Trump admin ends $350 million in grant funding to minority-serving institutions
The U.S. Department of Education is ending $350 million of discretionary funding to several grant programs at minority-serving institutions across the country, claiming that they are discriminatory, according to a Wednesday announcement.
Minority-serving institutions are colleges and universities that enroll a high percentage of minority students and thus receive federal funding, such as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) or Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI).
"Discrimination based upon race or ethnicity has no place in the United States. To further our commitment to ending discrimination in all forms across federally supported programs, the Department will no longer award Minority-Serving Institution grants that discriminate by restricting eligibility to institutions that meet government-mandated racial quotas," U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement. "Diversity is not merely the presence of a skin color. Stereotyping an individual based on immutable characteristics diminishes the full picture of that person's life and contributions, including their character, resiliency, and merit. The Department looks forward to working with Congress to reenvision these programs to support institutions that serve underprepared or under-resourced students without relying on race quotas and will continue fighting to ensure that students are judged as individuals, not prejudged by their membership of a racial group."
The $350 million of funding will instead be "reprogrammed into programs that do not include discriminatory racial and ethnic quotas and that advance Administration priorities," the federal government said.
The announcement came following a federal lawsuit seeking to dismantle the HSI designation.
Colleges and universities become an HSI when at least 25% of full-time equivalent undergraduate students self-identify as Hispanic, among other criteria, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
The state of Tennessee and the group Students for Fair Admissions sued the U.S. Department of Education in June.
The U.S. Department of Justice responded by stating that it will not defend a decades-old grant program against the lawsuit, believing it is unconstitutional.
The Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, which lobbied Congress in the early 1990s to recognize HSIs, intervened in the case in late July to defend the program.
Nine Massachusetts presidents called out the potential attack on HSIs, stating that the elimination of funding will have a "significant impact here in the Commonwealth."
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