Financial Aid

In total, historically Black community colleges received over $2.7 billion in federal relief funding during the pandemic. Nearly $800 million was issued for direct student aid disbursements and $1.9 billion was allocated for institutional spending.

Here is this week’s news of grants or gifts to historically Black colleges and universities or for programs of particular interest to African Americans in higher education.

Over the past two decades, 50 percent of Black and 40 percent of Hispanic student loan borrowers have experienced a loan default, compared to 29 percent of their White counterparts.

The program promises that if an eligible student's post-graduate income is less than $45,000, LRAP will assist with repaying federal, private, and parent PLUS loans. The university states that this unique initiative is the first of its kind at a historically Black college or university.

Over the past 20 years, Black Americans have made significant progress in educational attainment, but racial disparities remain in certain areas of postsecondary education.

Congresswoman Nikema Williams (GA-05) has introduced the Minority Entrepreneurship Grant Program Act, bipartisan legislation that creates a grant program with the Small Business Administration for entrepreneurs at minority-serving institutions like historically Black colleges and universities.

Historically Black Coppin State University in Baltimore announced new full-time undergraduate degree-seeking students admitted to the university from more than 30 states and U.S. territories outside of Maryland, will be eligible to pay in-state tuition upon enrollment. For the 2022-23 academic year, tuition at Coppin State was $6,904 for Maryland residents and $13,560 for students from outside Maryland.

The department of Africana studies at Georgia State University has announced the establishment of the Jacqueline Rouse-Doris Derby Africana Studies Fellowship program. The program honors two women who played a significant role in the development of the Africana studies program at the university.

Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and the Norman and Ruth Rales Foundation recently announced CMU Rales Fellows Program is expected each year to underwrite 86 graduate students in STEM fields in perpetuity, educating thousands of research and industry leaders in the coming decades.

In the month they were surveyed, 37 percent of Black parent-borrowers said they expected to be unable to make a partial payment on their student loan bills, compared to 20 percent for all other groups.

Loyola University Chicago received a $100 million gift to fund full scholarships, room and board, and an array of comprehensive support services for aspiring Black, Latino, first-generation, and other ethnically and racially diverse students who are historically underrepresented in higher education.

Robert F. Smith, founder and CEO of Vista Equity Partners, announced a gift of $15 million to the College of Engineering at Cornell University. The funds will be used to establish an endowed scholarship fund to provide financial aid for Cornell engineering students from urban high schools and graduates of HBCUs.

A new scholarship at Yale Divinity School honors Rena Karefa-Smart, the first Black woman to graduate from the school. Dr. Karefa-Smart was also the first Black woman to earn a theology doctorate from Harvard Divinity School and the first female professor to earn tenure at the Howard University School of Divinity.

The Thomas Wyatt Turner Fellowship will support up to 10 graduate students from 1890 institutions, which are historically Black colleges and universities that are land-grant universities. They will spend the 2022-23 academic year on the Cornell University campus.

Awards are for one year of study in the Cornell Law School LLM program or the Global Development program in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. The fellow receives a $20,000 stipend and a college tuition waiver. David Arnaud Ngam à Kibeng from Cameroon is the inaugural fellow.

The scholarship is named for Thaddeus Alexander Kitchener, who was the first student of color to graduate from Suffolk Law. Originally from Jamaica, Kitchener graduated in 1913. Before being accepted at Suffolk Law, Kitchener was working as a janitor at what is now Simmons University in Boston. After law school, Kitchener continued to work as a janitor until at least 1918.

In addition to financial assistance, Visa Black Scholars will work with mentors from the company, receive year-round programming and training aimed at developing their professional and technical skills, and will also be provided opportunities for paid internships. Those who meet program requirements will be invited to join Visa full-time after graduation.

A new report from the U.S. Department of Education finds that some 7.2 percent of Black undergraduates said they withdrew from their college or university during the first few months of the pandemic, more than double the rate for Whites. Another 5.6 percent of all Black undergraduates took a leave of absence, almost double the rate for Whites.