WASHINGTON – In their search for federal dollars, Hispanic-serving institutions must think beyond programs targeted just at HSIs or minority-serving colleges and look toward broader competitive federal grants open to all of higher education, an Obama administration official said Monday.
Juan Sepulveda, director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans, said education faces a “new policy landscape” in which narrowly targeted federal programs such as grants to Hispanic-serving colleges are unlikely, by themselves, to meet the needs of fast-growing postsecondary institutions.
“The notion that targeted dollars are the only funds available represents the old way of thinking,” he told a public policy forum of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities in Washington, D.C.
Targeted funds such as the Higher Education Act program for Hispanic-serving colleges remain important, Sepulveda said. But HSIs also must compete for funds from larger pots of money, citing the U.S. Department of Labor’s new community college competitive grants program as one such vehicle.
“Targeted and universal [funding] opportunities bring more potential for growth,” he said.
While federal education spending for 2011 remains unresolved — with the prospect of a possible government shutdown later this week — Sepulveda defended the administration’s policy of trimming some government programs while growing others. He said this approach stood in stark contrast to the “strategy of cuts” proposed by some congressional Republicans.
“We have to make sure that we cut and we invest,” he said. Among new initiatives, he touted the administration’s plan to spend $40 million to launch Hawkins Centers of Excellence that would expand and improve teacher education programs at minority-serving colleges.
