Last month, the Biden-Harris Administration announced new actions to advance educational opportunities for Latino communities, including an Executive Order establishing the White House Initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity through Hispanic-Serving Institutions. This Executive Order creates a new Initiative and President’s Board of Advisors for HSIs that will work to:
Increase awareness of opportunities for HSIs to equally participate in Federal programs and enhance the capacity of HSIs to meet the educational needs of their students.
Identify best practices for HSIs to scale effective strategies, programs, and initiatives to support the educational success and economic mobility of their students.
Improve the ability of HSIs to align program offerings with the economic needs of the Nation and their local economies, especially in Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, and teaching.
Coordinate efforts to help HSIs become or remain fiscally secure institutions.
Foster cross-sector collaboration among HSIs and philanthropic, public, and private sector organizations.
Strengthen Federal recruitment activities at HSIs to build accessible and equal pathways into Federal career opportunities for HSI students, faculty, staff, and alumni.
Provide tools, data, and analytics to support HSIs in improving educational equity, excellence, and economic opportunity for students.
The Administration also announced that the Department of Education is issuing a proposed rule to expand the federal TRIO program to ensure Dreamers and others can enroll. By providing high school students with services and supports such as college campus visits, tutoring, and help completing college and financial aid applications, the TRIO program helps students from low-income backgrounds and students who would be the first in their family go to college successfully transition from high school to college. The proposed expansion would mean that an estimated 50,000 more students each year would be able to access TRIO programs and services, and thousands more would go to college.
