On September 10, 2025, the U.S. Department of Education released a statement announcing that “it will end discretionary funding to several Minority-Serving Institutions (MSI) grant programs that discriminate by conferring government benefits exclusively to institutions that meet racial or ethnic quotas,” claiming the programs were unconstitutional.
But Mike Hoa Nguyen, an associate professor at the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies and principal investigator on the Minority-Serving Institutions (MSI) Data Project, says MSIs are “the backbone of American higher education” and told a virtual audience assembled for New York University’s Steinhardt Institute for Higher Education Policy that the Trump Administration is splitting hairs in an effort to divide institutions and pit them against each other.
During a March 12 event, Nguyen discussed the changing landscape of funding and other support for these institutions, which are classified based on their federal designations for serving marginalized student populations.
“Really the goal [of MSIs] is to benefit and support and validate students of color, while at the same time addressing ongoing racism,” he said.
In 2007, the U.S. Department of Education directed $400 million per year to support minority-serving institutions, which Nguyen jokingly referred to as “a rounding error when it comes to the total federal budget.” But despite how little the institutions receive, they continue to do very impactful work.
Nguyen also pointed out that because the 1965 Higher Education Act only allows institutions to select one MSI classification for funding purposes — meaning an institution cannot be both a historically Black college or university (HBCU) and a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI), even if it meets the criteria for both. The current structure “really doesn't recognize how diverse and how complex and how multicultural some of these institutions are today," said Nguyen.
“I don't envy those college presidents who have to make some really tough decisions, the about which which designation that they're going to pick, he continued. I had the opportunity to talk to several who had to make that choice, and they they often say it's one of the hardest and most difficult ones they've had to make in their in their presidency.”
