For 30 years, colleges enrolling a certain share of Hispanic students have been able to secure a title that opens up millions in federal funding. Hundreds of them now qualify as Hispanic-serving institutions, or HSIs.
But those programs are now in the line of fire.
Students for Fair Admissions, the group responsible for the lawsuit that ended race-conscious admissions policies at selective colleges in 2023, has brought a new complaint in Tennessee arguing that federal funding designated solely for HSIs is discriminatory.
The U.S. Education Department doled out about $350 million to Hispanic-serving institutions in the 2024 fiscal year across three competitive grant programs; the National Science Foundation awarded another $53.5 million. Colleges can become eligible when at least 25 percent of their undergraduate students identify as Hispanic or Latino/a.
According to SFFA, that’s a problem.
“Otherwise-qualified institutions are denied access to millions in federal support solely because they lack the designated racial mix,” said Edward Blum, president of the group. (Typically, to receive HSI grants, institutions must also demonstrate that they serve a large share of low-income students and that they have financial need; those requirements can be waived.)
The gateway to federal funding must be race-neutral. The current setup denies equal opportunity to thousands of students and faculty at non-HSI institutions.
Even though colleges often use HSI funding for services that benefit the entire student body, such as library upgrades and tutoring support, Blum said the designation is still discriminatory because of the types of colleges that have a chance to compete for the funding in the first place.
“The gateway to federal funding must be race-neutral. The current setup denies equal opportunity to thousands of students and faculty at non-HSI institutions — many of whom are Hispanic or low-income themselves,” Blum said in a statement to The Chronicle.
Blum is among a group of right-wing critics who are urging changes to the over $1 billion sent to minority-serving institutions each year. Some conservative activists argue that Congress should reallocate that money to programs that benefit all students, regardless of race or ethnicity.
Several higher-education experts told The Chronicle that Hispanic-serving institutions should get special funding, pointing to the fact that a plurality of HSIs are community colleges that have never received adequate government support.
Still, the recent scrutiny of HSIs has sparked fresh debate about a federal initiative that even some supporters acknowledge has never fully lived up to its promise.
A Growing Pool
Congress first defined Hispanic-serving institutions in 1992. The goal of HSI grants, per the legislation, was to “improve and expand” colleges’ capacity to support Hispanic and other low-income students who were enrolling in and graduating from college at low rates.
The government began distributing Hispanic-serving funding in 1995. Initially there was just one grant program focused on undergraduate students. There are now three other Hispanic-serving programs: One is earmarked for graduate education, and two — one administered by the Education Department and one by the NSF — are aimed at increasing the number of Hispanic students who receive STEM degrees.
But while the list of colleges eligible for HSI funding has grown significantly over the last 15 years, the pot hasn’t kept pace, said Wolde-Ab Isaac, chancellor of the Riverside Community College District, in California.
Taking away Hispanic-serving funding “would stifle the kind of innovation and progress that we are seeing in institutions that literally are serving the neediest students.”
For example, in 2010, Congress appropriated $117 million for the government’s largest HSI grant program, but only apportioned $124 million in 2019, when the amount of HSIs skyrocketed from 293 to 539. The number of institutions now stands at 615, according to the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities.
About one-fifth of undergraduates identifies as Hispanic or Latino. So it’s not that hard anymore for colleges to reach the threshold of 25-percent Hispanic enrollment.
The HSI ranks now include research juggernauts, like the University of Texas at Austin, which have a “greater capacity to compete for those dollars,” said Gina Ann Garcia, a professor in the School of Education at the University of California at Berkeley. (Berkeley is also working to increase its Hispanic enrollment and become eligible.)
Stephanie Aguilar-Smith, an assistant professor of higher education at the University of Georgia, said that, on the whole, she believes the original purpose of HSI funding — uplifting students in need — is being met: “The folks I’ve talked to across many different HSIs have used words like ‘transformational.’”
Still, Aguilar-Smith said it’s always important to keep an eye on where the money is going.
In a 2023 study, she found that while more-selective colleges were often likely to apply for the grants, they were less likely to win them. But she said her findings might not hold up amid the dramatic increase in the number of HSIs.
“Not all HSI universities are created equal, and that’s pretty much anywhere,” said Carlos Juan Crespo, the HSI liaison and dean of the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
UIC is one of the 22 members of the Alliance of Hispanic Serving Research Universities, which formed in 2022. Crespo said there are “no freebies” for universities like his, even if they are more accustomed to writing grant proposals. He added that institutions can be research-intensive while still serving Hispanic students.
Benefiting Students
The government’s HSI programs have long been situated in a legal gray area. Garcia said it’s important to ensure that the funding is actually benefiting Hispanic students. But colleges can’t only spend the funding on Hispanic students, because that would run afoul of antidiscrimination law.
The Department of Education gives wide-ranging guidelines on how such grants can be used, including for the development and renovation of instructional facilities, faculty development, counseling programs, and student-support services.
Deborah A. Santiago, co-founder and chief executive of Excelencia in Education, which advocates for Hispanic student success, said her organization’s “Seal of Excelencia” aims to reward “institutions that strive to go beyond enrollment to intentionally serve Latino students.” The ultimate goal, though, is to improve success for all students, Santiago said.
“If we can transform higher ed to serve these students better, can they not serve others better? And that is the hypothesis and the premise that we’ve taken,” she said.
For many community colleges, the money is used in a “capacity building” manner, said Isaac, of the Riverside Community College District.
Isaac said community colleges in California receive state funding based on the number of full-time students attending the institution, meaning their resources are “very limited.” Money received through an HSI grant is specifically allocated to student-success programs, he said.
Santiago said taking away Hispanic-serving funding “would stifle the kind of innovation and progress that we are seeing in institutions that literally are serving the neediest students.”
Though HSI funding is still needed, Jose Fierro, president of Cerritos College, said he would support restructuring how the designation is awarded to focus on graduation rates rather than enrollment data.
“We are perhaps in a point in which the investment is there, the designation is there,” Fierro said, “and we should look into how are we graduating our students and serving our communities.”
