President Joe Biden speaks at the 2024 National HBCU Week Conference (Photo/AP/Matt Rourke)
By Karen Stokes
On Monday, coinciding with National Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) Week, President Biden addressed the Annual HBCU Week Conference in Philadelphia, announcing an additional $1.3 billion in federal investments for HBCUs.
With these new investments, combined with the previously announced $16 billion in total federal investments in HBCUs, the Biden-Harris Administration has set another record of over $17 billion in federal investments in HBCUs from Fiscal Years (FY) 2021 through current available data for FY 2024.
“Together, Kamala and I know that an education makes a person free, HBCU education makes you fearless as well,” said Biden, who pointed out the challenges these schools face. “We all know that HBCU students are just as capable as other students. But the [schools] don’t have the endowments.”
The additional $1.3 billion in federal investments announced today will further build on the Administration’s commitments and on HBCUs’ demonstrated history of delivering
excellence.
These investments include:
• $188 million in competitive grants to HBCUs through the Department of Education, including grants that will support R&D capacity building.
• $1.1 billion in funding to support students at HBCUs directly through need-based grants and other federal programs, including Pell Grants.
The funding will be used to pair students with different industries, with an emphasis on federally granted programs that help with careers in STEM and IT jobs in engineering and cybersecurity.
“At this time more than $16 billion has been allocated to HBCUs, that is more than any administration in the history of our nation. This money has been used for a number of things including infrastructure updates and research and development funding,” said Dietra Trent, executive director of the White House Initiative on HBCUs.
The White House cited new research by the United Negro College Fund, which funds scholarships for Black students and general scholarship funds for HBCUs. The report found that HBCUs generate$16.5 billion annually in economic impact on communities across the United States, as well as more than 136,000 jobs and $146 billion in collective lifetime earnings for their graduates.
As such, the Biden-Harris Administration has made it a priority to expand the capacity of HBCUs to offer high-quality STEM education programs and to compete for federal R&D dollars. In the first six months of the Administration, President Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act– which requires federal research agencies to provide funding and other support for expanding the R&D capacity of HBCUs. The Biden-Harris Administration has worked diligently to implement this law.
“This administration has continued to invest. He knows the importance of our schools and he values diversity like no other president has ever valued diversity, and HBCUs are really benefiting from it,” Trent said.
HBCUs represent 3% of U.S. colleges and universities, according to the Department of Education, yet provide college access to twice as many Pell Grant–eligible, low- and middle-income students as non-HBCU institutions.