“Remove All Obstacles.” Behind a Historic Gift to Boost STEM Diversity

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Washington, D.C.’s Howard University recently received a $10 million gift from the Karsh Family Foundation to endow its Bison STEM Scholars Program, which provides scholarships covering all tuition and fees for about 30 students each year. Founded in 2017, the program produces more underrepresented minorities earning a Ph.D. or combined M.D./Ph.D. in a STEM discipline than any other institution in the U.S. Howard will rename the program the Karsh STEM Scholars Program in recognition of the gift.

The Karsh Family Foundation was founded in 1998 by Bruce A. Karsh, the co-founder and co-chairman of the Los Angeles-based Oaktree Capital Management, and his wife Martha L. Karsh, an attorney and designer. To date, the foundation has awarded approximately $250 million to support education and scholarships. Forbes recently pegged Bruce’s net worth at $2.2 billion.

“We are excited to endow this visionary program at Howard,” said the couple. “Simply put, we believe education, expertise and research in STEM fields will define mankind’s future, and we are proud to be able to help Howard attract and support the best and brightest students for its already renowned program.”

The commitment is the latest in an impressive run of gifts flowing to perpetually underfunded historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) over the past 12 months, suggesting that the success of HBCUs in achieving equity at scale is resonating with funders in a big way.

Meet the Karshes

Bruce Karsh, whom Inside Philanthropy recently profiled as one of the private credit industry’s top givers, attended Duke University as an undergraduate and then University of Virginia Law (UVA), where he met Martha. He co-founded the Los Angeles-based investment firm Oaktree Capital Management in 1995. The firm has roughly $122 billion of assets under management.

Launched in 1998, the Beverly Hills-based Karsh Family Foundation focuses on educational and health institutions, as well as Jewish charities. Recipients include Brown University, the Jewish Museum, Teach for America and the University of Pennsylvania School of Arts and Sciences. Karsh and his wife funded the Karsh Family Social Services Center in Los Angeles. Karsh also co-founded the Santa Monica-based Painted Turtle, a nonprofit camp for children with life-threatening diseases.

In 2011, the couple donated $50 million to Duke for an endowment to support need-based financial aid for undergraduate students. In 2018, they gave UVA Law $43.9 million to fund the school’s student scholarship program, establish the Karsh Center for Law and Democracy, and create an endowed professorships fund to support faculty associated with the new center.

The couple’s support for the historically black Spelman College dates back to 2012. In 2018, they gave the school a $2 million gift to fund annual and endowed scholarships that support graduates of the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) schools, a nationwide network of open-enrollment, college-preparatory public charter schools.

Of the Karshes’ $10 million gift to Howard, $8.9 million is for the Karsh STEM Scholars Program and $1.13 million will establish the Lomax KIPP Scholarships, a debt-free financial aid program for graduates of KIPP, named after Michael L. Lomax, CEO and President of United Negro College Fund. “We are inspired by Dr. Lomax’s passion to remove all obstacles for underserved students, and his relentless passion to advocate for HBCUs,” said the Karshes. Martha serves on the KIPP Foundation board.

Diversifying the STEM Field

Funders have made diversifying the STEM field a big priority at a time when 70 percent of STEM workers are white, 13 percent are Asian, 9 percent are African American and 7 percent are Latino. Moreover, black and Latino STEM workers are paid less on average than their peers.

The Bethesda, Maryland-based A. James & Alice B. Clark Foundation’s Clark Scholars Program provides African American, Latino, Native American, and female students with full tuition and a “holistic approach” to an engineering education. Last April, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative announced a $6.9 million venture to help UC Berkeley and UC San Diego replicate the Meyerhoff Scholar Program that started at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County. The program, created in 1988 with a grant from real estate developer Robert Meyerhoff and and his philanthropist wife Jane, is committed to increasing representation of minorities in STEM.

Howard’s program is modeled after the Meyerhoff Scholars Program. It is also startlingly successful. According to data from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES), Howard had more black graduates who went on to earn STEM doctorates between 2013 and 2017 than any other institution in the country. The Karshes’ gift will cover all or most of four years of tuition, fees, and room and board for undergraduates who commit to pursuing doctoral studies in STEM fields, depending on their family’s income.

A month before the Karshes’ gift, Howard received $4 million from the Hopper-Dean Foundation for the then-named Bison STEM Scholars Program. It was the largest gift in the school’s history prior to the Karshes’ commitment. “As the importance of computing and computer science continues to grow, we truly believe the population of computer scientists should reflect that growth in terms of diversity,” said Jeffrey Dean, who is currently the lead of Google AI, and his wife, Heidi Hopper.

A Compelling Track Record

In theory, a $10 million gift to a school like Howard should be a weekly phenomenon in a higher ed space where universities raised a record $46.7 billion in 2018 and funders cite equity and access as top priorities. More than 50 percent of African-American professionals and public school teachers hail from HBCUs. Two-thirds of HBCU students are from Pell Grant families, versus 35 percent of all college students. And the chances of graduating in six years for black students are significantly higher at HBCUs versus predominantly white institutions (PWI).

Or consider the role of HBCUs in cultivating African-American engineers. The NCSES found that while HBCUs accounted for 15 percent of bachelor’s degrees awarded to black students in 2016, 25 percent of science and engineering doctoral graduates from 2013 to 2017 held bachelor’s degrees from HBCUs. Meanwhile, a 2013 study by the National Science Foundation found that HBCUs represent nine of the top 10 universities producing African American STEM graduates.

Despite these figures, HBCUs received just two of the 462 gifts of $1 million that flowed to universities in 2017. In late 2018, an HBCU finally received a mega-gift–Ronda Stryker and William Johnston’s $30 million commitment to Spelman. Prior to that gift, the largest commitment ever made to an HBCU was Bill Cosby’s $20 million gift to Spelman—in 1998.

Encouraging Developments

Momentum seems to be picking up as of late, however. Last May, Robert Smith announced he would pay off student loans for every member of the Morehouse graduating class of 2019. In September, Papa John’s founder John Schnatter announced a $1 million gift to Kentucky’s Simmons College. October saw Oprah Winfrey give Moorehouse College $13 million for Oprah Winfrey Scholars Program, while the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation announced $3 million in grants to three HBCUs for faculty development.

In December, the United Negro College Fund awarded $1.2 million to four HBCUs to establish liberal arts innovation centers. And in January, Southern Company, the Atlanta-based energy firm, announced a $50 million initiative to provide career-readiness programs to HBCU students.

We can draw two promising conclusions from these developments. First, HBCU development teams are successfully building out the fundraising and networking infrastructure needed to secure the kinds of big commitments that routinely flow to their PWI peers.

And second, this success speaks to the growing recognition across the donor community that “you can’t say that you believe in equity in American excellence and not invest in HBCUs,” said Jarrett Carter, the founder of HBCU Digest. “In as much as they’re trying to grant equity and opportunity, [donors] are interested in schools that are conscious of how much it costs for someone to go there and get a top-quality education.”