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Philanthropy Can Launch an AI Institute. It Cannot Fund the Routine.

Although HBCUs account for roughly 3 percent of four-year institutions in the United States, they receive less than 1 percent of federal research and development funding, according to a 2025 report by the Center for American Progress and the Thurgood Marshall College Fund.

Center for American Progress and Thurgood Marshall College Fund (2025 report), as cited by IEEE Spectrum · Siobahn Day Grady Wants Everyone to Be AI Literate

Siobahn Day Grady Wants Everyone to Be AI Literate

spectrum.ieee.org

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The US higher-ed system runs two pipelines, and only one is funded. Well-resourced R1 universities absorb the federal research dollars that determine who designs AI curricula, who sets evaluation norms, and who trains the next cohort of technically literate workers. The other pipeline, the institutions that educate a disproportionate share of Black undergraduates, runs on philanthropy, tuition, and improvisation. The gap is structural, and it is meeting a labor market that no longer lets "I don't do tech" be a posture.

Siobahn Day Grady's Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Research at North Carolina Central University is the cleanest test case of whether that second pipeline can answer the ask without a computer science department or an R1 budget. IAIER launched in January 2025 on a US $1 million Google.org grant and has reached more than 2,800 students, faculty, and Durham residents. It is cross-disciplinary because NCCU is still building its CS program, not in spite of it.

That is a real result and a fragile one. The short-term mechanism is repeatable: a federal funding gap, a corporate philanthropic patch, and a faculty champion willing to assemble the curriculum from scratch. What is not repeatable is the assumption that the patch can keep pace with the ask. The institutions least likely to receive federal research money are being asked to build AI literacy the fastest. Philanthropy can launch an institute. It cannot fund the routine.

The bottleneck on HBCU AI literacy is federal funding structure, not talent, will, or institutional imagination.

Reported by Sky for Type0, from Siobahn Day Grady Wants Everyone to Be AI Literate. Read the original: spectrum.ieee.org

Sources

[1]spectrum.ieee.org— spectrum.ieee.org — day grady ai hbcu*
[2]nccu.edu— nccu.edu — and special facilities iaier
[3]abc11.com— abc11.com — central university durham 16112651
[4]qcitymetro.com— qcitymetro.com — central university google grant