In April last year, just before reaching his 100th day in office, President Donald Trump issued an executive order pledging to uplift the country’s historically Black colleges and universities.
Calling them “beacons of educational excellence and economic opportunity,” the order reestablished a federal initiative that would collaborate with federal agencies, the private sector and other stakeholders to shepherd resources HBCUs have requested for decades.
Nearly 16 months later, there are few public details of its work. The initiative’s website has no record of its presidential board of advisers — which is supposed to convene at least once every six months — holding a single meeting. Nor does the website include an annual progress report required by the executive order.
In response to questions from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the U.S. Department of Education did not say if the board has met. It also did not offer an update on the annual progress report, other than to say it’s the responsibility of the initiative’s director, Kelly Mitchell. An email address on the initiative’s website did not respond to requests for comment.
Credit: AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana
Credit: AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana
Since Georgia’s own Jimmy Carter first created a federal HBCU initiative in 1980, every administration has issued executive orders to continue it in different forms. Despite the orders, advocates say the historically underfunded schools remain underfunded.
“Sometimes after proclamations get issued, you don’t always have the follow-up that you need. And that’s not targeted at this administration, that’s targeted at every White House,” said Bruce Thompson II of Parker Poe, a law firm that works with HBCUs in Georgia and elsewhere in the South.
For critics, Trump’s initiative represents more of the same: another executive order that nominally supports HBCUs but lacks follow-through. Others call Trump a friend of HBCUs and can point to last September when he effectively doubled their annual funding by allocating them an additional $435 million (although detractors noted the money came at the expense of Minority Serving Institutions).
But even with that one-time funding injection, many say the schools need further financial investment. After decades of presidential executive orders, they hope Trump and Congress can find a way to deliver.
“These schools have never received enough, through Republican and Democratic administrations,” U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., a Morehouse College alum, said in an interview with the AJC. “(They) have been doing so much for so many with so little for so very long that the best way to describe the legacy of HBCUs is to say what we say about God on Sunday morning in our Black churches: They’ve been making their way out of no way.”
Credit: (Ben Gray for the AJC)
Credit: (Ben Gray for the AJC)
Warnock is among several Georgia lawmakers of both parties sponsoring legislation that could deliver crucial funding to HBCUs. Whether or not those bills will actually pass a gridlocked Congress remains an open, multibillion-dollar question.
More with less
Data indicates HBCUs have been punching well above their weight for decades. Despite making up only 3% of the country’s colleges and universities, HBCUs produce 15% of all African American graduates, according to the UNCF.
In 2022, President Joe Biden’s administration found the nation’s roughly 100 HBCUs — including the 10 in Georgia — generate nearly $15 billion in economic impact and create more than 134,000 jobs annually. It also found that if all the nation’s 19 historically Black land-grant universities had been equitably funded between 1987 to 2020, they’d be $13 billion richer. Of the 19 schools, 16 were underfunded, including Fort Valley State University. According to the Biden administration’s letter to Gov. Brian Kemp, FVSU lost out on $603,156,480 during those three decades alone.
Short funds have created big needs for HBCUs. While enrolling a disproportionate number of low-income students, and with endowments far smaller than their predominantly white peers, HBCUs are often forced to delay infrastructure repairs to handle more pressing financial problems, said Brent Swinton, a University of Georgia alum.
“There’s too many of us living check to check, whereas the PWIs (predominantly white institutions) have gotten to the point where they have a nice inheritance,” said Swinton, now the vice president of philanthropic engagement at Bowie State University, a Maryland HBCU.
With adequate funding, advocates say, the potential for HBCUs is enormous.
“HBCUs have been doing more with less since we were founded,” said Marshall J. Taggart, Jr., who leads the governmental affairs team at Clark Atlanta University. “Imagine what we could do if we had more funding.”
HBCUs Not DEI
Even without details about the initiative’s work or its promised annual report, some HBCU advocates say the executive order itself carries significance.
Lodriguez Murray, vice president of government affairs at the UNCF, called the order “extraordinary.” Not only did it come from an administration that has taken a hardline stance against diversity, equity and inclusion programs, but it being issued within Trump’s first 100 days in office signals HBCUs are a priority for the administration, he said.
But some of the administration’s policies, including its anti-DEI position, have cost HBCUs in other ways.
When the White House terminated thousands of federal grants at universities nationwide, Morehouse School of Medicine lost six grants, according to LaShannon Spencer, the school’s head of government relations. After appealing, Spencer said it was able to get five of the contracts reinstated.
Not all schools were as fortunate. Spelman College, for instance, lost a multimillion-dollar award, according to Grant Witness, a project tracking the termination of scientific federal research grants throughout 2025.
Such losses can be deeply impactful for HBCUs operating on tight budgets. It cuts into a pool of funds that the schools already have trouble accessing; According to a 2025 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, of all the federal research dollars distributed to universities annually, HBCUs collectively receive roughly 1%.
