More efficient, less bureaucratic government spending is always high on everyone’s list of priorities. But an Obama administration plan to consolidate dozens of education, science and community-development programs of interest to communities of color, including minority-serving institutions, continues to draw concerns from the president’s allies and adversaries alike.
At issue, will consolidation—and increased competition for federal dollars—negate minority participation in such programs or otherwise leave communities, institutions and students of color behind?
“Our children’s future should not depend on whether their state or district receives a competitive grant,” says National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel, referring to Race to the Top, one of several Obama initiatives that use competition to drive reform.
The consolidation/competition proposal that has generated considerable attention is a plan to take separate National Science Foundation programs for historically Black colleges and universities and tribal colleges and fold them into a new, larger program featuring partnerships between MSIs and majority institutions. Hispanic-serving institutions, which had sought their own separate program, also would become part of this mix.
At another agency, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the administration’s 2011 budget also calls for realignment of MSI programs.
HUD would create a $25 million University Community Fund to replace smaller separate funding streams targeted individually at MSIs. Under the current funding structure, HBCUs receive $9 million, while HSIs and tribal colleges have $6 million and $5 million, respectively.
“Funding would be allocated by competition to universities that show innovative community-development strategies that respond to local needs and build on past experience,” says HUD spokesman Lemar Wooley. “Perhaps the best way to think of the program changes are combining the programs under one name and encouraging partnership.”
