The Trump administration’s decision to cease Hispanic-Serving Institutions grant programs would have academic and economic consequences, according to the leader of the University of Texas at El Paso’s Diana Natalicio Institute for Hispanic Student Success.
Anne-Marie Núñez, the center’s executive director, said defunding HSIs could negatively affect human capital at the national level and the nation’s global leadership in sciences.
Núñez said that HSIs are more likely than their higher education peers to offer economic and social mobility. The federal government’s investment has led to effective strategies for historically underserved college students, which has had an overall positive effect on the nation’s higher education system.
An HSI is a college or university where at least 25% of full-time equivalent undergraduates are Hispanic. While HSIs enroll about 65% of the nation’s Hispanic students, they also register almost 33% of all U.S. undergraduates.
“The growing reluctance to defend the constitutionality of HSI funding risks undermining the critical role that HSIs play in strengthening the domestic labor market and sustaining the United States’ global leadership capacity,” said Núñez, a leading HSI scholar.
As of the 2023-24 academic year, 615 institutions in the U.S. and Puerto Rico were HSIs, and they served in excess of 5.6 million students. More than 100 of them are in Texas, including UTEP, Texas Tech Health El Paso and El Paso Community College.
The main funder of HSIs is the federal government through the Department of Education as well as other agencies such as the National Science Foundation, the Department of Agriculture, and the Pell Grant program. HSIs also get money from state and local governments, private donors and philanthropic foundations.
The federal agencies award competitive grants to eligible HSIs to strengthen institutional programs, expand educational opportunities for Hispanic students and to build capacity in specific academic areas. They award approximately $350 million annually.
The Department of Justice’s decision to not defend the constitutionality of HSIs came several months after the state of Tennessee and Students for Fair Admissions, a conservative nonprofit, filed a lawsuit against the Department of Education. The plaintiffs believed that HSIs, which Congress established in 1992, violate the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, and claim the government uses race and ethnicity to award grants even though those funds benefit all students.
Amy Wilhite, director of communications for the Office of Tennessee Attorney General, did not respond to a request for comment, but said in late June that her office did not have a timeline for the case to be heard.
UTEP declined to comment for this story. A TTHEP spokesman said the institution would provide a comment, but it did not. EPCC did not comment for this story, but a spokesperson told El Paso Matters in early July that it was too early to determine the lawsuit’s effect on the college.
Texas Rep. Vince Perez, a Democrat whose district represents El Paso’s Lower Valley, said the government’s decisions will deplete millions of dollars from the state, which has one of the country’s highest percentages of Hispanic residents – 40%. He expects the state to lose about $70 million annually in HSI grants.
“The continued defunding of Texas’ public universities, particularly cuts targeting Hispanic students who make up nearly half the state’s population, will give countries like China and India a major competitive advantage in the future global economy,” said Perez, a member of the House of Representative’s Higher Education Committee.
Deborah A. Santiago, co-founder and CEO of Excelencia, a national nonprofit dedicated to Latino success in higher education, said more than 150 colleges and universities in 27 states benefit from the millions of dollars that HSIs earn through three competitive grants.
Santiago said that the loss of those funds would worsen access to opportunity and to a quality education to all college students. She added that HSI representatives have expressed levels of fear and uncertainty if the HSI funds are unavailable.
“I think institutions across this country that are already feeling challenges of economic issues and funding are going to be further challenged, and it could mean decreased access to many people across this country, and that goes beyond Hispanics,” Santiago said.
Santiago said Excelencia will not represent HSIs legally, but will promote their value with members of Congress.
The Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, or HACU, filed a motion to intervene as a defendant in the lawsuit. In a statement released Monday, the group called the litigation unjust and the elimination of the HSI designation would unduly harm all students at these institutions and their communities.
David Mendez, HACU’s interim CEO, wrote that the HSI program constitutes a fraction of the federal budget, but delivers a return on investment that far exceeds its modest cost.
“Ending HSI program grants supporting institutions would cut off vital resources, not only for HSIs but for other programs that serve a large proportion of first-generation, low-income, and other historically underrepresented college students,” Mendez wrote.
Jacob Fraire, president of the ECMC Foundation, a Los Angeles-based group that works to eliminate gaps in post-secondary completion, worked for HACU in the late 1980s and early ’90s, and was part of the team that lobbied for HSIs. He said there was, until recent times, consistent bipartisan support for the program. As the nation’s Latino population grew and dispersed, more institutions earned HSI status.
“I think that the fact that there is now a challenge in the constitutionality of HSIs is disappointing,” Fraire said.
Anthony Hernandez, a faculty member in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Educational Policy Studies, spent part of his summer visiting institutions with large Latino student populations during what he called a “crisis moment in our country.”
Hernandez, whose research focus is HSI leadership, said officials at those campuses told him that they were coordinating financial, academic and community strategies to protect students and their opportunities. They are looking to diversify their revenue streams, had established cross-functional planning teams, and initiated audits of all federally funded programs to identify vulnerabilities. Some leaders used internal funds to “triage” critical programs.
He said officials have prioritized intrusive advising, wraparound support, bilingual counseling and free meals for students who cannot afford them. He said HSI grants represent hope and opportunity for the next generation of students, and when those grants are cut, the community suffers.
“As one of the leaders at an organization told me,” Hernandez said during a telephone interview, ‘We can’t control Washington, but we can control how we show up for students.’”
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