What’s New
A lawsuit filed Wednesday by the State of Tennessee and Students for Fair Admissions argues that a federal program that annually provides millions of dollars to Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs) is discriminatory and unconstitutional.
“The State of Tennessee operates many colleges and universities. Every one of them serves Hispanic students,” lawyers said. “Every one of them serves low-income students. But not one of them qualifies to receive grants under the HSI program. Why? Because they don’t have the right mix of ethnicities on campus.”
In order to qualify for the HSI program, a college must serve a student body made up of at least 25 percent Hispanic students. A majority of its enrollment must also be low-income.
“Treating people differently because of their skin color and ancestry drags our country backwards,” Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said in a statement. “The HSI program perversely deprives even needy Hispanic students of the benefits of this funding if they attend institutions that don’t meet the government’s arbitrary quota.”
The Details
HSIs, a designation created in 1992, enroll half of all Latino college students, according to the Rutgers Center for Minority Serving Institutions. The number of HSIs has gradually increased as enrollment demographics have shifted. There are currently 615 federally designated HSIs, a 5-percent increase from last year.
Funds from the federal Developing Hispanic-Serving Institutions Program have helped colleges provide scholarships and fellowships, invest in campus buildings and laboratories, and grow endowments. In 2023, the program awarded more than $28 million to HSIs around the country, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) is the same group of lawyers that in 2023 sued Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill over race-conscious admissions. In the HSI suit, lawyers argued that public tax dollars should not be distributed based on a colleges’ racial makeup and cited the 2023 Supreme Court ruling in their favor.
The lawsuit contends that several of Tennessee’s public colleges and universities — including the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Middle Tennessee State University, East Tennessee State University, and the University of Memphis — have been excluded from the program, despite meeting “neutral eligibility criteria.” More than 60 percent of students at the University of Memphis are minorities, but the institution does not meet the threshold to be considered an HSI.
“This lawsuit is not about denying opportunity to any racial or ethnic group. It is about ensuring that opportunity is extended to everyone on an equal basis,” Edward Bloom, president of SFFA, said in a statement.
The lawsuit could set a precedent for how federally designated Predominantly Black Institutions (PBIs) and Asian American, Native American and Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs) are funded. (PBIs are different from historically Black colleges and universities, or HBCUs, which receive federal designation based on their founding date and original mission.)
Acquiring a PBI status requires a student body made up of at least 40 percent Black students. The AANAPISI designation requires that students who identify as Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander make up at least 10 percent of the student body.
Minority-serving institutions were established in 1965 after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Higher Education Act with the explicit mission to increase the number of minority students enrolled in college.
“Because MSIs enroll a substantial share of minority students, many of whom might not otherwise attend college, the continuous development and success of these institutions is critical for realizing our nation’s higher-education and work-force goals and for the benefit of American society,” the Rutgers Center for MSIs wrote on its website.
There are currently more than 700 federally designated MSIs in the United States. In 2023, MSIs accounted for more than a third of all full-time undergraduate students and 52 percent of students of color, according to the Rutgers Center for Minority Serving Institutions.
The Details
Conservative think tanks like the Manhattan Institute, the Federalist Society, and the American Civil Rights Project have argued in several white papers that MSI programs with explicit racial criteria violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
“MSI programs intentionally treat colleges and universities differently based on the races of their students (and the imputed race of the institution), which the federal government has lacked the power to do since 1954,” Dan Morenoff, executive director of the American Civil Rights Project and an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute, wrote in draft legislation to eliminate MSI funding.
Colleges eager to attain the MSI designation sometimes employ explicit efforts to recruit Latino students. Morenoff said that the millions of dollars in federal funding that the programs provide entice administrators to violate civil-rights laws in recruitment practices.
Morenoff and other conservative activists have advocated for the federal funds to instead be diverted to the Pell Grant, which is currently at risk of budget cuts, or to states directly through block grants.
“If your concern is that there are people who do not have access to higher education, you can directly address that and you do not need a racial gloss in order to get from point A to point B,” Morenoff told The Chronicle. “There are better ways to do this that are constitutionally unproblematic.”
HSI advocates argue that Latino students have historically been discriminated against and continue to enroll into and graduate from college at significantly lower numbers than their white counterparts.
In Tennessee, only 26 percent of Latino adults earn an associate degree or higher, compared to 48 percent of white adults, according to Excelencia in Education, a national organization focused on educational success for Latino students.
Southern Adventist University, Tennessee’s only HSI, received its federal designation in 2023.
That year, the university was awarded a $3-million grant to establish a STEM Success program for “Hispanic, low-income, and other underserved student populations.” SAU launched a scholarship program that provides Hispanic students with up to $6,000 per year if they have at least a 3.0 GPA.
“Southern Adventist University’s DHSI grant allows the university to strengthen support services, implement institutional changes, and improve learning opportunities for all students,” a spokesperson for the university wrote in a statement to The Chronicle. “It also allows us to encourage all high-school students, with an emphasis on the underserved, to take appropriate high-school courses and then choose STEM degrees at higher-education institutions of their choice.”
What to Watch For
It’s not yet clear how the Trump administration will respond to the lawsuit.
“The primary goal of such litigation almost has to be to open the doors for all of our institutions to compete on an even basis, regardless of the race of their students,” Morenoff said. “How you get from here to there — whether that’s through some kind of legal change by Congress, whether that’s by court order — remains to be seen.”
