Featured Research

"HBCUs occupy a sacred and contested space in the United States. Sacred because of the sacrifice and endurance of those who founded and sustained them and contested because since their mid-nineteenth century founding (the earliest founded in 1837), HBCUs have been continuously asked to justify their existence in a nation that undervalues them yet is a beneficiary of their work. The constant requirement to prove their value, argue their relevance, and, most recently, demonstrate their ROI (return on investment) has relegated HBCUs to a defensive posture that is at best unnecessary, and at worst supports a fictive narrative that is institutionally and culturally destructive."

Another change occurring at U.S. law schools is the development of law school centers, clinics and institutes that focus primarily on racial justice issues. Howard University School of Law, a historically Black law school in D.C., offers a "movement lawyering clinic" that provides hands-on training in how to support human rights campaigns for disenfranchised people in the U.S. "We seek to support campaigns that are promoting racial justice causes, and those campaigns may involve structural changes or they may involve some campaigns to create a change in practices around bail reform or criminal justice reform or reparations or the school-to-prison pipeline," says Justin Hansford, executive director and founder of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center at Howard and a professor in the law school. In law school clinics generally, some students get supervised practice representing individual clients who have cases that relate to racial justice. However, that's different from what happens in Howard's new clinic, Hansford says. "In those campaigns, we work directly with people who are also on the ground seeking to create racial justice in society, and I think that's irreplaceable," he says.

Excellence in Undergraduate Education Must Include Equity, Says Influential Group  “Defining excellence in terms of equity rather than, for example, selectivity and sorting, unsettles at least 70-odd years of practice,” the authors state in "The Equity-Excellence Imperative: A 2030 Blueprint for Undergraduate Education at U.S. Research Universities." “Excellence founded in equity requires us to think differently about why we do what we do, not only what we do and how we do it.”

This research examines the benefits of attending HBCUs vs PWI for black college students. Using a College Board Data set merged with National Student Clearing House data this paper finds that there is an increase in the likelihood of graduating with a bachelor's degree for black students attending an HBCU. Additionally, when comparing only those students who graduate, HBCUs are more likely to produce a black STEM graduate.

Hill, N.J., H. Kurban, W. Spriggs, and O.H. Swinton, An Empirical Analysis of HBCU Attendance on Black Student’s Graduation Rates, Journal of Negro Education (accepted) 2022

Today, American college and university presidents face ever-increasing pressures from internal and external stakeholders. As a result, institutions are investing more resources to minimize presidential turnover (Harris and Ellis 2018) and, if needed, optimize the presidential search process. Despite these efforts, studies on presidential searches are scarce. Moreover, little is known about the roles and perceptions of search consultants in presidential searches (McDade et al. 2017), particularly regarding diversity efforts.

Burmicky, J., McClure, K.R., Gonzales, J., McCoy, C.J. (2023). Equity-minded principles for presidential searches in higher education. American Council on Education.

Women hold nearly 2/3 of the $1.7 trillion in #studentloans. This crisis especially impacts Black women who live at the intersection of 2 marginalized identities. Check out @EdTrust's brief on How Black Women Experience #StudentDebt

Victoria Jackson and Brittani Williams, The Education Trust 

"How we promote diversity can start by learning the lessons from history as well as seeing the opportunities. In this piece, I also call for folks to see the historic role that HBCUs could play once again if they are given the resources to support Black students and students of color." 

Denise Smith, Senior Fellow, The Century Foundation

The growing use of Parent PLUS loans by Black parents and their struggles with repayment illustrate that higher education finance and financial aid policies have failed. It is not sustainable to saddle two generations with debt to pay for one degree. 

Victoria Jackson, Brittani Williams, and Jalil B. Mustaffa, Ph.D.

Our country is in the midst of a reckoning of how it treats its Black citizens, churches, communities, and institutions, including HBCU land-grant universities. Today, these institutions, which lead the nation in educating the next generation of Black scientists and leaders, still face discrimination and hate-filled violence, Yet, the question still remains: Where would the nation be without them? During these troubling times when the nation is divided over how to close inequitable racial gaps in education, income, and wealth, the 1890 institutions are offering hope, teaching new skills, producing the next generation of Black scientists and leaders, and enhancing prosperity for marginalized Black individuals and communities. As the nation struggles with these issues, it should look to the institutions it supports the least to help close these gaps.

Denise Smith, Senior Fellow, The Century Foundation