Research & Studies

From fiscal year 2018 to fiscal year 2022, federal research funding to HBCUs increased from 0.9 percent to 1.5 percent of the total federal research funding granted to colleges and universities. Funding increased the most from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the National Science Foundation.

“My mathematical findings show that even if we hypothetically lived in a seemingly utopian world where everyone was starting off on equal footing and there were colorblind policies, minorities would still face disadvantages in social and economic opportunities over time because of social network dynamics arising from their group size being smaller,” said Chika Okafor of Northwestern University.

In 2024, the median Black household income was 60.5 percent of the median income of non-Hispanic White families. In 2023, the income gap was 63.4 percent. In 2022, the figure was 65.2 percent.

Using brain-imaging technology, a team of researchers led by Columbia University has found that in split-second decisions, racial stereotypes can prompt people to mistake everyday objects as weapons.

Chronic health conditions are the leading causes of death for adults in the United States. However, the specific conditions contributing to mortality differed by race and ethnicity, according to a new study led by researchers at the Yale School of Medicine. For Black adults, hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, and dementia were found to be the leading causes of mortality among older adults.

Nearly 30 percent of all Black Americans over age 25 held at least a bachelor's degree in 2024, compared to over 38 percent of White American adults. The gap in graduate degree attainment is much smaller, with 9 percent of Black adults and 11 percent of White adults holding a master's degree as their highest level of education.

For students in the high school graduating class of 2024, 55.0 percent of graduates of schools with greater shares of nonwhite students immediately enrolled in college in the fall 2024 semester, compared to 62.7 percent of their peers at low-minority schools.

“Almost daily, since January 20, 2025, the federal government, at the direction the White House, has set fire to policies and entire departments dedicated to protecting civil and human rights, providing access to an equal education, fair housing, safe and effective healthcare, and ensuring that our democratic process is adhered to across the nation,” the report authors write.

In a new report from the University of Southern California, scholars have found 61 percent of Black student affairs professionals at U.S. colleges and universities have experienced racism on campus, the majority of which was driven by White students, faculty, and staff, as well as external work contacts.

According to a new study, school finance reforms that were designed to close spending gaps between high and low-income school districts increased spending disparities between districts with low and high percentages of Black and Hispanic students.

Since 1979, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has periodically interviewed individuals born between 1957 and 1964 - the latter years of the baby boomer generation. Their latest data, collected in 2022 and 2023, documents this birth cohort's experiences in labor force participation from ages 18 to 58.

Heterodox Academy, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that advocates for increasing “viewpoint diversity” on college campuses, has examined more than 10,000 faculty job ads to analyze the prevalence of requests to include DEI-related materials in faculty applications.

“Across all institution types, [stakeholders] need high-quality data about how students across all racial groups are appraising and experiencing classrooms and out-of-class environments,” the authors write. “Simply conducting climate assessments and having the data are not enough – practitioners must use what they learn to strategically inform policymaking, practice, and curriculum.”

In the years immediately following the Civil War, many Black Americans gained access to education for the first time. Although many of these new opportunities were systemically dismantled by the end of Reconstruction, Black children who were exposed to these brief educational benefits had better economic opportunities in adulthood, and passed those benefits on to their children.

Compared to the mean of medical school matriculants from 2019 to 2023, there was a significant decline in the share of matriculants from racial backgrounds underrepresented in medicine compared to their White and Asian peers. Notably, declines were most pronounced at institutions located in states without prior state-level affirmative action bans.

Today, 64 percent of all U.S. adults think racism against Black Americans is widespread. Black adults are the most likely racial group to agree, with 83 percent holding this sentiment. In comparison, 64 percent of Hispanic adults and 61 percent of White adults say the same.

People who live in historically redlined neighborhoods, which have lower shares of White residents and higher shares of Black residents, are less likely to live within five minutes of an emergency medical services station - the national benchmark for critical call response time.

Although no HBCUs were included in a new LinkedIn report regarding the top colleges for alumni career outcomes, the networking website released a supplemental ranking list of the top HBCUs for long-term career success, with Howard University, Morehouse College, and Spelman College receiving the best evaluations.

If agencies and institutions use current reporting standards that group all multiracial students into a single category, Black students' reported representation of U.S college students would reflect about 13 percent. However, if multiracial students were counted within each race category they identified with, Black students' representation would jump to 19.7 percent.

After the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, there was a major increase in investment for Black-owned businesses, particularly from investors who had never previously invested in a single Black entrepreneur, according to a study led by researchers at Cornell University. However, investment in Black-founded startups was short-lived, returning to prior levels within two years.