HBCUs engines of national progress since 1837.

UNCF was founded in 1944 to safeguard, through joint fundraising, institutions that were critical to educating our country when segregation was rampant. Today, we call these institutions Historically Black Colleges and Universities or HBCUs.

HBCUs have proven to be engines of social and economic and cultural progress for generations.
HBCUs support best practices, pedagogy and systems that have proven remarkably effective in lifting the outcomes for students that society has too often left behind.
HBCUs leverage and share their hard-won expertise so that all students—from every background and region—benefit from the promise of higher education.
Nicole Tinson Dillard University
“It was an HBCU that took a chance on me. It was an HBCU that gave me infinite amounts of courage. And it is this courage that allowed me to be where I am today.”

—Nicole Tinson

Dillard University Graduate and CEO of HBCU 20×20
WhyHBCUs-001
WhyHBCUs-002
WhyHBCUs-003
UNCF009_WebsiteUpdates_WhyHBCUs_004
Research conducted by UNCF’s Frederick D. Patterson Institute
Research conducted by UNCF’s Frederick D. Patterson Institute

THE OUTSIZED IMPACT OF HBCUs

Continually challenged by structural and systemic inequities, HBCUs still outperform their better-resourced counterparts.

Liftetime Earnings

HBCU graduates can earn 56% more than they could without these college.

Social Mobility

HBCU graduates are 51% more likely than peer graduates to move into a higher-income quartile

Return-On-Investment

Every dollar an HBCU and its students spend generates $1.44 in spending for local and regional economies.

Workforce Development

HBCUs generate 134,090 jobs per year for local and regional economies.

Economic Impact

HBCUs create $14.8billion per year in total economic impact.

[HBCUs must] remain the beacons that
they’ve been for more than a century and a half:

Crucibles of learning where students discover their full potential and forge the character required to realize it;

Catalysts of change where young people put their hands on the arc of history and move this nation closer to the ideals of its founding; and the

Cradles of opportunity where each generation inherits the American Dream—and keeps it alive for the next.

Former President Barack Obama
opr060121levdig-073-1623188864
IF NOT FOR HBCUs…

Juneteenth would be just another day.

On June 19, 1865, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, Union troops freed men and women still enslaved in Galveston, Texas. More than 150 years later, Wiley College alum Opal Lee finally won her battle to get this day recognized as a national holiday. The 93-year-old activist stood beside Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee and President Biden as he signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act.

WATCH VIDEO
Chadwick-Boseman-Oscars
IF NOT FOR HBCUs…

Black arts wouldn’t be a global phenomenon.

The Harlem Renaissance, Spike Lee joints, The Black Panther and countless more. The brilliant heights of HBCU grads cannot be contained within any structure, industry or national boundary. Creatives like Oprah Winfrey, Chadwick Boseman and Will Packer polished their crafts at an HBCU, embodying the worlds of Toni Morrison, a Howard University alum: “Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.”

WATCH VIDEO
Band[1]
IF NOT FOR HBCUs…

Black culture and traditions would not march on.

Across music, fine arts, visual arts, the fashion industry, television and film, the cultural influence of HBCU graduates remains unparalleled. Even the legacy of HBCU marching bands is reshaping popular culture.

WATCH VIDEO
UNITE 2026

JULY 19-23, 2026

Signia by Hilton | Atlanta, GA