Has officially cut all funding to Hispanic serving institutions.
Trump administration to end funding for Hispanic-Serving Institutions, affecting many California colleges
The U.S. Department of Education said Wednesday it is ending a grant program for Hispanic-Serving Institutions and several similar programs, a decision expected to sap funding from California colleges and universities that are eligible for extra federal dollars because they enroll high numbers of Latino students.
Campuses earn a Hispanic-Serving Institution designation by having an undergraduate student body that is at least 25% Latino. California has 167 such institutions, more than any other state, including five University of California campuses, 21 California State University campuses and most of the state’s community colleges. The designation allows those colleges to apply for the grants, which are competitive and not guaranteed to all HSIs
.Together, California institutions have received more than $600 million in HSI grants since the program’s inception in 1995.
CSU Chancellor Mildred García said in a statement that ending the HSI grant program “will have an immediate impact and irreparable harm to our entire community.” CSU campuses have used grants to help more students graduate faster, increase the number of low-income students in STEM majors and even train faculty in culturally responsive pedagogy.
“Without this funding, students will lose the critical support they need to succeed in the classroom, complete their degrees on time, and achieve social mobility for themselves and their families,” she said.
U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said grants for HSIs and other minority-serving institutions “discriminate by restricting eligibility to institutions that meet government-mandated racial quotas,” and called them unconstitutional.
“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,” McMahon added in a statement.
In total, the department said it will hold back $350 million in grant funding that was budgeted for fiscal year 2025. Most of that would have gone to HSIs, but some of it also would have been allocated to grant programs for colleges enrolling high numbers of Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiian students, Asian American students and Black students.
Earlier this year, the state of Tennessee and the anti-affirmative action organization Students for Fair Admissions filed
a lawsuitin U.S. district court challenging the HSI grant program. The lawsuit argues that the criteria to become an HSI are unconstitutional and that all colleges serving low-income students should be able to apply for the grants available to HSIs.
The U.S. Department of Justice later decided not to defend the program against the lawsuit, with U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer writing to House Speaker Mike Johnson in July that HSI programs “violate the equal-protection component of the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.”
Proponents of HSIs argue that the program and grant funding are not discriminatory because grants for HSIs are meant to be spent on initiatives that could benefit any student at the college, not just Hispanic students.
That’s the case across the 22-campus CSU system, according to García, the chancellor, who said in a statement that HSI grant funding “not only helps advance the CSU’s educational mission, but it also supports CSU’s efforts to carry out our core values of inclusive excellence, social mobility, authentic access to higher education and equity in all its dimensions.”
“The CSU remains steadfast in its commitment to ensuring that all students continue to have access to affordable, high-quality higher education,” she added.
