Cuts to minority-serving colleges to cause ‘immediate harm’

United States Secretary of Education Linda McMahon has ordered the termination of more than one-third of a billion dollars in discretionary spending that had been appropriated for Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) and other Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs) that provide post-secondary education to indigenous Alaskan, Hawaiian and Black students.

This decision follows the announcement almost three weeks ago that the Department of Justice (DoJ) would not be defending the three-decades old HSI programme.

In the 2025 budget year, HSIs could apply for grants from a US$229 million fund; these grants were awarded on a competitive basis and were made to institutions to, for example, improve laboratories, not to individual Hispanic students.

Race-based quota

The press release that announced the cuts totalling US$350 million cited as justification a determination by Solicitor General D John Sauer that the HSI programmes “violate the equal-protection component of the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause”. To qualify as an HSI, the institution must have an enrolment that is at least 25% Hispanic, which, in Sauer’s judgement, constitutes an illegal race-based quota.

By refusing to defend the HSI programme, the DoJ hopes that it will not have to defend this determination in court.

“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 programmes, the Department will no longer award Minority-Serving Institutions grants that discriminate by restricting eligibility to institutions that meet government-mandated racial quotas,” said McMahon in the press release, in which she also provided her department’s gloss on the meaning of “diversity”.

“Diversity is not merely the presence of a skin colour. Stereotyping an individual based on immutable characteristics diminishes the full picture of that person’s life and contributions, including their character, resiliency, and merit,” she said.

Representative Robert C Scott (Democrat of Virginia), the ranking opposition member on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, was quick to respond, noting that MSIs “serve roughly five million students, or about one-third of all undergraduate students in America”, which underlines a fact absent from the Department of Education (DoE) press release: the large numbers of American students that will be affected by this defunding decision.

Scott then went on to remind Americans that when President Lyndon B Johnson signed the Higher Education Act into law (November 1965), it was intended to ensure “that a high school senior anywhere in this great land of ours can apply to any college or any university in any of the 50 states and not be turned away because [their] family is poor”. McMahon’s actions are, Scott said, “deeply at odds” with that goal.

‘Immediate and significant harm’

The removal of federal discretionary funding for HSIs will cause immediate and significant harm,” said Lynn Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities.

These cuts will force “colleges and universities to reduce academic support services, cut critical infrastructure, and raise tuition costs, which will have a disparately negative impact on first-generation, low-income, and under-represented students.

“The reduction in resources holds the potential for delayed graduation rates, increased attrition, shrinking opportunity, and decreased socioeconomic mobility.”

What the DoE refers to as “reprogram[ming]” of funding will have immediate and deleterious impacts on MSIs that have counted on tranches of the discretionary grant programmes.

The grants that are being cancelled are as follows (the percentage of each minority required to be designated as a specific type of MSI is indicated in the parenthesis):

• Minority Science and Engineering Improvement (50% minority);

• Promoting Postbaccalaureate Opportunities for Hispanic Americans (25%);

• Strengthening Alaskan Native and Native Hawaiian-Serving, Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving institutions (25%);

• Strengthening Native American-Serving Nontribal Institutions (25%; these institutions differ from Tribal Colleges by the fact that the latter are charted by independent tribes); and

• Strengthening Predominantly Black Institutions (These institutions differ from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) because their status is determined by the percentage, 40%, of Black students enrolled and not by the historical period in which they were established.)

According to Deborah Santiago, co-founder and CEO of the Washington, DC-based Excelencia in Education, an NGO that works to improve educational opportunities for Latino Americans, the DoE says it will immediately stop funding for non-competing continuations, typically a five-year grant that follows upon having been awarded a grant on a competitive basis to, for example, “improve the quality of education such as by enhancing student support and faculty development”.

Like Francisca Fajana, a lawyer with New York City-based LatinoJustice PRLDEF, Santiago challenges Sauer’s determination that the HSIs are unconstitutional.

Santiago was surprised and disappointed by the administration’s “overreach”. Based on Sauer’s “determination”, she said, they went beyond terminating the existing non-competing continuations – meaning that monies institutions planned on receiving, typically for three to five years, will not be forthcoming.

She also noted that a competition for new grants had ended a few months ago and that the winners of the competition will not be awarded their grants, which means that the time, money and effort that went into applying for the grants (that they ultimately were awarded) were wasted.

“They just had a competition in June and July, and they’re not going to award those [grants], which also means that the institutions spent time and money and effort to put the proposals together,” Santiago said.

