Historically Black colleges and universities outperform all other types of institutions of higher education in fueling the middle class, a report from UNCF finds. The report, HBCUs Transforming Generations: Social Mobility Outcomes for HBCU Alumni (16 pages, PDF), found that the mobility rate — defined as the share, among all students at a college, who come from the bottom 40 percent of household income ($46,000 and below) and transition into the top 60 percent — at HBCUs is 34.3 percent, compared with a national average of 15.8 percent and just 7.4 percent among twelve “Ivy plus” institutions. The study also found that the access rate — the share of students from low-income households — was 51.3 percent at HBCUs, compared with a national average of 22.5 percent and 9.3 percent at Ivy plus schools. And while the success rate for students from low-income backgrounds — the percentage of those who attain a higher income level — is lower at HBCUs (67.6 percent), which serve more economically disenfranchised students than the national average (72.3 percent) and at Ivy plus schools (80.3 percent), HBCUs are closing the gap.