Trump issues executive order support HBCUs; critics say plan lacks substance, funding
By the Arkansas Black Vitality Staff
April 26, 2025 – In a surprise move that caught many Black college supporters off guard, President Donald Trump this week announced a White House initiative to elevate and advance the nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).
As is his preferred governing approach, Trump issued an executive order on Wednesday (April 23) removing administration, oversight, and funding of HBCUs from the U.S. Department of Education back to the Executive Office of the President, where it resided in the president’s first term.
During a ceremony at the White House, Trump said he is committed to elevating HBCUs as beacons of educational excellence and economic opportunity, building on transformative actions from his first term.
“ (HBCUs) remain integral to American students’ pursuit of prosperity and well-being, providing the pathway to a career and a better life,” Trump said. “This order will continue the work begun during my first administration to elevate the value and impact of our nation’s HBCUs as beacons of educational excellence and economic opportunity that serve as some of the best cultivators of tomorrow’s leaders in business, government, academia, and the military.”
However, considered together with other executive orders that Trump signed to reshape the nation’s K-12 and higher education systems in the administration’s conservative mold, critics are not yet convinced because the initiative makes no funding commitment.
In an April 24 article in Diverse Issues in Higher Education, Dr. Marybeth Gasman, the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Endowed Chair in Education and Distinguished Professor at Rutgers University, offered measured support for the initiative.
“On the surface, the Order is a positive step and follows the support of past presidents since its inception under President Jimmy Carter. Trump’s Executive Order acknowledges HBCUs’ essential role in shaping Black leadership, intellect, and economic mobility,” said Gasman, an expert on HBCUs and the co-author of The Power of Historically Black Colleges and Universities with Dr. Levon Esters.
“However, what is missing is any commitment to new federal funding. We’ll have to see what President Trump does next,” said Gasman.
In the same article, Lodriguez Murray, senior vice president of public policy and government affairs at UNCF, said he is hopeful that the president’s order will serve as a springboard for Congress, the private sector, philanthropic organizations, state and local governments and the community to increase the critically needed funding support for HBCUs.
“The executive order is like the appetizer, but the meal is the level of funding and that is what we are looking for,” he said. “We’re seeing a resurgence in students attending HBCUs. This is wonderful but it places added pressure on the infrastructures of HBCUs. The level of commitment following this executive order will be determined by the level of funding for HBCUs in the 2026 federal budget process.”
The new Trump administration HBCU initiative, among other things, revokes former President Biden’s executive order Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity Through HBCUs in September 2021. It also directs the Environmental Protection Agency administrator to terminate the HBCU and MSI Advisory Council within 14 days.
In addition, the new HBCU initiative adopts much of the aspirational language contained in the HBCU Partners Act of 2019, sponsored by Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina. This act emphasizes the importance of HBCUs in driving workforce development, innovation, and educational access. It outlines several goals: strengthening institutional capacity, expanding public-private partnerships, improving student outcomes, and encouraging state support for 1890 Land-Grant HBCUs.
However, President Trump’s HBCU initiative, a key plank of every POTUS since the late President Jimmy Carter, does not include any apparent financial or funding commitments or statutory authority that carries the weight of law. Under former President Biden’s HBCU initiative, HBCUs across the U.S. received nearly $1.6 billion in immediate investments within a week of his executive order. Between 2021 and 2024, the Biden administration directed $17 billion, including $1.3 billion in 2024 alone.
Under the new White House initiative, the new HBCU office will be led by an executive of the president’s choosing. Trump’s order also establishes the new President’s Board of Advisors on HBCUs with the DOE. The White House did not address what would happen to the advisory panel once the DOE is dismantled, which Trump has promised to do.
The new presidential initiative will work with executive departments and agencies across the federal government, private-sector employers, educational associations, philanthropic organizations, and other partners to increase the capacity of HBCUs to provide the highest-quality education to an increasing number of students.
One group that effusively praised the president’s order was the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, which supports Black education institutions from kindergarten through college and was a key backer of Sen. Scott’s HBCU Partners Act.
Following the ceremony at the White House, Thurgood Marshall College Fund (TMCF) extended appreciation to President Trump for signing an executive order and reinforcing key TMCF policy priorities for the HBCU community.
“Today’s executive order serves as strong reaffirmation of President Trump’s support of investment of HBCUs,” said TMCF President & CEO Dr. Harry L. Williams . “This executive order should serve as a call-to-action for corporations, foundations, members of Congress, and state lawmakers to redouble their efforts to support HBCUs and their students. TMCF looks forward to continued engagement with the administration and Congress to deliver results for HBCUs and the students they serve via appropriations and other legislative actions.”
Along with the HBCU initiative, President Trump signed six other executive orders last week addressing broad aspects of the U.S. education sector, including elementary, secondary and postsecondary institutions, as well as accrediting agencies and workforce education programs.
For instance, the president’s “Reinstating Common Sense School Discipline Policies” critiques former President Biden’s joint guidance issued in 2023 by the Department of Education and the Department of Justice, which provided a resource to confront and combat racial discrimination in K-12 student disciplinary practices. However, Trump’s order states that such guidance “reinstated the practice of weaponizing Title VI to promote an approach to school discipline based on discriminatory equity ideology.”
Likewise, his “Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy” takes aim at the content and effect of disparate-impact claims of unlawful discrimination, asserting that such theories of liability” [hold] that a near insurmountable presumption of unlawful discrimination exists where there are any differences in outcomes in certain circumstances among different races, sexes, or similar groups, even if there is no facially discriminatory policy or practice or discriminatory intent involved, and even if everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed.”
Another executive order directs the Secretary of Education to investigate and hold accountable accreditors of institutions of higher education that engage in unlawful discriminatory practices through DEI initiatives and to reform and streamline the accreditation process.
During his first day in office, Trump signed what the White House termed “a historic executive order” terminating all DEI programs, positions, and preferences across the federal government while compelling federal agencies “to relentlessly combat private sector discrimination.”