Assistance program
Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education
$1.5 Billion committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Office of Postsecondary Education, Education, Department of
- Assistance
- Project Grants (Discretionary)
- CFDA number
- 84.116
- What it does
- To provide assistance to support institutional reforms and innovative strategies designed to improve postsecondary instruction, quality, and to expand postsecondary opportunities. For community project funding, to provide direct funding for activities selected by Congress.
- Who benefits
- Postsecondary educational institutions and their students will benefit.
- Who applies
- Eligible applicants for FIPSE project grants include institutions of higher education, other public and private non-profit institutions and agencies and combinations of these institutions and agencies. Entities identified for Congressionally directed spending or community project funding under FIPSE are eligible.
- Authorized by
- Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended, Title VII, Part B, 20 U.S.C. 1138.
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