Wilson looked for the underlying reasons. "I was asking questions about why is it that during the revolution [in college fundraising] our black colleges seemed to be uninvolved or unaware."

The issue remains relevant. For example, Howard University recently completed a $272 million campaign, breaking the previous HBCU fundraising record set by Hampton University.

"I saw a lot of predominately white institutions getting on this kind of superhighway, and I saw too many black institutions who were seemingly unable or undetermined to find the on-ramp."

"Two hundred seventy-two million dollars is the best that a black college can do, and that astounds me and it greatly disappoints me," Wilson said. "I was running an office at MIT, and our job during the campaign was to raise at least a quarter of a billion dollars," or roughly equivalent to Howard's record-setting effort.

Another number gives him pause: the estimated value of the endowments of America's 46 private HBCUs is about $1.6 billion, a sum that pales in comparison to the annual $4 billion a year in investment earnings by Harvard's massive $35 billion endowment.

Wilson traces the widening quality gap at least to the late 1960s, when HBCUs began to lose some of their best and brightest students and, later, faculty. This "brain drain" from the applicant pool of most HBCUs occurred in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., as the Ivy League colleges, and later other predominantly white colleges and universities, actively began to recruit African-American students. This trend, coupled with the skyrocketing endowments at the predominantly white schools, began to hurt even the best of the HBCUs such as Morehouse, Spelman, Howard, and Fisk.

"So then the question becomes, what is it about black higher education, especially the best of the black colleges, that can make them much more attractive to the donor community? And what is their appeal to the high-performing black high school students who can go anywhere? That's the question in the philanthropic marketplace, and I don't think many black colleges have figured out what it is about their historic mission, current function and future plans that can speak to this philanthropic marketplace that's just gone wild.

"Philanthropy is not a color," Wilson adds. "If it's a color, it's green. When you give millions of dollars to a college, it's about some great thing you see in the capacity of that college, but it's also about wanting your legacy associated with the greatness you created or enhanced with the investment. And I think that many more HBCUs can make that compelling case than have been making it."

"I was asking questions about why is it that during the revolution [in college fundraising] our black colleges seemed to be uninvolved or unaware."

HBCUs played key roles in training leaders such as Dr. King in the struggle for civil rights. That history, Wilson suggested, is great, but it's not the heart of the matter - that is, unless it can somehow be accentuated when HBCUs approach potential donors, and in ways that have more to do with the future than the past. "There is a lot of untapped value and virtue in black colleges."

While keeping much of his research close to the vest, Wilson suggested that HBCUs need to better understand that when it comes to large donations, donors with business backgrounds usually scrutinize a college's books, and cast a critical eye on financial and business practices.

"They know what a safe investment is. At this point, it's not about a gift, it's about an investment. And an investment can go bad."

He cites Spelman College - the women's college across from Morehouse in Atlanta - as an example of an HBCU that "gets it." Under President Beverly Daniel Tatum, Spelman has done a good job of fundraising and attracting top students. "It's very sophisticated and ambitious in the sense that they are deliberately trying to become, and remain, state of the art with the industry. They're telling their story and functioning in a way that's on par with the best in the industry."

Spelman can move toward being more competitive with the Ivy League schools, Wilson said, because it has its act together - from the financial systems and stability, to the quality of the curriculum and infrastructure, to the feeling you get on campus.

Ultimately, Wilson said, "I believe the difference between higher performing and lower performing black colleges is not unlike the white colleges, both good and bad, and that is leadership. Leadership is going to make the biggest difference in the kinds of things I'm focused on."