Assistance program
Higher Education Institutional Aid
$8.4 Billion committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Office of Postsecondary Education, Education, Department of
- Assistance
- Project Grants
- CFDA number
- 84.031
- What it does
- To help eligible colleges and universities to strengthen their management and fiscal operations and to assist such institutions to plan, develop, or implement activities including endowment building to strengthen the academic quality of their institutions.
- Who benefits
- Applicant institutions of higher education, including those in the territories and possessions that meet statutory eligibility requirements will benefit.
- Who applies
- An institution of higher education (IHE) that qualifies as eligible using criteria as specified in the regulations. Under Part A, specific and basic requirements as stated in the program regulations must be met. Eligible applicants include institutions that have: (1) A low average per full-time equivalent (FTE) educational and general expenditures; (2) a substantial percentage of students having Pell Grants or other Federal need-based financial aid. However, a waiver of the low educational and general expenditure requirement and the needy student enrollment requirement may be granted to institutions meeting the criteria specified in the existing regulations. Under Part B HBCUs, historically Black institutions that were established prior to 1964, whose principal mission was, and is, the education of African Americans are eligible. A listing of those institutions is published in program regulations; these HBCUs are also eligible under the Endowment Challenge Grant Program. Institutions eligible for PBI program grants are defined in Title III Section 318(b) of the HEA. Institutions eligible for HBGI program grants are specified in Title III Section 326(e)(1) of the HEA. Under the Title V programs, an HSI is defined as an institution that has an enrollment of undergraduate full-time equivalent students that is at least 25 percent Hispanic as specified in Section 502 of the HEA.
- Authorized by
- Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended (HEA). Title III, Part A, Part B and Part F, Title V, Part A and B.
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