Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) will receive more than $174 million in one-time supplemental funding, the U.S. Department of Education announced Tuesday. The boost comes as the Trump administration continues to seek steep reductions across much of federal higher education spending.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced the investment at the White House HBCU Summit. The money, distributed through Title III, comes on top of what Congress appropriated for fiscal 2026. It follows a one-time infusion of $438 million last year. According to the department, that brings the administration’s new HBCU funding to more than $612 million across fiscal years 2025 and 2026. Tribally controlled colleges and universities will also receive a one-time award of more than $61 million.
McMahon called HBCUs “engines of opportunity in communities.” She said the funding would help them prepare students “for success in a rapidly evolving economy.”
HBCU advocates welcomed the announcement. Dr. Harry L. Williams, president and CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, said the result “would not have been possible without a commitment from HBCU advocates to work in a bipartisan manner.”
The increase did not come out of nowhere. Last September, the Education Department canceled $350 million in discretionary grants for other minority-serving institutions. It labeled those programs discriminatory because eligibility depends on the share of minority students a school enrolls. HBCUs and tribal colleges were spared because their designations are not based on student demographics.
The Justice Department later issued a legal memo declaring several Education Department grant programs unconstitutional. Among them were programs for Hispanic-serving, Native American-serving and predominantly Black institutions.
The administration has tied those moves directly to its HBCU spending. Its fiscal 2027 budget proposal, released in April, calls for cutting $354 million from MSI grant programs. The proposal presents that cut as building on last year’s effort to redirect this funding to HBCUs and tribal colleges.
The same budget would eliminate all $1.6 billion for TRIO and GEAR UP, programs that help disadvantaged students prepare for and stay in college. It would also eliminate all $910 million for Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants, which go to the lowest-income students. Federal Work-Study would be cut by 90% from fiscal 2025 levels.
The cuts reach beyond student aid. The department’s Office for Civil Rights, which investigates discrimination on campuses, would lose 35% of its budget. The plan would also eliminate the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities. In total, higher education programs would lose $2.7 billion, and the budget describes the Education Department as being “on a path to elimination.”
Congress rejected many similar requests for fiscal 2026 and kept the student access programs Trump had sought to eliminate. Virginia Rep. Bobby Scott, the top Democrat on the House education committee, criticized the 2027 plan when it was released. “This proposal would raise the cost of living, undermine our institutions, and threaten the future of public education,” Scott said.
For HBCUs, the new money is real and welcome. It comes, however, alongside a budget agenda that would take support away from other minority-serving institutions and from disadvantaged and low-income students across higher education. Whether that agenda becomes law depends on Congress.
