From El Paso Matters:
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 was aware of the lawsuit, but since it is a legal matter, “our university cannot provide a comment on the case.” 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.
