Assistance program
Strengthening Minority-Serving Institutions
$286.3 Million committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- Office of Postsecondary Education, Education, Department of
- Assistance
- Project Grants
- CFDA number
- 84.382
- What it does
- To strengthen Predominantly Black Institutions (PBI); Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions (AANAPISI); and Native American-Serving Nontribal Institutions (NASNTI) that propose to carry out activities to improve and expand such institution's capacity to serve low-income and minority students. For Master’s Degree Programs at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (Section 723) and Master’s Degree Programs at Predominantly Black Institutions (Section 724) to specified eligible institutions to further advance educational opportunities for African-Americans.
- Who benefits
- The authorized beneficiaries are underrepresented; low-income; first-generation; minority; undergraduate students.
- Who applies
- At the time of application, PBIs must have an enrollment of undergraduate students that is at least 40 percent African American students. AANAPISI and NASNTI applicants must have, at the time of application, an enrollment of undergraduate students not less than 10 percent Asian American and Native American Pacific Islanders and Native Americans, respectively. Institutions eligible for Master’s Degree Programs at HBCUs and PBIs are specified in Title VII Sections 723 and 724 of the HEA. An institution that is eligible for and receives an award under HEA’s Title III Historically Black Graduate Institutions (HBGIs) or Title V Promoting Postbaccalaureate Opportunities for Hispanic Americans (Section 512) for a fiscal year is not eligible to apply for a grant or receive grant funding under Section 897—Master’s Degree Programs for HBCUs and PBIs—for the same fiscal year.
- Authorized by
- Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended
- Title III, Part F, Section 371(b)(2)(c)(ii), 371(b)(2)(D)(iii), and 371(b)(2)(D)(iv); Title VII, Part A, Subpart 4, Section 723 and 724
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