Assistance program
Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need
$178.5 Million committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Office of Postsecondary Education, Education, Department of
- Assistance
- Project Grants
- CFDA number
- 84.200
- What it does
- To provide fellowships through graduate academic departments, programs, and units of institutions of higher education to graduate students of superior ability who demonstrate financial need for the purpose of sustaining and enhancing the capacity for teaching and research in academic areas of national need, as designated by the Secretary.
- Who benefits
- Graduate students receiving fellowships must demonstrate financial need, have excellent academic records, plan to pursue the highest degree in the field, and be a U.S. citizen or a National, or a permanent resident of the U.S., or intend to become a U.S. citizen, be a permanent resident of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, or a citizen of any one of the Freely Associated States.
- Who applies
- Academic departments and programs of IHEs that provide courses of study leading to a graduate degree may apply. Nondegree-granting institutions may submit joint proposals with degree-granting IHEs.
- Authorized by
- Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended
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