Federal funding changes impact Central Texas Hispanic-serving universities, HBCU's
AUSTIN (KXAN) — Some Texas universities and colleges are losing money, while others will get more federal funding following recent announcements from the U.S Department of Education and the Trump administration.
The U.S. Department of Education (DOE) announced last week that it’s eliminating $350 million in federal grants to Hispanic-serving institutions.
“It will end discretionary funding to several Minority-Serving Institutions (MSI) grant programs that discriminate by conferring government benefits exclusively to institutions that meet racial or ethnic quotas,” the DOE said. “This action follows the U.S. Solicitor General’s determination in July that the Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI) programs ‘violate the equal-protection component of the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause,’ and that the Department of Justice would not defend them in ongoing litigation.”
This will directly impact campuses in Central Texas, like Texas State University, where Hispanic students make up nearly half of the school’s population, and St. Edward’s University, where more than half of its undergraduate population is Hispanic.
Texas State told KXAN it’s not sure to what extent it will impact them yet. However, St. Edward’s student newspaper Hilltop Views reports that President Montserrat Fuentes released a statement to the campus community on Thursday saying, “the programs are more than labels,” and that they “represent lives changed, first-generation students supported, and pathways created for futures that were once thought to be out of reach.”
The president added that more than half of incoming students are federal Pell grant recipients, and that they’re looking for other ways to support students.
Funding cuts will impact both 2025 new awards and all moving forward, according to the DOE.
In the meantime, the Trump administration announced earlier this week that it’ll be redirecting $500 million in federal funding to historically Black colleges, as well as tribal colleges. It’ll be a one-time deal, covered by the very cuts we just mentioned, which will benefit Huston-Tillotson University, a historically Black campus in Austin.
A funding bill passed by Congress this year aligned with President Trump’s priorities. The DOE told the AP it carefully scrutinized the federal grants to make sure taxpayers aren’t funding racially discriminatory programs.
