For months, advocates for minority-serving institutions predicted the U.S. Department of Education might channel funds slated for MSI programs into another bucket: the Strengthening Institutions Program, a capacity-building program intended to help underresourced institutions improve academic programs and infrastructure. The Trump administration recently proved their premonitions right, sparking a range of reactions, from reluctant acceptance to outrage.
ED and the Department of Labor, which has taken over some of the Education Department’s functions, announced plans to nix 2026 MSI grant competitions last Thursday, directing hundreds of millions of dollars to SIP instead. Many hope that MSIs, underresourced by definition, may still benefit from the funds, for which they are free to apply. But some worry the institutions will inevitably lose out on federal dollars by competing in a broader contest without the specific pools of funding Congress has historically designated for them.
Administration officials argued in a news release that MSI programs are “unlawful” because they confer “government benefits exclusively to institutions based on racial or ethnic criteria.” (MSI designations are defined partly by race-based enrollment thresholds, in addition to low per-student expenditures and high numbers of low-income students.) SIP has no race- or ethnicity-related criteria. The move comes as another blow to MSIs after the Education Department last year redirected funds for their institutions to historically Black colleges and universities and tribal colleges.
