FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: media@edtrust.org
September 11, 2025

Statement from Denise Forte, President and CEO of EdTrust, and Alexza Barajas Clark, Executive Director of EdTrust-Tennessee, on the Trump Administration’s Cancellation of Grants Supporting Minority-Serving Institutions
Colleges and universities will lose key resources to expand access and opportunity for students of color

WASHINGTON – “The Trump administration launched a sweeping attack against Black, Hispanic, and Native students cancelling $350 million in grants for colleges and universities that educate significant numbers of students of color. The message from the administration is clear: students of color are not worth the nation’s support. These essential funds must be restored.

“President Trump and Education Secretary McMahon are not being truthful with the American people. Diversity and equity serve all students, and the grants canceled by the Trump administration support initiatives across minority-serving institutions (MSIs) and provide support to all students, regardless of race or ethnicity. Every student who walks the halls of a minority-serving institution is served by these grants. And these institutions serve everyone — for example, only 25% and 40% of a college’s student body need to be Hispanic or Black, respectively, to qualify as a Hispanic serving institution (HSI) or a predominantly Black institution (PBI). They can be large universities like Texas A&M or smaller institutions like Augusta Technical College in Georgia.

“One of the first signs that the Trump administration planned to target MSIs came in June, when the Tennessee Attorney General filed a lawsuit to target HSI funding. EdTrust-Tennessee pushed back against the action, describing both the potential damage inflected and the dangerous precedent set, which is now being used against other institutions serving students of color.

“Just as we predicted back in June, the grants cancelled go beyond HSIs: Predominantly Black institutions (PBIs), Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian-serving institutions, Asian American- and Native American Pacific Islander-serving institutions, and Native American-serving Nontribal institutions have all been targeted.

“This administration has continuously worked to make college less affordable and accessible for students of color through a litany of deliberate decisions: the current withholding hundreds of millions in funds for higher ed programs and cancelling bipartisan-appropriated investments; signing into law a bill to raise monthly student loan payments for millions of borrowers and force millions more to take out expensive loans from private banks to go to graduate school; and blatantly misrepresenting a Supreme Court decision to severely chill the recruitment of Black and Latino students into higher education and the ability to support them once they arrive. And with yesterday’s action, the administration is going after the programs and initiatives that help Latino, Black, Native, and other students of color thrive.

“Federal funding that supports the MSIs and other institutions serving communities of color and students from low-income backgrounds are essential resources, and EdTrust will continue to fight for the investments their students deserve.”

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