not try to actively prevent anything they’re interested in funding,” he said.
Plus, by some measures, support for HBCUs has actually decreased under Trump.
For example, since 2016, federal funding for scientific research at HBCUs dropped by 17 percent, according to a 2019 report from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics.
