As the Black Alumni Collective National Conference convenes on the University of Pittsburgh’s campus under the theme, “The Fierce Urgency of Now: Black Advocacy from Campus to Corporate to Congress,” Dr. James R. Martin II, chancellor of North Carolina A&T University, says that despite the setbacks of the present “post-DEI environment” higher education is staring down, he sees a historic opening for some institutions.
The landscape has shifted, Martin argues — economically, technologically, and politically — and while institutions, their leaders, and their alumni cannot afford to respond slowly, Martin says he does see an opportunity for historically Black institutions to reassert their importance to the national agenda.
“We’re making this country better faster than a lot of other institutions,” Martin said in an interview with The EDU Ledger. He added that the conversation around the importance of HBCUs should focus squarely on return on investment, social justice imperative aside.
“What we are underplaying is how much, traditionally, this country has depended on us and our population for national defense and how much national defense has been more of an equalizer than most other programs for the Black community,” Martin said. He pointed out that HBCUs should be claiming significantly more funding from the U.S. Department of Defense as the 1890 Land Grant institutions are key producers of military talent through their ROTC programs alone.
“We’re very represented in the Armed Forces, but we haven’t gotten our share of funding from the Department of Defense,” he said. “The same top [Research 1] universities are essentially doubling their budgets.”
And it’s not just the military. From Black intellectual capital helping to advance the space race, to the impact of Black patent holders and businessmen and women on the national per capita gross domestic product (GDP), Martin points out that the economic future of this country is reliant on the Black intellectual labor force.
A relationship economy
As artificial intelligence continues to transform the culture of work and the demand for labor in the United States, Martin said, “The cost of specialized knowledge is approaching zero.
“For the first time in human history,” he said, “we [as a society] don’t seek knowledge anymore. We are assaulted by information.”
“We have always felt a sense of purpose from being seekers of information, creating new knowledge, building something new,” Martin continued, framing the current moment as one of profound historical discontinuity.
What replaces it, in his view, is something far more human.
“I think the next economy is going to be the relationship economy,” he said — one driven by emotional intelligence, resilience, and the ability to connect across differences. “Who can inspire, connect. Who has intelligence, who has resilience. Who can go out and do something new and learn and re-learn” — those are going to be the in-demand workers of the future, he said.
As knowledge becomes ubiquitous, what becomes scarce — and therefore valuable — are the distinctly human capacities that no algorithm can replicate: grit, resilience, creativity, and the ability to build relationships, he said.
And that is where HBCUs and their alumni excel.
“What you really need are the human skills of grit, resilience, being innovative, being resourceful, being connectors — I can’t tell you what an extraordinary component of excellence is grit and resilience. We naturally have that cultivation of people that have an extraordinary amount of grit and resilience.”
For Martin, the devaluation of information and even specialized expertise is not a threat — it’s an opening, particularly for institutions like A&T and the students they serve.
He pointed to concrete evidence at A&T. “We had to move our career fair off campus to the Greensboro Coliseum because there’s so much demand” for the university’s graduates, he said. “In this new economy, our students have never been in higher demand.”
From education as event to learning as lifestyle
Martin also pushed back against a long-standing assumption in higher education: that the institution’s relationship with a student ends at graduation.
“No longer can we just focus on education as an event that occurs at 18 to 23,” he said. “We’re going to have to look at learning for our entire career. Learning is going to have to be a lifestyle.” He described this as a shift “from higher education to higher learning” — one in which universities stay engaged with alumni throughout their careers, helping them make early investments, acquire property, and embrace ownership.
He also broadened the frame from individual outcomes to collective ones. “In the past, we have focused largely on the education of one individual at a time,” he said. “What we’re going to have to do now is focus on ecosystems, because the productivity and how well a person does now depends on their connection to resources.”
A new ask of alumni: generational velocity
Historically, Martin said, alumni engagement has centered on supporting current students — helping them navigate institutions, persist to graduation, and land their first jobs. That work remains important, but he believes the moment demands more.
“We’re going to have to focus on creating generational velocity,” he said. Rather than simply helping graduates survive, the goal is to accelerate their trajectory — connecting them with venture capitalists, supporting their first patent, creating early opportunities for ownership and upward social mobility. He also pointed to the value of international experience early in a career, and the importance of older alumni and their networks to help facilitate and support those exposure opportunities for younger alumni.
Alumni, networked together, have a unique capacity to bring those opportunities to the next generation, he said.
