Hispanic-Serving Institutions Must Be Defended

Race and higher-education policy have always been entwined, from Jim Crow-era exclusion to the creation of historically Black colleges and universities, from the rise of tribal colleges to today’s Hispanic-serving institutions. What changes is whether the government chooses to widen doors or close them.

The Justice Department’s recent decision not to defend the federal statute that defines Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs) — followed by the U.S. Department of Education’s move to halt discretionary funding for several minority-serving-institution (MSI) grant programs — is the latest turn in a long struggle over whether higher education should be expected to help correct for the weight of historical inequities. Framed as “colorblindness,” the DOJ’s stance threatens not only hundreds of colleges that disproportionately serve first-generation and low-income students but also the very legitimacy of federal support for minority-serving institutions more broadly.

To understand the stakes, it helps to view this decision as part of a broader trajectory. For decades, the Supreme Court and federal agencies have wrestled with race in education. Desegregation rulings sought to dismantle systems of exclusion. Affirmative-action policies tried to expand opportunities within selective admissions. More recently, the court’s Students for Fair Admissions decision limited the use of race in college admissions.

Now the DOJ has gone further still. Earlier this year, in response to a lawsuit challenging federal support for Hispanic-serving institutions, the department chose not to defend a longstanding provision of the Higher Education Act that defines HSIs as colleges in which at least 25 percent of undergraduates are Hispanic. That legal challenge, State of Tennessee and Students for Fair Admissions v. U.S. Department of Education, argues that HSI funding amounts to an unconstitutional racial preference.

That claim misses a crucial detail: To qualify as an HSI, a college must also demonstrate that at least half of its students are from low-income households — a definition that reflects demographic change and socioeconomic need. By failing to defend the provision, the DOJ signaled that even capacity-building investments in institutions serving students at this intersection may now be suspect under federal law.

This shift marks a profound departure from three decades of bipartisan support for HSIs, and for minority-serving institutions in general. It also reveals a deeper philosophical battle over whether higher education should be treated as a mirror of inequality or as a lever to reduce it.

To label the HSI designation a racial preference is to misunderstand how it functions. No student gains admission to a university because it is an HSI. These colleges qualify for federal support because of the students they already serve — students more likely to be first-generation, low-income, and graduates of underfunded schools.

The funding is not a scholarship pot earmarked by race. It is a capacity investment — support that helps colleges strengthen the systems and services that enable student success. That includes building infrastructure, developing faculty, expanding STEM pathways, and creating mentoring and advising programs. To collapse that distinction — between preferential treatment for people and investment in institutions — is to mischaracterize the very purpose of the program.

I witnessed this distinction firsthand. At the University of California at Irvine, I helped lead the campus as it prepared for its assumption of HSI status. The work was never about meeting a demographic threshold. It was about building the capacity to serve students more effectively. I started an Inclusive Excellence Certificate Program that engaged hundreds of faculty members, staff, and students in equity-based practices. That program pushed us to rethink who our students are, whether we truly serve them, and how to transform teaching, advising, and campus culture to ensure their success. The impact extended well beyond Hispanic students; it strengthened the institution.

The same pattern is evident in my current role at California State University at Chico. Our HSI designation has enabled us to create programs that remove barriers to student success, prepare first-generation students for graduate study, and build stronger bridges from the campus to the surrounding community. These are not boutique projects on the margins of the university. They are central to how we fulfill our mission as a public institution.

And that is the larger point: HSIs were designed to recognize institutions already central to educating the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population. Nearly 40 percent of Californians identify as Latino, and nationally, Latino students now account for almost 20 percent of all college enrollment. Stripping support from these campuses is not about fairness; it is a decision to cement inequality into the foundation of higher education.

The Justice Department’s position also ignores the policy lineage that gave rise to HSIs in the first place. Congress created the designation in 1992 through amendments to the Higher Education Act, recognizing that demographic change was reshaping American higher education and that institutions serving large numbers of Hispanic students needed resources commensurate with their role.

