The future of a graduate student resource center at UTA is in question after the federal government cut a grant program for schools that serve a large number of Hispanic students.
The EDGE Center, an acronym for “Empowerment, Development, and Growth in Education,” is funded by a federal Hispanic-Serving Institution grant. Any graduate student, regardless of race, can study and work together, receive career coaching, attend workshops and borrow computers and other materials at the University of Texas at Arlington center.
In 2022, UTA received a $3 million grant under the U.S. Department of Education’s Promoting Postbaccalaureate Opportunities for Hispanic Americans program, one of the grant programs for HSIs.
The money was intended to be paid out over five years, according to The Shorthorn. The first grant year began Oct. 1, 2022.
The federal program was intended to support Hispanic students in earning advanced degrees as well as increase and improve postbaccalaureate programs at universities that serve many Hispanic and low-income students.
In 2014, UTA became a Hispanic-Serving Institution, meaning at least 25% of full-time undergraduate students are Hispanic. Last fall, more than 40% of undergraduates were.
The creation of the EDGE Center was one of three activities funded by the grant. When it opened in January 2024, EDGE stood for Empowerment, Development, and Growth in Education for Hispanic Graduate Students. The center then dropped “for Hispanic Graduate Students” from its name to comply with a Texas law banning DEI efforts at public universities.
All graduate students, regardless of ethnicity, have always been able to use the EDGE Center, UTA spokesman Joe Carpenter said.
For international students such as Bangladeshi doctoral student Nur Jafira, the center is helpful because it provides resources as they navigate a new country, she said.
“They provide us with all the apps and all those things there,” she said.
Although the number of international graduate students dropped by 30% this fall, they still make up more than a quarter of all graduate students at UTA.
The federal funding allowed the center to offer travel stipends to support master’s students in attending professional conferences. The school recently stopped accepting applications due to uncertainty about future grant funding, Carpenter said.
UTA is “currently assessing potential impacts” to the EDGE Center from the grant cut, Carpenter said, adding that he could not speculate as to how the end of Hispanic-Serving Institution grant funding would impact the university at large.
Department of Education officials announced Sept. 10 that they were cutting funding for seven grant programs for colleges and universities with high minority student enrollment, including two grant programs for Hispanic-Serving Institutions.
The Hispanic-Serving Institutions program began in 1992 after Congress recognized that the growing Latino population struggled to access higher education, had a high college dropout rate and often attended colleges and universities with little state and federal funding.
The federal government began distributing funding for schools with the designation a few years later.
Texas Wesleyan University and Tarrant County College also attained the designation.
The program is among those that have drawn criticism from President Donald Trump’s administration as Republicans seek to restrict diversity, equity and inclusion efforts they see as discriminatory.
This summer, the U.S. solicitor general determined the Hispanic-Serving Institution program violates the Constitution because it requires that a certain percentage of a school’s student body be Hispanic in order to receive the designation.
Advocates of the program say the grants do not just benefit Hispanics and cutting them takes resources away from all students.
The Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities and more than 170 Hispanic-Serving Institutions, schools nearing the status and other groups sent a letter to the chairs and ranking members of several congressional committees urging them to protect the grants.
“The HSI program is not about preferential treatment; it is about equitable resource allocation to ensure all students have the opportunity to succeed,” the letter read.
McKinnon Rice is the higher education reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at mckinnon.rice@fortworthreport.org.
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