Where Did the $174 Million for HBCUs Come From?

On Sept. 22, 2026, HBCU presidents filed into the White House for a summit. The Education Secretary announced $174 million in new money for their schools. The presidents said thank you. The United Negro College Fund said thank you. The photos went out that afternoon.

Here is what the photos left out.

The $174 million was not new. It was taken from colleges that serve Latino students. Most of last year's $438 million was taken from colleges that serve Latino, Asian American, Native and Black students. Both times, the government said the original programs were illegal.

The legal argument it used to say so could one day be pointed at HBCUs.

This guide walks through how that happened in four moves.

Move One: The Money Changed Hands

It started in July 2025. Tennessee and Students for Fair Admissions, the group that won the 2023 Supreme Court case against affirmative action, had sued to end federal grants for Hispanic-Serving Institutions. Those are colleges where at least a quarter of students are Latino. The Justice Department, whose job is to defend federal law in court, announced it would not defend this one.

Two months later the Education Department canceled about $350 million in grants for colleges defined by the race of their students. Latino-serving colleges lost the most, about $229 million. Asian American, Native and majority-Black colleges lost grants too. Five days later the department sent $495 million to HBCUs and tribal colleges as a one-time award.

Long Beach City College in California shows what that cost on the ground. It lost about $3 million that paid for food and housing help and for advising adult students. The state covered it for one year.

In 2026 it happened again. This time the source was different.

Federal money comes in two kinds. Discretionary money is what Congress approves every year. Mandatory money is set by permanent law and flows without a new vote.

In 2025 the department moved only discretionary money. It left about $132 million in mandatory money alone and said that money could not legally be moved. In 2026 it moved mandatory money anyway, according to UNCF. The $174 million came from a STEM program for Latino-serving colleges, made permanent by a 2019 law called the FUTURE Act.

Across the two years the administration counts more than $612 million in extra HBCU money. It also gets credit with Black college leadership heading into the midterms. Which HBCUs got how much is unknown. The department has not released a school-by-school list.

Something changed between the first round and the second. It happened on Dec. 2, 2025.

Move Two: A Legal Opinion Made It Possible

That day the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel issued a formal opinion. This office tells federal agencies what the law allows. Agencies follow it unless a court says otherwise.

The opinion built on the 2023 affirmative action case. Its logic runs in three steps.

1. Any federal program that sorts colleges by the race of their students faces the strictest test courts use.
2. To pass, Congress must have documented specific past discrimination that broke a law. General history does not count. Gaps in graduation rates do not count.
3. Congress never wrote those findings. So the programs fail.

Then the opinion opened the door. It said money for the struck programs could be repurposed. It named the permanent STEM money by its statute. That sentence is the legal basis for the $174 million.

Move Three: HBCUs Were Left Out of the Question

One footnote matters more than the rest of the opinion. Footnote 10 says the office was not asked to review HBCU or tribal college programs, so it did not.

HBCUs are defined by history. An HBCU was founded before 1964 with a principal mission of educating Black Americans. It does not have to hit a percentage of Black students today. Tribal colleges are tied to federally recognized tribes, which courts treat as governments. That is why the money could land there.

The protection is thin (inference). The same opinion rejected the majority-Black college program with this reasoning: a well-documented history of discrimination against Black Americans in higher education is not enough without specific findings from Congress. The HBCU definition names Black Americans in its mission. Nobody has asked whether it would survive that test.

HBCUs are safe today because of a question no one asked.

Move Four: Black Students Paid Too

The headline says the money moved from Latino students to Black students. Part of it moved from Black students to Black students.

Predominantly Black Institutions are colleges where at least 40 percent of students are Black but that are not HBCUs. Many are community and technical colleges in the South, and city schools in places with no HBCU nearby. Chicago State. Medgar Evers in Brooklyn. Baton Rouge Community College.

In 2025 they lost their formula grants, about $22 million across 39 colleges. A smaller grant for them, $14.1 million in permanent money, kept paying that year. Whether it paid in 2026 is unknown.

Central Carolina Technical College in Sumter, South Carolina, shows what the money did. It paid for an early alert system for students about to drop out, degree advisers, and the staffer who ran the nursing simulation lab and placed students in hospital clinicals. The state picked up some of it. Two workers were let go. The lab job ended. Its pre-nursing program has doubled to 500 students.

Georgia had 11 of the 39 colleges and 36 percent of the money.

