MacKenzie Scott is bypassing the Ivy League and rewriting the $79 billion higher ed playbook by giving to HBCUs and community colleges

Americans gave an estimated $78.8 billion to colleges and universities in fiscal year 2025, a 4% year-over-year increase that barely kept up with inflation, according to survey findings released Tuesday from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.

Recommended Video

But that figure doesn’t fully illustrate where the money is actually going or which schools have historically been left out. Between 2015 and 2019, the average Ivy League school received 178 times as much philanthropic funding as the average HBCU, according to a study by Candid. Total Ivy League gifts over that period topped $5.5 billion, while HBCUs collectively took in just $303 million.

Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott has stepped in to close that gap, especially as government funding for historically Black colleges and universities has been yanked by the Trump administration.

During the past five years, Scott has donated more than $1.2 billion to HBCUs, making her one of the most significant donors in that category. (In all, Scott has donated well over $26 billion to thousands of organizations.) In 2025 alone, she gave more than $700 million to more than a dozen HBCUs and affiliated organizations.

Scott has also expanded her higher ed giving to include community colleges, Hispanic-serving institutions, and tribal colleges, many of which had never received a gift anywhere close to this size.

Scott’s largest donations to HBCUs

Many of the donations Scott has made to higher ed institutions are historic. Howard University, the alma mater of former Vice President Kamala Harris, Thurgood Marshall, and Toni Morrison, received $80 million in November 2025—one of the largest single donations in the school’s history, with $17 million earmarked for Howard’s College of Medicine.

This gift came at an especially critical time for Howard. As of Oct. 1, 2025, new grant awards from the Department of Education have been halted because nearly 95% of non-student aid staff were furloughed, leaving only essential staff to keep working.

That left key programs like the HBCU Capital Financing Program, which offers renovation and construction-loan subsidies, in limbo, even as the Education Department announced in September 2025 a $495 million increase for HBCUs and tribally controlled colleges and universities (TCCUs) for FY 2025. But experts say this action is hard to reconcile with the Trump administration’s desire to dissolve the DOE.

“If [the Trump administration] actually … cared about HBCUs and tribal colleges, then you would not see such a big attack on other sectors of higher education,” Mike Hoa Nguyen, an associate professor of education at UCLA, told The American Prospect in October 2025.

Other major gifts to HBCUs from Scott include a $63 million donation to Morgan State University (the largest gift in its history); Prairie View A&M also received $63 million, and Bowie State, Norfolk State, Virginia State, and Winston-Salem State each landed $50 million. In early April, Elizabeth City State University celebrated a $42 million gift on its Founders Day. That donation pushed Scott’s cumulative HBCU total past the billion-dollar mark.

Scott also gave $70 million to the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) in 2025, aimed at strengthening pooled endowments for private HBCUs. She also gave $70 million to the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, which represents public HBCUs.

“MacKenzie Scott is rewriting the book on individual philanthropy, and she’s making a huge difference,” UNCF president and CEO Dr. Michael Lomax said in a PBS NewsHour interview following the UNCF gift.

Why Scott’s gifts come at the right time

The Trump administration’s fiscal year 2026 budget proposal calls for a 14.4% reduction in Title III funding, which is the federal program that helps HBCUs, tribal colleges, and other under-resourced institutions improve their academic programs, management, and financial stability. This brings the budget down to roughly $668 million.

“The budget continues the illegal dismantling of the Department of Education, with no suggestion on how this downsized Department will be able to fulfill its statutory duties,” Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), said in a statement. “[By] eliminating programs that provide direct support services for disadvantaged students that promote college access, President Trump’s budget proposal does nothing to deliver for students.”

The White House also proposed cutting $64 million from Howard University‘s direct federal allocation, just days after the president told HBCU leaders during a NewsNation town hall they had nothing to worry about. The Trump administration responded that the reduction was necessary to “to more sustainably support the Nation’s only federally-chartered Historically Black College and University (HBCU).”

While the Department of Education redirected approximately $495 million in one-time discretionary funds to HBCUs and tribal colleges in September 2025, that money came at the expense of $