Many of the nation’s leading higher education groups — from community colleges to the National Collegiate Athletic Association — are urging Congress to reject a House of Representatives plan that would cut spending for Black, Hispanic-serving, tribal and other minority-serving colleges by more than 40 percent next year.
A coalition of 37 organizations says the 2012 plan from a House spending panel would make “drastic cuts” that will have “a disastrous effect on minority students’ college participation and completion” at a time when the federal government wants to raise college success rates.
“Cuts of this magnitude would devastate the campuses that receive this funding and the students who depend on it,” the group said in letters to all House and Senate members.
The groups are taking aim at the 2012 education spending bill unveiled by a Republican-controlled House subcommittee late last month. Among other provisions, it would cut spending on Title V Hispanic-serving institutions by 83 percent, from $104 million to $17 million next year.
Funding for HBCUs would decline by 36 percent, from $236 million to $152 million for the 2012 fiscal year.
The bill would terminate all funding for the $26 million tribal college program as well as smaller initiatives for predominantly Black colleges and universities and colleges serving large numbers of Native Hawaiians, Alaskans and Pacific Islanders.
In proposing the cuts, Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky., House Appropriations Committee chairman, said the bill “takes decisive action to cut duplicative, inefficient and wasteful spending to help get these agency budgets onto sustainable financial footing.”
