UNCF GETS RESULTS. Member HBCUs educate more than 57,000 students each year at tuitions averaging 30 percent less than those charged by comparable institutions. Research shows that HBCUs out-perform many larger and better-funded schools at graduating low-income students—the students the country most needs to have college degrees. UNCF Scholarship Programs increase the likelihood that students will graduate. African American recipients of UNCF scholarships have a 70 percent six-year graduation rate, 10 percentage points higher than the national average, and 30 percent higher than the average for all African Americans. A $5,000 UNCF scholarship increases by seven percent the likelihood that its recipient will graduate from college. The low-income minority recipients of Gates Millennium Scholarships, a partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, have average graduation rates of 90 percent. UNCF Advocacy has changed the way the nation thinks about education and race. When UNCF’s iconic motto, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste”®, debuted more than 40 years ago, the idea that African Americans should go to college was not widely accepted. Today, the UNCF motto is almost universally known and almost every college has black students. The latest iteration of UNCF’s PSAs frames support for minority education as investment in better futures for students and all of us, and expands the iconic motto to, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste, but a wonderful thing to invest in.”
