Historically Black Colleges and Universities, often known by the acronym HBCUs, play a unique role, reinforcing the importance of community, culture and education to each new generation of students that roam their campus grounds.
These schools—107 of them nationwide, most of them public—have had a historic year of funding, with the Biden-Harris administration supporting record investment into the institutions. These funds, along with endowments and funds allotted by the state, provide support to different facets of academia, from renovations to student funding.
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Endowments are classified as money or other financial assets that are donated to academic institutions; many colleges and universities in the U.S. depend on a mix of state funding and endowments to operate. We congratulate the heavy hitters of this list of top HBCU endowments (by way of comparison, the largest endowment held by a non-HBCU school is at Harvard—$49 billion), and encourage those looking to support the growth and development of HBCUs to take a look into their goals and missions, and those of the other 97 institutions throughout the United States.
Donations to endowments for these institutions prove that we are societally vested in the spirit of knowledge and see value in what was built for us. As Malcolm X said, “Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.”
Howard University
$926 million Endowment value per full-time student (an indicator of a school’s capacity for offering financial aid) – $81,341
Spelman College
$475 million Endowment value per full-time student – $197,713
Hampton University
$349 million* Endowment value per full-time student – $109,152
Morehouse College
$186 million* Endowment value per full-time student – $83,381
Meharry Medical College
$179 million Endowment value per full-time student – $165,39
North Carolina A&T State University
$165 million Endowment value per full-time student – N/A
Florida A&M University
$113 million Endowment value per full-time student – $6,044
Morgan State University
$101 million Endowment value per full-time student – N/A
Virginia State University
$101 million Endowment value per full-time student – N/A
Norfolk State University
$83 million Endowment value per full-time student – $16,149
Source: The National Association of College and University Business Officers, 2023; *2022.
Joy Madison has an MBA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale and is a project manager with expertise in CRM, design tools and various productivity applications.