Meanwhile, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act championed by Trump “compromised the ability of (low-income) students to go to college,” said Andre Perry, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.
“With policies that directly impact the financial capacity of Black families to afford higher education, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and Trump’s economic agenda risk reducing demand for HBCUs,” according to a 2025 Brookings report.
Endowment gaps
Even advocates pushing Washington for more money acknowledge that closing the HBCU funding gap will require more than federal action.
For public HBCUs, state support is vital.
LeAndrea Mikell, assistant vice president for government relations at Savannah State University, said it received a $42.8 million capital investment last year from the state Legislature, the largest in its history. Thanking Kemp and the University System of Georgia, she said the “transformational” investment would be used to modernize campus and enhance the student experience.
Private universities, on the other hand, rarely receive state funding and are instead reliant on donations and their endowments, according to a 2019 congressional committee report.
A 2021 Century Foundation report found that per student, private non-HBCU endowments are about seven times larger than at private HBCUs. While over 100 predominantly white institutions have billion-dollar endowments, only one HBCU (Howard University) has achieved the feat.
Schools with large endowments can maintain infrastructure and help more students afford tuition. That’s why Verdun Perry, chair of Morehouse College’s board of trustees, wants to grow the school’s endowment to at least $1 billion.
“Ideally, Morehouse (and) Spelman should be $2 billion endowment schools,” he said.
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
It’s a tall task. A recent Spelman financial statement lists its endowment at roughly $600 million. Perry approximated Morehouse’s sits at $340 million.
Even so, he believes the billion-dollar milestone is achievable. Nearly 18% of Morehouse alumni donate to the school, well above the national average, according to Perry. He wants to raise it even higher and to bring in larger gifts from non-alumni, such as the $16.5 million the college recently got from the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation.
He argued non-alumni will be inspired to give once they hear the school’s story: An undercapitalized institution that, like so many HBCUs, uses limited funds to transform the lives of talented, low- and middle-income students.
“There’s a multiplier effect of giving to Morehouse College,” said Perry, a 1994 alum. “You’re not just giving to Morehouse. You’re giving to broader society.”
A potential game changer
Congress has done a lot for HBCUs in recent years, said U.S. Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Suwanee, an alum and former student body president at the Morehouse School of Medicine.
Trump has expanded funding “like probably no administration in my lifetime,” McCormick told the AJC.
As one example, he pointed to the FUTURE Act; passed by Congress during Trump’s first term, it made permanent $255 million in annual federal funding that was set to expire.
Credit: Andrew Harnik
Credit: Andrew Harnik
Thompson said presidential executive orders can serve as a bully pulpit to encourage congressional action. But without that legislative follow-through — even with Trump’s one-time funding increase last fall — the schools may be left wanting.
“There’s no way out of poverty if you don’t address education,” said McCormick. “Think about what (HBCUs) mean to the community in Atlanta.”
McCormick, along with Democrat U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams, are cosponsoring a bill that would specifically help HBCUs secure federal research grants. Currently, HBCUs are at a disadvantage when competing for lucrative federal research contracts, said Warnock. For instance, the grants may require matching dollars that HBCUs can’t afford.
“So then they’re locked out,” said Warnock, who is sponsoring an identical bill in the Senate. “Or many of these large universities have entire departments dedicated to writing grants. That’s capacity I can tell you, as a graduate, that these HBCUs do not have.”
The bills have not had a vote in either congressional chamber since they were introduced this spring.
Advocates like the UNCF are pushing hard for Congress to pass the IGNITE bill. With nearly 40 co-sponsors on the House version, including McCormick and Williams, the bipartisan legislation would deliver funds for schools to address their aging infrastructure and to build new facilities without taking on debt.
“That would be a game changer for the life of an institution as well as the students on that campus,” said Murray of the UNCF.
No action has been taken on the legislation since May. Proponents fear it could face the same fate as versions of the bill in recent years, which failed to make it out of committee and died in Congress.
Hope in the blood
In some ways, many HBCUs today are thriving. Clark Atlanta University, Morehouse and Spelman colleges have seen a flood of applications; some say the surge is a backlash against anti-DEI policies.
The demand could increase further thanks to Netflix rebooting “A Different World.” Produced in Atlanta, it’s a sequel of the hit sitcom that boosted the popularity of HBCUs three decades ago.
Credit: Rodney Ho
Credit: Rodney Ho
Trump’s executive order helps, too. And although previous presidential proclamations have not resulted in the funding HBCUs say they need, they remain hopeful that this time, the president and Congress can deliver.
“We’ve always dealt with less, so optimism is in our blood,” said CAU’s Taggart.
About this project
This story was done in conjunction with a partnership with the Ida B. Wells Society HBCU Data Fellowship, a program designed to sharpen the skills of a select group of journalists. The reporting team interviewed several dozen students, HBCU officials, educators and others. The team reviewed federal reports, independent studies and other documents for the reporting.
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