Author: Sol Cárcamo

The number of job openings increased to 10.7 million in September of last year, up more than four percent from the month before, according to the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Since January 2021, job openings have been steeply climbing. Companies not recruiting at HBCUs may be missing out on promising future employees.

Companies like Gilead Sciences, Novartis, Google, Microsoft and more have created recruiting pipelines with HBCUs over the past few years.

Biopharmaceutical giant Gilead is working to build specific, personal relationships with HBCUs to facilitate recruitment. The company uses employees as liaisons to build relationships with officials at the nine HBCUs it recruits from. These liaisons are sometimes alumni of the school who now work for Gilead. The HBCU officials can then recommend their star students for internships and fellowships.

For Microsoft, the big tech giant has enticed Morehouse students to panels of alumni talking about entry-level positions at the company and careers in tech with the quintessential college bait — free Chick-Fil-A and the chance to win an Xbox.

“[University recruiting] is about finding the best talent right out of the gate and kickstarting lifelong careers,” Portia Kibble Smith, head of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Karat. “It also creates an opportunity to source candidates from more diverse talent pools.  There are many diamonds in the rough.” 

Karat conducts first-round interviews for tech companies and has worked with HBCU students. In October, Karat signed on as a corporate partner for the new Morehouse Center for Broadening Participation in Computing. The company is providing 1,000 mock technical interviews for the center.

Here are some advices from Kibble Smith on how companies can effectively recruit from HBCUs:

What advice would you give to companies who want to hire more from HBCUs but don’t know how?

Identifying a list of HBCUs to target, even if they are not the most well-known or popular, is an important first step. Look at your employee base who are from HBCUs to help build that list.  Start small if needed to avoid a saturated recruiting market and build relationships with the institutions and student leaders.

Getting to really understand and know the students and professors/leadership at these colleges, because each is different, will help to also build a successful recruiting strategy.

Why should companies try to recruit from universities?

Companies that get an early start on university recruitment will have their choice of some of the best candidates.

That said, even in the current job market, we’re still seeing strong university recruiting and early career hiring demand, and the tail for peak university recruiting season now often extends well beyond the start of the new year for full-time and intern hiring. 

Why should companies look to recruit a diverse pool of candidates?

There is a huge need for more diverse hiring, especially in the tech industry when only five percent of software engineers are Black. Building diverse software development teams is both a priority and a challenge for many companies.

Compared to industry averages, the population of candidates during university recruiting season is far more diverse. Over the past three years, companies saw an average of 113 percent more applicants who were female or non-binary and 67 percent more applicants who were members of an underrepresented minority group during university recruiting season.

If a company wants to be successful, they will need a diverse group of employees who will have diverse backgrounds and ideas to share as they build products and services for today’s market. It’s a great business decision!

What can companies do to recruit and hire more Black and brown students?

The opportunity for candidates to redo interviews is huge for candidates who have had limited exposure to technical interviews.

Research shows that more than half of HBCU computer science students had never had a practice interview before entering the job market, which puts them at a disadvantage. Offering interview redo opportunities is a good way to level the playing field by giving candidates the interviewing experience they need to put their best foot forward. Our data shows that redos not only create a more inclusive hiring process, but they also improve hiring efficiency for companies.

Also having diverse recruiters can help.  Having someone who can relate to the students is always key and it shows the candidates that your company has a commitment to diversity.  If you’re not showing that commitment, then it will be difficult to attract the talent. 

The Pentagon has chosen Howard University to lead a university-affiliated research center, its first partnership with a historically Black college or university, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced this week.

“To sharpen America’s technological edge and to strengthen America’s outstanding military, the department is committed to investing even more in HBCUs and minority-serving institutions,” Austin, the first Black secretary of defense, said Monday.

Howard will receive $12 million per year for five years in funding, according to a news release. This is the first university partnership primarily sponsored by the Air Force, and this is the first time the department accepted submissions from universities to become an affiliated research center, according to Howard University President Wayne A. I. Frederick.

The new consortium will focus on tactical autonomy, an Air Force program that aims to develop technologies that require minimal human supervision, according to the branch’s website. The center looks to take advantage of Howard’s science, technology, engineering and math programs.

Austin described the technology as “central to US security in our changing world” and said the military needs the creativity and ideas of students in these programs to continue advancing the advantages American soldiers have on the battlefield.

“Responsibly used autonomous systems make our military faster, smarter, and stronger,” he added. “Howard’s new research center will protect our most precious asset—and that most precious asset is our men and women in uniform.”

The university will also focus on diversifying the pool of scientists and engineers that work with the Defense Department, according to the news release, and it will lead eight other HBCUs, including Hampton and Tuskegee universities, in the research effort.

Frederick told that this is “an enormous opportunity” for faculty and students to “work on cutting edge research in a technology space that is ever evolving.”

“It’s going to put us in a unique space to develop techniques and capabilities and skillsets that we otherwise wouldn’t,” Frederick said, adding that this partnership will allow the university to expand to other areas of research in the future.

The program “really emphasizes that for the country to be successful and for the country to compete, to continue to be competitive in terms of research, etc., that you have to diversify what that work force looks like in the arena of research,” Frederick said.

The Pentagon currently has partnerships with 14 other universities across the country, including Georgia Institute of Technology, University of South California and the University of Maryland.

