States awarded $18.6 billion in aid to students during the 2023-24 academic year, a 12 percent increase from the previous academic year, according to the National Association of State Student Grant and Aid Programs' annual report.
Federal funding for Pell Grants, and the number of awards given, plummeted between fiscal years 2011-12 and 2021-22. Black student enrollment in public colleges and universities plunged by nearly a half million students over that same period. A new report, produced by the University of Alabama's Education Policy Center for the Southern Education Foundation, suggests the declines in financial aid and Black students attending college are linked.
"There are a variety of very significant concerns that Americans have with higher education that are not unrelated to the topics the Trump administration cites or references as justifications for their crackdown," said Matt Baum, the Marvin Kalb Chair of Global Communications at the Harvard Kennedy School, a public policy professor and one of the survey researchers. Still, "the fact that Americans have these concerns doesn't necessarily translate to agreeing with the corrective measures the Trump administration is advocating and implementing."
Bay Area universities lost more than $2 million in funds after the Trump administration announced it was rerouting money meant for minority-serving institutions to charter schools and other educational programs, an analysis by Bay Area News Group has revealed. In September, the Department of Education announced it was ending $350 million in discretionary funding for several minority-serving grant programs, alleging the programs were racially discriminatory because qualifying schools must maintain a percentage of minority students in their total student enrollment.
Gov. Newsom is acting like an extortionist. His threat to withhold university funding unless schools publicly oppose President Trump's demands is political coercion. Public universities should not be strong-armed into adopting the governor's preferred positions. Their mission is education and open inquiry, not serving as instruments of partisan pressure. What makes this especially troubling is the hypocrisy. Newsom built his political brand by criticizing Trump for using federal funds as a political weapon.
"Our 'why' is simple: to level the playing field in West Virginia and Appalachia," the Smiths said in a statement. "We hope this gift ensures that every student with the dream of an advanced degree has the opportunity and support to achieve it-while also showing what's possible for the future of higher education in our region and beyond."
University budgets across the country are broken. Overall revenue and accumulated financial support appear to be declining for a wide variety of reasons. New funding policies, administrative reorganizations such as those at the Department of Education, lean fiscal times for states, diminished regard for higher learning, fewer requirements for degrees among employers hiring for entry-level positions and the impact of artificial intelligence all come together to reduce the pool of new students, tuition revenues and grants.
