HBCU advocates have spent years urging Congress to help them shore up their aging campus infrastructure and boost their research capabilities — and the Biden administration’s grant competition announcement earlier this month is the first step to attaining a new level of prestige that has long been out of reach for the institutions.
The Biden administration is readying two new grant competitions totaling nearly $100 million to support research infrastructure and student retention. About $50 million will go toward a research and development infrastructure grants which are slated to play a key role in fueling HBCU leaders’ push to attain the coveted Research-1 status — an indicator of research prowess that opens doors to research grants — which no HBCU holds.
The grants, which were funded during the last appropriations cycle, will bolster construction on campuses, but also expand the HBCU research footprint. While HBCUs are only 3 percent of colleges, they produce about 25 percent of all Black STEM graduates.
“The administration is very focused on helping an HBCU obtain the R1 designation,” said Lodriguez Murray, United Negro College Fund senior vice president of public policy and government affairs. “Good facilities help you recruit the right people and have strong researchers on your faculty. And then hopefully all the rest of the money flows from there because good researchers can then write good grants and then students can work with the best.”
Few HBCUs will be considered for the R1 race, but HBCU advocates are pressing for more funding because the rest of their institutions are often stepping stones to entering competitive STEM programs. “You have to support all of the institutions that are providing the entire ecosystem of potential researchers, the students that get those undergraduate degrees,” Murray said. “And that's going to take much more than the $50 million.”
This past year (FY23), FAMU recorded a 34 percent increase in sponsored research funding bring in nearly $100 million, while North Carolina A&T saw a year-over-year $50 million jump in research funding bringing in more than $147 million for FY23.