Education

To Recruit Workers, Big Employers Team With Historically Black Colleges

Under pressure to diversify, companies are investing money and mentorship in HBCUs
Dec 13, 2022 9:00 AM ET
Exterior of the Earl S. Richardson Library. Grassy area with park benches in front of it.
Morgan State University, a historically Black school in Baltimore, has partnerships with companies including IBM, NBCUniversal and a Minneapolis advertising agency called Solve. Image courtesy of Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post

Originally published by The Washington Post on washingtonpost.com

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IBM announced in May that it would underwrite new cybersecurity centers at six HBCUs: Morgan State, Xavier, North Carolina A&T State, South Carolina State, Clark Atlanta and Louisiana’s Southern University System.

In addition to supplying academic content, the company will furnish experts to conduct guest lectures and even simulated hacking events.

“This is our next new big thing with HBCUs,” said Logan, at IBM, which already had a program to recruit students from historically Black schools.

“We’ve had a long commitment to diversity. For other companies, it’s newer. For everyone, it’s gotten deeper over the last couple of years,” Logan said.

There’s now not only a social imperative for these companies, but there also is an economic one: a huge demand for workers — not just in cybersecurity, but also in other fields that require education in science, technology, engineering and math.

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