Santiago was also surprised by the DoE’s statement “that they expect to redistribute the funds themselves”, which is contrary to the constitution, which assigns to Congress “the power of the purse”.

“There’s a question of separation of powers,” said Fajana. Congress has appropriated funds and the executive is supposed to execute the appropriated funds, and distribute and disperse the funds in the ways Congress has indicated.

“What’s making this stream of funding illegal this year? Last year it wasn’t illegal. Two years ago, it wasn’t illegal; five years ago or 10 years ago, [it wasn’t illegal], and this year it’s illegal. Why is that?” she asked rhetorically.

Additionally, “There are also potentially some violations of the Administrative Procedures Act, particularly to recipients [colleges or universities] who have been promised funding and relied on this promise to start implementing programmes” or hiring personnel, said Fajana.

Fajana represents the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) in a motion before the judge who was slated to hear the case that the State of Tennessee and Students for Fair Admissions brought against the DoE for the HSIs programmes.

HACU is seeking intervenor status so that it could defend the programmes, which, as University World News reported on 22 August, became all the more important when the DoJ decided it would not defend the provisions of the Higher Education Act that established the HSIs programmes.

Santiago was further surprised by McMahon’s decision because this week, the Republican-controlled House Appropriations Committee reported out a bill that held the level of HSI funding in fiscal 2026 at the same level it was in fiscal 2025, which accords with a budgetary proposal supported by the Republican-controlled Senate.

At the very least, she suggested, there is mixed messaging coming out of Washington. At worst, Santiago averred, the administration is engaging in constitutional overreach, that is, arrogating to itself the power to decide where and when monies will be spent.

Inconsistency towards race

In an interview, Santiago drew attention to the American government’s inconsistent attitude towards race.

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) this week issued a split 6-3 decision in which the six Republican members of the court overturned a lower court’s injunction that had barred Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers from stopping individuals to check their immigration status on the basis of their “speaking Spanish or English with an accent” and “apparent race or ethnicity” (in addition to stereotypical behaviours such as “being present at particular locations such as bus stops, car washes, day labourer pick-up sites, agricultural sites” and “the type of work one does”).

In a fiery dissent, Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic appointed to the SCOTUS, said, in part: “We should not have to live in a country where the government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low-wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.”

Following the government’s logic, “you can’t use it [race] to get access to benefits and opportunities or resources, but you [the government] can use it to target and disproportionately impact a community,” Santiago told University World News.

“It is clear to me that this administration is not consistent, and that there is another strategy in place that is not about just being equal and fair to the community, and how it applies its rationales and approach that needs to be called out,” she said.

The end of McMahon’s statement is far more suggestive than an indication that some legislative housekeeping is needed now that the government has determined that the non-continuation awards are unconstitutional – that is, the removal of these programmes from the Higher Education Act.

“The Department looks forward to working with Congress to re-envision these programmes 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,” said McMahon.

However, while noting again that the Republican-controlled Congress recently indicated its intention to fund HSIs, Santiago said McMahon is saying more than it appears.

“She did say that they can’t, in the short run, change the non-mandatory funding (the US$128 million). But I do think she is willing to put that up on the chopping block as well.”

Are HBCUs next?

It’s an open question how far the DoE is willing to go with its legal reasoning.

The legal basis for the HBCUs differs from the other MSIs, the oldest HBCU having been founded in the 1850s and a number after the end of the Civil War in 1865 and still others being mandated by the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1890. As well, a number of presidents, including Trump, have issued executive orders supporting the HBCUs.

Nevertheless, said Pasquerella, “While President Trump has made a commitment to supporting HBCUs, many of his policies and executive orders have harmed HBCUs in profound ways – for instance, the cuts to the National Science Foundation.”

The DoE’s determination that the HSIs and the programmes for MSIs are unconstitutional, Pasquerella said, “will likely extend to HBCUs as the next target”.

For her part, Fajana said: “It’s HSIs today. Tomorrow it’s Predominantly Black Institutions; it's Asian American ones; it’s Native American ones. Tomorrow is already here: the Department of Education has determined that the discretionary funds under Title III [of the Higher Education Act] for minority serving institutions are unconstitutional, and therefore, is redirecting and reprogramming those resources.”

Fajana, too, fears that America’s oldest minority-serving institutions, the HBCUs, may soon also be on the firing line.

“They may seem safe today; they may seem safe tomorrow, next week. But, because ‘Black’ is included in the name of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities, I can see a universe in which there is an attack based on the fact that the use of the name itself is discriminatory because it is earmarked for institutions that are predominately serving Black students.