Department of Defense Looks to Bolster Research at Minority-Serving Institutions

A new National Academies report recommends the Department of Defense provide non-R1 minority-serving institutions with new funding sources and higher reimbursement rates to combat historic underinvestment compared to non-MSIs.

DOD asked the Academies to recommend ways of increasing the participation of MSIs in defense-related research activities such that more of them reach R1 status, a rating that denotes “very high research activity” in the Carnegie Classification system.

The term MSI encompasses Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Tribal Colleges and Universities, which are historically designated institutions with missions to serve specific racial groups. It also includes institutions with significant percentages of undergraduate minority students such as Hispanic-serving institutions.

There are currently no R1 HBCUs, and TCUs are not included in the classification system, though changes to the classification in 2025 are expected to result in R1 status for at least one HBCU.

The report recounts lagging funding for HBCUs and TCUs, beginning at their founding and continuing to today, with a $12 billion disparity in state funding between HBCU and non-HBCU land-grant universities over the last 30 years. Accordingly, the report recommends that DOD bolster research at MSIs, including by funding a postdoctoral fellowship program and a DOD Investigator Award that would issue up to 100 awards per year.

The report co-chairs also emphasized the importance of creating administrative hubs to help MSIs apply for grants and organize MSI-led research consortia that would coordinate several institutions’ efforts on a single problem.

These recommendations target common issues facing MSIs, particularly among HBCUs focused on teaching and TCUs that have student enrollment in the low hundreds and staff in the dozens. Faculty at such institutions tend to have high course loads and low administrative support, according to the report.

“There is a significant administrative burden associated with securing and administering this funding, and often only institutions of a certain size can reasonably support that administrative load,” said Andrea Christelle, a report co-chair and the vice provost for research at Diné College, a TCU.

The fellowship program would allow faculty to dedicate more time to research, while administrative hubs serving multiple institutions would help manage grants and contracts, allowing researchers to focus on their work, the report said.

Fayetteville State University Chief Research Officer Ganesh Bora said in an interview that FSU, like many HBCUs, currently cannot meet the PhD graduate requirement for R1 or R2 status. The university, one of several visited by the report committee to learn about on-the-ground experiences and infrastructure at MSIs, only has one graduate program, and faculty teach four courses a semester compared to just one at many R1 and R2 institutions.

Because of this, Fayetteville faculty write proposals infrequently, but the proposals they do write are strong, Bora said. Despite heavy course loads and just four staff members for research administration, FSU had an 80% success rate for proposals and $32.9 million in extramural funding in the past year, he estimated.

Though FSU is primarily a teaching university, research funding allows it to grow, Bora said. “We are more interested in getting research done than getting the status,” he said.

The report pushed back on the notion that getting more MSIs to R1 status is a key metric for improving their contribution to DOD’s research needs, noting that it is impractical for all MSIs to pursue R1 status, such as TCUs with only a few hundred students and the 85% of HBCUs that are predominantly undergraduate institutions.

“There is a real interest in blending cutting-edge Western research with Indigenous epistemologies and insights,” Christelle said. “So, investing in resources at these institutions should be a priority. It does not need to be directed toward achieving R1 status.”

The report concluded that, in many cases, the resources and prestige of R1 institutions are self-perpetuating. For example, representatives from small institutions told the report authors of several instances where their partnerships resulted in those larger institutions recruiting away their faculty members. The recommended research consortia would create mutually beneficial partnerships, rather than a primarily White institution taking the lead, the report argues.

The report also points to the role of the facilities and administrative reimbursement rate in what it calls the “cyclical environment of underinvestment.” These are federally approved rates that help institutions recover indirect research costs and are highest for institutions with over $10 million in yearly research expenditures.

“The resultant lower F&A reimbursements [for MSIs] mean that MSIs have fewer resources to invest in building and maintaining research infrastructure, hiring administrative staff, and providing support services for researchers,” the report concludes. “MSIs continue to suffer current inequities that are a direct consequence of prior investment disparities in research-focused facilities, equipment, and infrastructure.”

The report recommends that Congress provide dedicated funding for HBCUs, TCUs, and non-R1 HSIs to build and maintain state-of-the-art research facilities and equipment, as well as a higher de minimis F&A rate for small institutions and assistance for MSIs to negotiate their rates.

“We know that our institutions have very high capabilities to be able to engage and do the related research to benefit our national security, but if we don’t have the facilities to be able to do so, then our competitiveness goes to waste,” said Erin Lynch, a report co-chair and president of the Quality Education for Minorities Network.

The report co-chairs said they hope there will be a subsequent report after some of the recommendations have been implemented to assess their efficacy.

“We really feel strongly that all of these recommendations are things that could be implemented in the near-term and are feasible,” Christelle said. “But we think that there’s more work to be done, and so we hope that there will be a subsequent report and that this work will continue.”