HSIs did not emerge in a vacuum. They were the latest chapter in a much longer federal effort to tackle inequities in access to higher education through targeted institutional support. Historically Black colleges and universities, mainly established after the Civil War, became eligible for dedicated federal funding under Title III of the Higher Education Act in 1965. Tribal colleges were formally recognized in the 1970s, with the Tribally Controlled Community College Assistance Act of 1978. Institutions that serve Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander students were added in 2007. Each of these programs grew out of a recognition that one-size-fits-all federal support would only reproduce historical disparities — and that fundamental fairness required tailored investment in underfunded institutions serving underrepresented populations.

In this context, HSIs are not an outlier but reflect a longstanding bipartisan consensus: Higher education should meet students where they are. The idea is simple — equity is not achieved by pretending history doesn’t matter, but by giving institutions the tools to serve the students they already enroll.

At UC Irvine, for example, HSI-focused programs helped support a dramatic expansion in Latino student success. Between 2009 and 2019, Latino undergraduate enrollment grew by nearly 150 percent — even as the university became more selective — and the campus invested in faculty training, mentoring networks, and culturally responsive advising to meet the needs of a changing student body. Targeted state funding within the California State University system has made the new Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Student Achievement Program (ASAP) possible. Rather than generic student-success efforts, ASAP builds learning communities, develops culturally relevant curriculum, and forms partnerships with families and communities to support first-generation persistence. Such identity-based programs enable institutions to address barriers that income-based support alone would miss.

National evidence reinforces this pattern. Colleges that receive Title V HSI grants have documented measurable improvements in Latino graduation and persistence rates. According to the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU), campuses have leveraged federal HSI grants to create bridge programs in engineering, expand bilingual advising, and build undergraduate research opportunities that prepare students for graduate study. These structural investments enable historically underrepresented students to thrive — and strengthen institutions over all.

The importance of these designations is not limited to HSIs. Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-serving institutions (AANAPISIs) provide another clear example. Research shows that first-generation students who are Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander often disappear in aggregate enrollment statistics without targeted investment, masking high dropout rates in Southeast Asian and Pacific Islander communities. AANAPISI funding has supported bilingual advising, mentoring programs, and culturally grounded leadership development that generic low-income support would never have identified as priorities. In other words, identity-based designations surface inequities that “income alone” policies overlook, and they supply the resources needed to address them.

The DOJ is now questioning that premise. By framing HSIs as unconstitutional “racial preferences,” the department is signaling a break not just with affirmative action in admissions but with the entire federal architecture of minority-serving institutions. If the courts accept this argument, the same logic could soon be wielded against HBCUs, tribal colleges, and other MSIs.

This isn’t just another policy fight. It’s an attempt to change what fairness means in higher education, whether it’s helping students overcome unequal starting points or pretending those disparities have never existed. It doesn’t happen all at once. Equity programs are rolled back gradually, often framed as efforts to ensure “equal treatment.”

If Hispanic-serving institutions are dismantled, what disappears is not simply a line item in the federal budget but an entire vision of higher education as a public trust. For three decades, the HSI designation has affirmed that capacity matters — that institutions cannot serve growing, diverse student populations without deliberate investment in faculty development, student support, and academic pathways. Removing that scaffolding would send an unmistakable message: that our system will no longer concern itself with whether underfunded campuses have the means to succeed at their mission.

The consequences would reach well beyond Hispanic students. HSIs and other minority-serving institutions educate millions of first-generation and low-income students — the very students who will decide what America becomes. They are the campuses where the next generation of teachers, nurses, engineers, scientists, business leaders, and civic leaders are trained. To label this support unconstitutional is to adopt a definition of fairness so narrow that it excludes the realities of American history — and the demands of the present.

Leadership now requires more than compliance with shifting legal mandates. It requires institutions to articulate why designations like HSIs matter. The outcomes are clear. Latino students at institutions certified by the Seal of Excelencia — a national certification recognizing colleges with evidence-based practices that support Latino student success — graduate at rates eight percentage points higher than the national average for Latinos (52 percent compared to 44 percent). In addition, a study by the Education Trust found that Latino students at Hispanic-serving institutions complete degrees at rates more than five percentage points higher than their peers at comparable non-HSIs, reinforcing the value of institutions intentionally serving Latino populations.

I began my journey in a California community college as a first-generation, low-income student. The opportunities I found weren’t accidental; they were built through decades of struggle and policy. The Department of Justice’s decision places that legacy in jeopardy.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of California State University at Chico.