In 2026 the department folded the next round of these grants into a race-neutral pool called the Strengthening Institutions Program. The pool grew to about $366 million. The Labor Department runs it. Majority-Black colleges can apply. They now compete against every low-resourced college in the country, with nothing set aside for them. The department did not say how much of the pool came from their grants. The roughly $22 million almost certainly went in.

UNCF Said Thank You. Its Data Is on the List.

Federal law lets exactly two scholarship groups pull student financial aid application data straight from the government: UNCF and the Hispanic Scholarship Fund. That data is how they find and qualify students.

The December opinion called that access unconstitutional, because both groups award scholarships by race. Nine months later, UNCF publicly thanked the administration for the $174 million.

Whether the Education Department has acted on the data finding is unknown. If it does, the scholarship pipeline for the next class of Black students changes (inference).

What To Watch

• Tennessee v. Department of Education (federal court, Eastern District of Tennessee, No. 3:25-cv-270). The Hispanic college association stepped in to defend the grants after the Justice Department walked away. It asked the judge to drop the case as moot. If that happens, no court ever rules on the merits, and the legal opinion stays the working rule (inference). Status after January 2026 is unknown.
• Whether the Education Department asks the Office of Legal Counsel about HBCU programs. It would be the single biggest signal.
• 2027 funding for Title III Part B, the main HBCU line in the federal budget.
• A third round of one-time money, and which program it gets pulled from.
• Any action on UNCF's data access.

What Would Prove This Wrong

• Congress writes the higher HBCU funding into permanent law.
• A court rules on the merits that minority-serving grant programs are constitutional.
• The Education Department states in writing that HBCU programs fall outside the opinion's reasoning.

What You Can Do

• Ask your HBCU where the one-time money went. Alumni office, student government, board minutes. One-time money belongs in one-time costs: buildings, deferred repairs, the endowment. If it pays salaries, those salaries are exposed next year.
• Ask your House member and both senators one question. Will Congress build the record of specific discrimination findings the opinion says is missing? That record is what makes a program hold up in court.
• If you give to UNCF or your school, ask what changes if the data access goes away.
• Read footnote 10 yourself. Page 16 of the opinion. One sentence.
• Check the Tennessee case on the court's public docket.

Glossary

AANAPISI: Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institution. A college where at least 10% of students are Asian American or Pacific Islander.

Discretionary funding: Money Congress has to approve again every year.

DOJ: Department of Justice. The federal government's law department.

ED: The U.S. Department of Education.

FAFSA: Free Application for Federal Student Aid. The form students fill out to get grants and loans.

Fiscal year (FY): The federal budget year. FY2026 ran from Oct. 1, 2025, to Sept. 30, 2026.

FUTURE Act: A 2019 law that made about $255M a year for minority-serving colleges permanent.

HACU: Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities. The trade group for Hispanic-Serving Institutions.

HBCU: Historically Black College or University. A school founded before 1964 whose main mission was and is educating Black Americans.

HSI: Hispanic-Serving Institution. A college where at least 25% of full-time undergraduates are Hispanic.

Inseverable: A bad part of a law cannot be cut out without breaking the rest, so the whole program goes.

Mandatory funding: Money set by permanent law. It flows every year without a new vote.

McNair program: A federal program that prepares low-income and first-generation students for PhD study.

MSI: Minority-Serving Institution. The umbrella term for HBCUs, HSIs, PBIs, tribal colleges and the rest.

Moot: A case with nothing left to decide, so the court drops it.

OLC: Office of Legal Counsel. The part of DOJ that tells federal agencies what the law allows.

One-time money: A single payment with no promise it repeats.

PBI: Predominantly Black Institution. A college that is not an HBCU where at least 40% of students are Black.

SFFA: Students for Fair Admissions. The group that won the 2023 Supreme Court case ending affirmative action in admissions.

Strict scrutiny: The hardest test a court uses. A law that sorts people by race usually fails it.

Title III and Title V: Sections of the Higher Education Act that fund minority-serving colleges. Title III Part B is the main HBCU line.

TMCF: Thurgood Marshall College Fund. Represents public HBCUs.

Tri-caucus: The Congressional Black Caucus, Hispanic Caucus and Asian Pacific American Caucus acting together.

Tribal college (TCU): A college chartered by or tied to a federally recognized tribe.

UNCF: United Negro College Fund. Raises scholarship money for students at private HBCUs.