Predominantly Black Institutions (PBIs) are not well understood in the higher education lexicon, despite serving a large number of students of color: namely, a large number of black or African Amer­ican students.

When people think about colleges and universities that enroll large percentages of Black students, they often think of HBCUs, a group of institutions that initially came into being in 1837. The emergence of PBIs is in fact very recent, first recognized by Con­gress through the Predominantly Black Institution Act of 2007. As that law states, PBIs play an essential and often mission-driven role in providing postsecondary access and training to low- and middle-income black and other minority students.