Why This Executive Order Isn’t the Win It Claims to Be for HBCUs

The White House recently announced a new Executive Order titled “White House Initiative to Promote Excellence and Innovation at Historically Black Colleges and Universities.” On the surface, it sounds like a positive step—but when we take a closer look, it becomes clear that this executive order offers more optics than outcomes. Despite the historic role HBCUs play in advancing educational and health equity, this new directive includes no new funding, no structural safeguards, and no measurable commitments. In a time when Black students and the institutions that serve them are under constant pressure, symbolism alone simply isn’t enough.

What It Claims to Do: 

• Establish the White House Initiative on HBCUs within the Executive Office of the President and the President’s Board of Advisors on HBCUs within the Department of Education.
• Revoke the Biden Administration’s Executive Order, “White House Initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity Through Historically Black Colleges and Universities”, shifting the federal focus from educational equity and racial justice to private sector partnerships and institutional development.
• Terminate the HBCU and Minority Serving Institutions Advisory Council within the Environmental Protection Agency.
• Support the HBCU Partners Act, which requires certain agencies to submit plans on how they will improve HBCUs competitiveness for grant funding.

Why It Doesn’t Actually Change Much: 

• There are no new federal funding commitments for HBCUs. Instead, the executive order promotes private sector partnerships and increasing HBCU funding competitiveness. 
• The executive order directs the Department of Education to provide funding for the President’s Board of Advisors on HBCUs–not HBCUs themselves. This funding also depends on Congressional appropriations, which the President cannot guarantee. 
• It establishes the President’s Board of Advisors on HBCUs within a department that the Trump Administration has ongoing plans to dismantle: the Department of Education. 
• The executive order speaks broadly about promoting academic excellence and student success, but offers no clear metrics for tracking that progress.  

At its core, this EO is performative. It offers no new policy, funding mechanisms, or structural support for HBCUs.  HBCUs have always done more with less, but this moment demands more.

Our Black students deserve more than empty words. They deserve real, sustained investment that equips them with the education and opportunities they need to live full, healthy lives. Anything less is a disservice to the value that they, and the HBCUs they come from, bring to our communities and to our country.