Commentaries at the San Antonio Report provide space for our community to share perspectives and offer solutions to pressing local issues. The views expressed in this commentary belong to the author alone.<\/p>\n
When I sat in Spanish classes taught by Dr. Antonio Rigual at Our Lady of the Lake University in 2010, I had no idea the deep personal impact his vision to promote Hispanic Serving Institutions<\/a> (HSIs) would have in my life.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n My alma mater is the birthplace of HSIs. After a 1985 visit<\/a> to Xerox headquarters seeking support for a \u201cCenter for Hispanic Higher Education\u201d at OLLU, Dr. Rigual developed the idea that became the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU<\/a>), making OLLU the first HSI in the nation. HSI is now a designation that covers more than 600 colleges<\/a> and universities around the country that serve large numbers of Latino students. These vital educational institutions, where 67% of all Latino college students are matriculated, are under attack.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The Hispanic Serving Institution federal designation is awarded to degree-granting colleges with at least 25% of Hispanic or Latino students enrolled.<\/p>\n San Antonio local college officials say the widespread misconception is that these dollars only benefit Hispanic or Latino students, while in reality the programs created using these funds are open to all students<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The latest assaults on education effectively abdicated all federal responsibility<\/a> for the schooling of more than 73 million K-12 students nationwide and severely limited loan eligibility and debt forgiveness for advanced degrees in fields dominated by women, including nursing, education and social work<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n HSIs were not spared, recently receiving a major blow from this administration, which not only refused to defend against a lawsuit<\/a> seeking to have HSIs declared \u201cdiscriminatory,\u201d but also withdrew over $350 million<\/a> in federal grants essential to supporting education for all students at these schools, not just Latinos.<\/p>\n In total, there are 12 public and private colleges designated as HSIs in San Antonio: Our Lady of the Lake University, Texas A&M University-San Antonio, all five colleges under Alamo Colleges District, St. Mary\u2019s University, and the now-merged University of Texas at San Antonio and University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.<\/p>\n HSIs have made the dreams of countless young people a reality, including mine. Two years after taking Dr. Rigual\u2019s class, I received a HACU internship that would open doors I never thought possible.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The internship placed me with the USDA Forest Service<\/a> as a media intern, training in Washington, D.C., before heading to Florida. For a first-generation student like me, whose family could not afford unpaid internships or costly summer housing, this opportunity was life changing. It was only my second time on an airplane, and it gave me a foot in the door to launch my career in communications.\u00a0<\/p>\n Those skills and experiences built the foundation for every job I\u2019ve had since. Today, I am the manager of media relations and marketing at the civil rights organization LatinoJustice PRLDEF. And in a full-circle moment, my organization now represents HACU in court as we intervene in Tennessee and Students for Fair Admissions v. U.S. Department of Education<\/a>, a federal lawsuit that seeks to dismantle the HSI program. The very program that gave me a chance I would not have had otherwise is now under threat and I am using the skills I first learned thanks to OLLU and HACU to defend it.\u00a0<\/p>\n With clueless or cruel timing, the Department of Education announced during HSI Week<\/a> last September that it had slashed funding that supports HSIs. Days later, the Department of Education announced it would redirect $495 million<\/a> in funding to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and tribal colleges, vital institutions that deserve strong, sustained support. This is not a zero-sum game. HSIs should not have to compete against HBCUs for support.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Congress created the HSI Program<\/a> to provide critical resources to colleges and universities that already enroll large numbers of Hispanic students. Nationally, more than 5.6 million<\/a> students of all backgrounds benefit from their programs and eight of the top 10<\/a> colleges and universities in the 2024 Social Mobility Index were HSIs. These successes are no accident; they demonstrate why we need strong investment in schools that serve historically under-resourced students.\u00a0<\/p>\n This makes the recent funding cuts even more devastating on a personal level. OLLU has one of the highest percentages<\/a> of Hispanic student enrollment in the nation and is a top producer of Hispanic graduates with master\u2019s degrees.\u00a0<\/p>\n