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.

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........

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