Assistance program
National Defense Education Program
$203.5 Million committed in FY2020–FY2026
- Agency
- Immediate Office of the Secretary of Defense, Dept of Defense
- Assistance
- Not Applicable
- CFDA number
- 12.006
- What it does
- To obtain support for the management, development, implementation, research/evaluation, and furthering of new and existing partnerships between the Department of Defense and its National Defense Education Program (NDEP) for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education and outreach activities, and other educational outreach efforts, as well as STEM workforce development initiatives across the PreK through College continuum, to include skilled trades and advanced manufacturing that do not require four-year degrees . The scope will cover all 50 states, U.S. territories, and DoDEA schools.
- Who benefits
- General public: students, parents, learners, teachers/educators in K-12 schools, post-secondary institutions, and not-for-profit organizations with equity in education and workforce development.
- Who applies
- Please refer to funding opportunity announcement for specific eligibility requirements. Profit is not allowed.
- Authorized by
- America Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology Education, and Science Reauthorization Act of 2010.
- Educational Partnerships U.S.C. § 2194
- Manufacturing Experts in the Classroom U.S.C. § 4844
- Department of Defense cooperative education programs U.S.C. § 2195
- Manufacturing Engineering Education Program U.S.C. § 4843
- Improvement of education in technical fields: grants for higher education in science and mathematics U.S.C. § 2193
- Programs to expand STEM opportunities; improving undergraduate STEM experiences; Informal STEM education; and developing STEM apprenticeships.
- Program site
- https://dodstem.us ↗
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