From Focus Quest we believe that this announcement of Howard University as the first HBCU to lead a research center affiliated with the university is a significant development that has numerous advantages. This decision will create more opportunities for African American students and researchers to excel in fields that have traditionally been dominated by white scholars. Additionally, it will provide the Pentagon with a more diverse pool of talent and ideas, leading to better solutions and innovations. The research center will also serve as a model for other institutions to follow, promoting the importance of diversity and inclusion in academic and research settings. Overall, this news represents a major step forward in promoting equity and excellence in research and education.

Black households have a fraction of the wealth of white households, leaving them in a much more precarious financial situation when a crisis strikes, such as the pandemic. Wealth allows households to rebound from a financial emergency, invest in their children’s education, start a business, relocate for better opportunities and buy a house. Unfortunately, the wealth gap between white and black Americans has not decreased in the last 50 years. In 2019, the median wealth (without defined-benefit pensions) of Black households in the United States was $24,100, compared with $189,100 for white households. Homeownership contributing significantly to household wealth was 72% for whites compared to 42% for blacks. And the reasons for the black-white wealth gap are not a mystery. They have resulted from centuries of policies that have systematically disadvantaged Black Americans’ ability to build, maintain, and pass on wealth.

Research shows that one of the proven ways to narrow this gap is through higher education, especially for those who graduate in the STEM, legal and medical fields, which offer higher-paying career opportunities. Black professionals have relied on HBCUs more than any ot

her higher education institution for over 180 years. They graduate 80% of Black judges, 50% of Black doctors, 50% of Black lawyers, 40% of all Black US Congress members, and award 24% of all bachelor’s degrees in STEM fields. And while HBCUs have received record funding over the last two years, with more than 6.5 billion allocated by the Federal government, that doesn’t begin to make up for decades of neglect.

Our Money Matters, a free platform to help HBCU students and community residents get on the path to financial wellness, offers six reasons why minority institutions need our continued advocacy.

1. HBCUs have a 34% mobility rate of moving their students from the bottom 40% in household income into the top 60%. That is double the national average and five times more than Ivy institutions.
2. Endowments for HBCUs are a fraction of comparable non-HBCUs, with an average of $15,000 per student compared to $410,000. Endowments are typically used to support scholarships, facility upgrades, and faculty hiring and retention. The difference is significant if you compare Howard University, sometimes referred to as the Harvard of HBCUs, and the HBCU with the highest endowment. Harvard’s endowment is about $42 billion, while Howard’s is around $700 million—less than a 50th of Harvard’s endowment. There is not one HBCU with an endowment of over a billion dollars, while there are over 100 white institutions.
3. The pandemic required HBCUs to shift funds to remote learning. Many students needed computers and access to Wi-Fi, and schools needed to upgrade their technology infrastructure. Also, many students require student loan debt relief as well. This meant that schools diverted crucial funds from maintenance and other infrastructure investments. Nearly two-thirds of the surveyed schools said they had more than 5 million in deferred maintenance.
4. Private donations and grants are significant funding sources for all higher education institutions. However, it accounts for a small portion of total revenue for HBCUs compared to non-HBCUs – 17% versus 25.8%. And because much private funding comes with certain restrictions, it means less flexibility for HBCUs to address pressing needs. And when HBCUs must turn to other sources for funding, they face higher fees to borrow money than white institutions. For example, a Black minority-serving institution would have to pay underwriters $35,000 more for a $30 million bond than a white university. In addition, historically black colleges and universities in the U.S. have been underfunded for decades, with billions of dollars in state funding diverted by lawmakers for other purposes, according to higher education experts.
5. First-generation college students make up 39% of HBCU enrollment, and many rely on student loans. While costs at HBCUs are less than at non-HBCUs, tuition is increasing universally across all institutions. This forces many Blacks to choose between a degree and the accompanying astronomical debt or forgoing college altogether. In fact, in a 2021 nationwide survey of nearly 1,300 Black borrowers conducted by the Education Trust, many questioned whether the debt they incurred was worth it. And yet, Blacks that had a degree were much better equipped to weather the pandemic than those without one.
6. For faculty members, choosing to work at an HBCU means being unfairly penalized in terms of salary. On average, HBCU faculty earn $18,000 less than those teaching in non-HBCU institutions. HBCU faculty earn about $69,180, compared to $87,385 for faculty in non-HBCUs, making it much more challenging to recruit professors and administrators, especially in expensive cities.

HBCUs have traditionally had to do much more with less. And yet, they have positively impacted society to a far greater degree than the historically meager investments made from private and public sources. HBCUs provide an average of 6,385 jobs in each state and territory where they are located and generate an average of $704.7 million a year in total economic impact. They make up just 3% of higher education institutions in the country, but they educate 10% of all Black college students. And according to recent research, increasing the strength of HBCUs around the U.S. could increase Black worker incomes by about $10 billion, strengthening the economy with $1.2 billion in incremental business profit, additional consumer expenditures of $1 billion, and help to reduce the wealth imbalance.

In conclusion, Black History Month is important for HBCUs as it allows these institutions to celebrate the contributions and achievements of African Americans, recognize the legacy of their institutions, and provide a space for students and faculty to learn and share their perspectives.