


The U.S. Education Department announced it would pull back funding from grant programs at minority-serving institutions on Wednesday.
The department called the grant programs discriminatory in a press release, saying the programs allocate the government funds to universities that aim for racial or ethnic quotas.
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“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 programs, the Department will no longer award Minority-Serving Institution grants that discriminate by restricting eligibility to institutions that meet government-mandated racial quotas,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said.
The Higher Education Act of 1965 originally established parameters for minority-serving institutions in the U.S. The act, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, established thresholds for the percentage of minority-specific that students need to be enrolled at the institution for it to qualify for MSI funding.
In July, the Department of Justice issued a determination that ethnicity quotas from Hispanic-serving institutions violate the Constitution, specifically the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause.
“The Department looks forward to working with Congress to reenvision these programs 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,” McMahon said.
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The department said about $350 million in discretionary funding was set to be allocated to support the grant programs in 2025 and that this money would be reprogrammed. The funds were supposed to support seven different programs assisting five different racial and ethnic groups.
Congress has already allocated $132 million in mandatory funding for the programs this year, and this money cannot be reprogrammed, according to the press release.