\n<\/p>\n
Delays in the distribution of federal grants for undergraduates involved with TRIO, a series of college-access programs, combined with an ongoing lawsuit have raised concerns among proponents for the McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program\u2014a TRIO grant designed specifically for those pursuing graduate school.<\/p>\n
Legally, grants don\u2019t have to be awarded for either the TRIO undergraduate programs or McNair until the end of the fiscal year, Sept.\u00a030. But in most years prior, the Department of Education has notified institutions about the status of awards in late August or mid-September.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That has not been the case so far this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Award notifications started to trickle out after Sept.\u00a015 for the undergraduate programs that started Sept.\u00a01, but according to a TRIO advocacy group, most of the college staff members who lead McNair are still waiting to hear from the department, though at least one program got approval Friday. <\/p>\n
As with the other TRIO programs, the Education Department says it will issue notices by the end of the month. But with a lawsuit filed last year arguing McNair is discriminatory and President Trump calling to slash TRIO altogether in his recent budget proposal, uncertainty remains rampant.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of a sudden, we\u2019re in sort of this panic mode,\u201d one assistant program director said on condition of anonymity, fearing that speaking out could harm the students she serves. \u201cThat stress and panic has certainly been building since January, but this definitely accelerated it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
And while the anonymous director said her program has yet to receive a status update, for some the fear of cancellation has already become a reality.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So far, the Council for Opportunity in Education, a TRIO advocacy group, has tallied 18 grant cancellations out of the more than 200 McNair programs. Collectively, McNair serves more than 6,000 first-generation, low-income and underrepresented students each year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
ED deputy press secretary Ellen Keast said in a statement, \u201cThe department plans to issue continuation awards for the McNair Scholars program by the end of the fiscal year,\u201d while also continuing to \u201cevaluate the underlying legal issues raised in litigation.\u201d In an email obtained by Inside Higher Ed<\/em>, a legislative affairs officer at the department reinforced this statement to a staffer on Capitol Hill, saying that any grantees facing a cancellation would have been notified by Sept.\u00a016.\u00a0<\/p>\n Still, the director said she is scrambling to devise a backup plan.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have less than three weeks to figure out what’s going on, talk to our institutions and make a plan,\u201d she said. \u201cJobs are going to be lost and students aren\u2019t going to have services.\u201d<\/p>\n Worries about McNair have existed for months, but they kicked into a higher gear at a COE conference earlier this month.\u00a0<\/p>\n The program director and COE president Kimberly Jones, both of whom attended the conference, say <\/em>that Christopher McCaghren, ED\u2019s deputy assistant secretary for higher education programs, spoke about the future of McNair on Sept.\u00a010. And according to both of their recollections, when the secretary was asked if and when grant awards would be allocated, he said the department needed to wait on further rulings from the court before it could administer this year\u2019s awards. (Jones noted that the session was not recorded, at the request of the department.)\u00a0<\/p>\n Keast said the account of McCaghren\u2019s comments was \u201cunsubstantiated fake news\u201d and reinforced that the department is committed to issuing McNair awards by Sept.\u00a030. She declined, however, to provide a transcript or recording of his remarks.<\/p>\n The lawsuit McCaghren was likely referring to was filed last year by the Young America\u2019s Foundation, a national conservative student group. It alleged the criteria for McNair eligibility was race-based and argued that in order to be constitutional, the program should be open to all students. The case was dismissed by a federal district court, but the plaintiffs have since appealed.\u00a0<\/p>\n If the government is delaying grant allocation because of the lawsuit, Jones said, it would be an \u201cabsolutely unacceptable\u201d practice.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf the government couldn\u2019t move on something every time they were sued, then they wouldn\u2019t do anything,\u201d she added. \u201cI believe that this is an opportunity they\u2019re taking advantage of to undermine the program and attempt to eliminate it.\u201d<\/p>\n Amanda Fuchs Miller, the Biden administration appointee who previously filled McCaghren\u2019s role, made similar comments.<\/p>\n \u201cJust because there’s pending litigation doesn\u2019t mean that you don\u2019t fund a program that Congress has authorized and appropriated funds for,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s not the role of the executive branch.\u201d<\/p>\n Both Jones and Fuchs Miller pointed to the department\u2019s recent decision to end funding for grant programs that support minority-serving institutions as another reason they are worried about McNair\u2019s future.\u00a0<\/p>\n The MSI decision stemmed from a similar lawsuit that argued the criteria for Hispanic-serving institutions was illegal. And while no court ruling had been issued, a Justice Department official agreed with the plaintiffs and so did Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who expanded the determination to include similar grant programs.<\/p>\n Named after Ronald McNair, a first-generation college student and astrophysicist who died during the launch of NASA\u2019s space shuttle Challenger<\/em> in 1986, the McNair Scholars program started in 1989 and receives about $60\u00a0million per year from Congress.<\/p>\n As with other TRIO programs, at least two-thirds of the students served under McNair must be first-generation and low-income. But what has sparked the legal scrutiny of the graduate program is a provision that allows up to one-third of the participating students to be admitted because they are \u201ca member of a group that is underrepresented.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Proponents for McNair say that this may include characteristics like race or sexuality, but aspects like gender and field of study often play a role as well. In many instances a student will tick all three boxes\u2014first-gen, low-income and underrepresented\u2014at once.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a perspective that McNair is only for students of color, which it is not,\u201d said Jones. \u201cIt particularly looks for a demographic that is not usually sought after in postgraduate education\u00a0\u2026 We\u2019re tapping into talent that we would not have otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n For example, a white woman from a low-income household who is pursuing a career in STEM could be a prime candidate under the current regulatory statute. <\/p>\n But advocates worry that because of current political tensions, many eligible students of all races could lose access to this critical service.<\/p>\n The program leader who spoke with Inside Higher Ed <\/em>said that until grant awards are sent out, her rural institution will lack $278,000. As a result, she will likely have to tell 27 students that the classes they have already signed up for, the workshops they were promised and the conferences they planned to attend will not be possible.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the semester that our seniors\u2019 grad applications are due, so to just yank the rug out from underneath them and say, \u2018You\u2019re on your own\u2019 in this critical time is just cruel,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s also, in my opinion, a really shortsighted way of the administration understanding national security and participating in the global economy.\u201d<\/p>\n Tara Ruttley, a McNair alumna who studied neuroscience and now works in the space industry, always knew she wanted a Ph.D. but wasn\u2019t sure how to get there before she saw a poster advertising the grant program at Colorado State University. Through McNair she was able to pursue a paid research internship, present her findings at conferences, receive guidance on application essays and then give back to younger students. If funding were to be cut, Ruttley said, other aspiring graduate students won\u2019t be so lucky.<\/p>\n \u201cI’m kind of a scrapper, so I might have figured it out, but it definitely would have been delayed. The entire package wouldn\u2019t have been as strong and it probably would have taken me a lot longer to get to where I was going,\u201d she explained. \u201cThere\u2019s a whole generation of scientists we may never see from varied backgrounds across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Delays in the distribution of federal grants for undergraduates involved with TRIO, a series of college-access programs, combined with an ongoing lawsuit have raised concerns among proponents for the McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program\u2014a TRIO grant designed specifically for those pursuing graduate school. Legally, grants don\u2019t have to be awarded for either the TRIO undergraduate programs<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22651,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[5472,13894,536,7980,808],"class_list":{"0":"post-22650","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-advocates","9":"tag-mcnair","10":"tag-program","11":"tag-scholars","12":"tag-worry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u2018Unacceptable Delays\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\u2018Tapping Into Talent\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n