Kei’Yanii Dawson dreams of attending a historically Black college where she can take classes and engage in campus life with more students who look like her.
But Dawson, a junior at a majority-White private high school in San Francisco, said that would likely mean going to school far from home and taking on more debt for housing and out-of-state tuition.
However, a growing movement to expand the presence of HBCUs into more communities outside the South could soon give students like Dawson easier access to a Black college.
Officials in cities such as Boston and San Francisco say they are actively working to bring satellite campuses of HBCUs to their communities, hoping to strengthen the pipeline for Black students to pursue higher education and to grow and diversify their local economies.
“I feel like if there was a satellite (HBCU) here in San Francisco, it would just be so much easier,” Dawson said. “An education coming to me instead of me going so far, there’s definitely more benefits from that, money-wise.”
Advocates for HBCUs insist these proposals are critical as the Trump administration targets diversity, equity and inclusion programs at predominantly White institutions, such as Harvard University, and as Black students seek schools where they feel included and celebrated.
President Donald Trump has decried DEI initiatives as “illegal and immoral discrimination.”
Earlier this year, the Trump administration proposed a 2026 fiscal year budget that would cut $64 million in funding for Howard University, the nation’s only federally chartered HBCU. The National Institutes of Health also canceled a $16.3 million grant for Florida A&M University’s pharmacy school as part of Trump’s effort to end DEI programs.
US District Judge Stephanie Gallagher on Thursday struck down two administration actions that threatened to cut federal funding from educational institutions with DEI programs, ruling the Education Department violated the law, according to The Associated Press.
Despite his administration’s attacks on DEI, Trump signed an executive order in April supporting HBCUs.
“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,” it read.
HBCUs were first established in the mid to late 1800s, when legal segregation in the South prevented Black students from enrolling in existing colleges and schools in the North imposed quotas on the number of Black students who could attend. During this period, HBCUs became the primary means of providing a college education to Black people. Today, the majority of HBCUs are located in the South.
Keith Lezama, CEO and founder of Building Bridges Education — a nonprofit dedicated to providing New England students with access and pathways to HBCUs — said he supports the expansion of Black colleges. He said many Black families in communities without HBCUs are not aware of their impact.
HBCUs “are a movement that has allowed access when access wasn’t allowed,” Lezama said. “A movement that instills a sense of pride, resilience that produces amazing leaders in our communities and across the world. To know many of these institutions do this without the same resources (as predominantly White colleges), is something that can be seen as a national model of what excellence looks like in education.”
Major cities lead the way
In June, Boston City Councilor Brian Worrell filed a hearing order proposing the establishment of an HBCU satellite campus in Boston. He said during a June 25 city council meeting that Boston is known for being a college town, “but we do not have a single HBCU.”
The closest HBCUs to Boston are Cheyney University of Pennsylvania and Lincoln University, both more than 300 miles away.
HBCUs, Worrell said, are known for producing a higher percentage of low-income, first-generation Black college graduates than majority-White institutions.
“If we are serious about building a diverse workforce here in Boston in tech, health care, education, government, then we need to be just as serious about the pipelines that people get here,” Worrell said.
Establishing a satellite campus is a lengthy process that could take years to complete, advocates say.
Worrell said it is not yet clear if or when the HBCU would open in Boston, and officials have not yet decided which school the city will partner with.
Boston is hosting a listening session on August 26 to allow community members to share their thoughts on what they want to see in a satellite campus, he said. Worrell will consider their feedback in his proposal for the school.
He also hopes to work with HBCUs on an initiative that would allow students at local institutions to transfer credits to the satellite school when it opens.
Officials from Huston-Tillotson University, a small private HBCU in Austin, Texas, say they are also working to establish an off-campus instructional site in San Diego.
California has the largest out-of-state student enrollment at Huston-Tillotson, said Archibald Vanderpuye, the university’s provost and vice president of academic affairs. The school is located about 1,300 miles from San Diego.
“Our partners are looking at ways to increase access to and completion of college degrees among underrepresented minority students by providing them with meaningful HBCU experiences,” Beverly Downing, associate provost at Huston-Tillotson University, said in a statement.
Downing said there is growing interest among students and families in expanding the school to California.
“We started getting a lot of calls and getting requests for a presence there so that the students would have a choice of whether to come out to Texas or to take courses (in California),” Downing said.
The university plans to launch the off-campus instructional site in San Diego with a business administration program in spring 2026, Downing said.
Plans for the San Diego location are underway and the school is required to obtain numerous approvals, including for the off-campus instructional site plan and accreditation, Downing said.
In San Francisco, officials are also in active discussions about bringing an HBCU satellite campus to the city, Charles Lutvak, spokesperson for Mayor Daniel Lurie, said.
Lutvak said he was unable to provide details on a timeline or which Black colleges are in discussions with city leaders.
The conversations follow the city’s launch of the Black 2 San Francisco initiative last year, which seeks to “create a satellite campus partnership with several HBCUs, including a physical location in San Francisco, and a full suite of academic and professional programming.”
Former Mayor London Breed said last year that an HBCU campus in San Francisco would “boost our downtown and our economy, while bringing new minds and ideas to grow within our world-renowned culture of innovation.”
Mixed reaction to expansion plans
Harry Williams, president and CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, said developing satellite locations for HBCUs across the country will help increase the number of Black Americans in the middle class.
HBCUs produce 70% of Black doctors and dentists, 50% of Black engineers and 35% of Black attorneys, according to the United Negro College Fund.
Williams said HBCUs have higher retention and graduation rates among Black students.
Black students can also experience a sense of belonging and culture at HBCUs that they may not find at predominantly White institutions, where DEI and affirmative action are under attack, Williams said.
“Being in a place where you are wanted, that’s the key,” he said. “These institutions were created for African Americans.”
Some people, however, oppose expanding HBCUs to other communities.
“You want to attend an HBCU, then move to a city where the school history and culture already exist,” one user posted on X. “Our resources are stretched enough. Plus, our cities depend on the migration of students from the North.”
“One of the lures of HBCUs is the historical part and putting a satellite campus somewhere random disconnects that,” another user posted on X. “Especially in Boston.”
Brandon Graham, founder and CEO of Our HBCUs Matter Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to educational programming for high school and HBCU students, said he believes it will be challenging for satellite campuses to replicate the connections and experiences students receive on an HBCU’s main campus. However, he said there are creative ways to achieve this.
HBCUs must “ensure that you cultivate programmatic models and bring in alumni for those folks who are local to then be able to share and cultivate that synergy that you initially get on an HBCU campus,” said Graham, a graduate of both Clark Atlanta University and Tennessee State University.
Graham said he is confident that HBCUs have the connections and resources to expand their reach to communities across the country, just as predominantly White institutions have done.
“It will have positive effects on the institutional educational branding, on its financials, as well as on its ability to cultivate a very diverse alumni base across the country,” Graham said. “This next level of satellite campuses is going to diversify and transform the way an HBCU education can be provided.”