‘HBCUs survived’: Historically Black colleges are poised to get billions in spending bill
Historically Black colleges and universities are poised to receive an estimated $3 billion or more in federal funding as part of a spending deal that the White House reached with members of Congress, HBCU advocates say.
The amount was less than President Joe Biden had sought, but HBCU advocacy groups expressed relief that it was more than what they were bracing for in the legislation that did not include other parts of Biden’s domestic agenda.
“Free community college is gone. Family paid leave is gone. And HBCUs survived,” said Victor Santos, director of government relations for the HBCU advocacy group Thurgood Marshall College Fund.
The HBCU funding was part of a total of about $10 billion in the legislation slated for institutions that serve minorities, which also include tribal colleges and universities and schools with large Hispanic student populations.
Biden had initially wanted to provide minorityserving institutions and their students with more than $90 billion in benefits in his jobs and families plans.
His early agenda included $39 billion in tuition subsidies for students at those schools whose parents make less than $125,000 a year. But the president ran into opposition over the total cost of his programs, and the proposed tuition subsidies were left out of the legislation that is making its way through Congress.
Low-income students attending any institution will get as much as $550 more to help pay for tuition if they are part of the Pell grant program. It would bring the total maximum award per academic year to more than $7,000 a student.
“There’s a lot more work to do over the next three years to help the president bring his promises to bear, but this a very strong start,” said Lodriguez Murray, senior vice president of public policy and government affairs at the United Negro College Fund.
HBCU advocacy groups argued that the current proposal is significantly better than an earlier version of the House bill that gave minority institutions roughly $2 billion to share and made them compete for grants against larger educational institutions, a plan that was met with fierce opposition by the groups.
The presidents of Thurgood Marshall College
Fund and the United Negro College Fund shared their apprehension over the House proposal with Vice President Kamala Harris in a call last Tuesday, the organizations said.
Harris reiterated her support for HBCUs and Biden’s commitment to the institutions, two participants on the call said, and pledged that the administration would work to alleviate the groups’ concerns. The vice president attended Howard University, an HBCU in Washington, D.C.
Harris’ office declined to comment on the details of the conversation.
Cedric Richmond, a senior adviser to Biden, said in an interview that the call with Harris was to acknowledge the vice president’s continued support for HBCUs. He said “no one had to convince” the White House to push for more money.
HBCU advocacy groups said the call with Harris may not be directly responsible for the funding in the new proposal, but it helped to draw attention within the Biden administration to their concerns about the House bill.