Assistance program
Higher Education - Institution Challenge Grants Program
$36.6 Million committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Agriculture, Department of
- Assistance
- Project Grants
- CFDA number
- 10.217
- What it does
- The purpose of the Higher Education Challenge Grants Program, under assistance listing 10.217, is to strengthen institutional capacities, including curriculum, faculty, scientific instrumentation, instruction delivery systems, and student recruitment and retention, to respond to identified state, regional, national, or international educational needs in the food and agricultural sciences, or in rural economic, community, and business development.
- Who benefits
- Applicants for the HEC must meet all the requirements discussed in this RFA. Applications may be submitted by: 1. U.S. public or private nonprofit colleges and universities offering a baccalaureate or first professional degree in at least one discipline or area of the food and agricultural sciences; 2. land-grant colleges and universities, (including land grant institutions in the Insular Areas); 3. colleges and universities having significant minority enrollments and a demonstrable capacity to carry out the teaching of food and agricultural sciences; and 4. other colleges and universities having a demonstrable capacity to carry out the teaching of food and agricultural sciences.
- Who applies
- Applicants for the HEC must meet all the requirements discussed in this RFA. Applications may be submitted by: 1. U.S. public or private nonprofit colleges and universities offering a baccalaureate or first professional degree in at least one discipline or area of the food and agricultural sciences; 2. land-grant colleges and universities, (including land grant institutions in the Insular Areas); 3. colleges and universities having significant minority enrollments and a demonstrable capacity to carry out the teaching of food and agricultural sciences; and 4. other colleges and universities having a demonstrable capacity to carry out the teaching of food and agricultural sciences.
- Authorized by
- 7 U.S.C. § 3152(b)(1)
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments