Abstract
Amid public divestment in higher education, grant acquisition is increasingly critical for colleges and universities, especially Hispanic-serving community colleges (HSCCs). We conducted a content analysis of 400 HSCC Title V awardee proposal abstracts and found that these awardees ground their proposals in the needs of their local communities but often still pitch race-evasive projects. At the same time, we also discovered that, in recent years, these successful applicants began invoking the language of “servingness,” promisingly suggesting that some HSCCs are attempting to leverage this money to intentionally support Latine/x students. However, the Department of Education’s competitive preference priorities, alongside its race-evasive evaluation criteria, may undercut the extent to which HSIs, including HSCCs, advance servingness with this funding. Ultimately, the findings support the need to reform this public program, particularly considering the ongoing institutional diversification of the HSI population.
Keywords
Dwindling public support stresses all colleges and universities, forcing them to identify alternative revenue streams like philanthropic gifts, grants, and contracts. However, these conditions have an outsized negative impact on particular segments of the higher education system, including community colleges and Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs). In all, 39% of HSIs, or 234 of the 600 HSIs as of 2022–2023, are public community colleges 1 (Excelencia in Education, 2024) and one-fourth of all public community colleges in the United States are HSIs (American Association of Community Colleges, 2024). Given the long-standing underfunding of community colleges (Cummings et al., 2021; Ortagus et al., 2024) and HSIs (Hillman & Corral, 2017; Nellum & Valle, 2015; Ortega et al., 2015), Hispanic-serving community colleges (HSCCs) are especially susceptible to budgets cuts and attentive to revenue diversification to realize their multi-pronged missions (Aguilar-Smith, 2021). Among revenue diversification tactics, many HSCCs seek Title V grants—competitively awarded, multi-year capacity-building grants (Aguilar-Smith, 2021). In particular, through these approximately $3.5 million institutional grants spread over 5 years, the federal government invests in expanding HSIs’ educational opportunities and improving Latine/x students’ academic attainment (Higher Education Opportunity Act, 2008). Indeed, over the last 5 years (i.e., 2024–2020), the Department of Education (ED) has funded between 118 to 49 new projects per year (ED, 2024).
Returning to HSCCs, although public HSCCs constitute the largest segment of the HSI population (Excelencia in Education, 2024), the HSI scholarship underemphasizes these institutions (Doran, 2023; Marin & Aguilar-Smith, 2023), much like how the broader higher education literature routinely neglects the community college sector (Crisp et al., 2016; Townsend et al., 2009; Twombly & Townsend, 2008). Hence, HSCCs’ involvement and success in grant-seeking is poorly understood. Furthermore, while a plethora of studies have examined the link between research grants and research productivity (e.g., Chudnovsky et al., 2008; Dundar & Darrell, 1998; Gulbrandsen & Smeby, 2005), far less research has explored seeking and getting institutional grants like Title V, especially among community colleges. Given the growing push for grant acquisition across higher education (Reiser et al., 2015), including within the community college sector (Carter & Patterson, 2019), and that Title V grants are a key external funding source for many HSIs, the purpose of this study is to understand grant acquisition within the HSCC context better. Specifically, with an eye on equity, we ask: What characterizes funded HSCC Title V grant proposals? As equity-minded scholars, we pursue this question attentive to the implications our findings present for HSCCs’ pursuit and use of Title V funding, considering the increasing diversity among HSIs and the unequal conditions between HSCCs and their 4-year peers.
Background and Literature Review
Given this study’s focus, we first briefly describe the criteria for HSI designation. More substantively, we then review the literature on HSCCs, calling attention to their distinct missions and needs relative to their 4-year counterparts. Next, we provide background on community colleges’ general resource conditions, elevating implications of the prolonged underfunding of this sector. Finally, we discuss scholarship on competitive grantmaking within the postsecondary context and highlight research on Title V.
Federal Designation as an Hispanic-Serving Institution
Briefly put, official federal designation as an HSI hinges on enrollment demographics and organizational resources. More specifically, HSIs are accredited, not-for-profit 2-year and 4-year colleges and universities in the United States, enrolling a minimum of 25% Latine/x-identified full-time equivalent (FTE) undergraduates and 50% of FTE undergraduates that qualify for need-based federal financial aid (Higher Education Opportunity Act, 2008). Beyond meeting these enrollment metrics, these institutions must also have below-average educational expenses (Higher Education Opportunity Act, 2008), meaning they are “generally cash-strapped” institutions (Aguilar-Smith, 2024). As alluded to earlier and discussed further later, these resource constraints characterize HSIs in general, and HSCCs especially.
Hispanic-Serving Community Colleges
Despite HSCCs’ pivotal role in providing access to educational opportunities, particularly for underserved communities, few studies explicitly focus on these institutions as a distinct subset of HSIs and consider their multiple missions and unique needs (Doran, 2023; Marin & Aguilar-Smith, 2023). Instead, the earliest work on HSIs generally described this population, indicating, for example, that these institutions (most of which were community colleges at the time) were concentrated in the U.S. Southwest, New York, and Florida, states with traditionally large Latine/x populations (e.g., Laden, 2004). Research has also repeatedly described HSCCs as critical access points to higher education for Latine/x students, given their locations and generally affordable price points (e.g., Martinez, 2020; Núñez et al., 2011; Perrakis & Hagedorn, 2010). Indeed, research suggests that a major reason Latine/x students attend community colleges is their lower cost compared to 4-year institutions (Kurlaender, 2006; Salinas & Hidrowoh, 2018; Zarate & Burciaga, 2010). Notably, as admissions-inclusive, relatively affordable institutions, HSCCs also provide access to education to other historically marginalized or excluded populations, including racially/ethnically minoritized students and students underprepared for college-level work (M. Cuellar & Johnson-Ahorlu, 2016; Lorch, 2014). HSCCs also serve as a critical access point for Latine/x students planning to transfer to 4-year institutions (Núñez et al., 2015).
Recently, however, Doran (2023) conducted a systematic literature review of research related to HSCCs. Specifically, utilizing G. A. Garcia and colleagues’ (2019) multidimensional framework of servingness, she examined how components of servingness, like programs and services, may differ at HSCCs relative to their 4-year counterparts. Additionally, she explored the unique, multifaceted parts of the community college mission, like career and technical education, which merit greater consideration in conversations around servingness. However, she did not consider HSCCs’ grant-related work, although G. A. Garcia et al. (2019) position HSI grants as a structure for serving Latine/x students at HSIs. On the topic of HSI grants, however, Carter and Patterson’s (2019) case study suggests that some community colleges pursue designation as an HSI, viewing this status as a potential gateway to much-needed funding. Such moves make sense, considering most community colleges’ acute resource needs, which we discuss next.
Community Colleges’ Overall Resource Conditions
Systemically underfunded, community colleges shoulder the brunt of the work of serving minoritized students with shoestring budgets and limited alternative revenue streams. The systemic underfunding of this sector traces to its inception. Funders, both public and private entities, have long directed wealth to 4-year institutions, especially elite, predominantly White research universities, at the expense of community colleges (Community College Research Center, 2022; Kahlenberg, 2015). For instance, although (White) philanthropists have channeled resources to community colleges over time, particularly to advance the Completion Agenda and workforce development, philanthropic donations still disproportionally flow to 4-year institutions (Drummer & Marshburn, 2014). Illustratively, Wagoner and Besikof (2011) indicated that only a meager 2% of private gifts went to community colleges in 2008. More recently, Gasman and colleagues’ (2023) analysis of philanthropic support directed to HSIs from 2006 to 2018 showed that while HSCCs benefitted from some of this giving, most donations went to 4-year HSIs (see their Appendix B for a detailed list of donations by institution during this period).
Similarly, the public invests more in 4-year institutions than in community colleges. Among state funding to higher education in 2022, less than a quarter went to public community colleges (State Higher Education Executive Officers Association [SHEEO], 2023). Ultimately, while public 4-year institutions received approximately $17,540 per FTE student in 2016–2017, public 2-year colleges received only $8,695 per FTE student, resulting in a whopping $78 billion disparity between these sectors (Yuen, 2020). Notably, this difference translates into disparate levels of college spending and, in turn, unequal resources for students across sectors, with community college students often getting the short end of the stick. In numerical terms, while higher education institutions, on average, spent approximately $20,800 per FTE student in 2018–2019, public community colleges had the lowest education-related expenditures among all institutions, only spending $12,747 per FTE student (Hillman, 2020).
Complicating matters further, despite modest gains over time, most community colleges operate with minimal endowment holdings (American Council on Education, 2021), with the average community college’s endowment assets still totaling only a mere $14.3 million as of 2018 (Finkel, 2019). For context, based on IPEDS (2020–2021) data, the average endowment for a 4-year institution in the United States was $291 million. Hence, community colleges not only have bare financial cushions but rack in fairly little income from endowment investments—a major source of revenue that colleges and universities use to support teaching, research, and public service (Center for Community College Advancement, 2017; Zeidenberg, 2008).
Beyond endowments, community colleges have few alternative revenue streams, given their open-access and teaching-focused missions. For starters, spiking tuition and fees jeopardizes their open-access mission, making it an incongruous revenue generation tactic. Related to access, as gateways to college for marginalized populations, community colleges pull in limited revenue from alumni giving (Skari, 2014; Smith et al., 2019; Zeidenberg, 2008). At the same time, as institutions primarily focused on undergraduate teaching and career and technical education, they also typically lose out on other sources of funding, including research grants and patents (Herbkersman & Hibbert-Jones, 2003). Indeed, federal grants and contracts represent only a small share—5.6%—of public community colleges’ total revenue, on average, whereas this stream represents 9.1% at public 4-year institutions as of 2021–2022, which translates to approximately $1,500 and $5,500 per FTE student, respectively, for 2-year versus 4-year institutions (National Center for Education Statistics, 2023). Considering HSCCs, in particular, with regard to federal funding opportunities, it bears noting they are not eligible for all HSI-related grants. Specifically, they are ineligible for Title V Part B or the Promoting Postbaccalaureate Opportunities for Hispanic Americans (PPOHA) Program, as these funds are reserved for HSIs that award graduate/professional degrees and certificates (Aguilar-Smith & Doran, 2024).
With few alternative revenue streams, community colleges rely heavily on public dollars, meaning that any cuts to higher education spending have an outsized negative impact on this sector. Facing perennial budget shortfalls, many community colleges formed independent foundations 2 in the 1970s (Kent & Eblinger, 1997) and started establishing advancement or development offices and standalone grants offices to shore up external funding (Akin, 2005; Keener et al., 2002; Smith, 2021). Relatedly, building relationships with donors and fundraising have become increasingly crucial parts of community college presidential leadership (Smith, 2021). Yet, many community colleges still have minimal organizational structures for seeking external funds, including philanthropic and alum gifts and public and private grants (Skari, 2014; Smith, 2021; Smith et al., 2019).
Hispanic-serving community colleges’ general resource conditions
As alluded to above, while such resource constraints pervade the community college sector, HSCCs are multiply marginalized. They “are both disadvantaged by the unequal distribution of financial resources to (a) community colleges relative to four-year institutions (Community College Research Center, 2022) and (b) HSIs relative to historically white institutions” (McCambly et al., 2023, p. 9). Illustrative of the long-term effects of such marginalization, a recent Third Way report indicated that public HSCCs’ endowment holdings hovered around a mere $1.28 million in 2021–2022, whereas public and private 4-year HSIs had substantially larger assets, totaling, on average, $173 million and $7.71 million, respectively (Aguilar-Smith, 2024). Ultimately, because of such marginalization, as McCambly et al. (2023) explain, “The net effect is cruelly ironic: Hispanic-serving community colleges—institutions generally in acute need of additional resources—are often those most malpositioned to secure external funding. In other words, their resource limitations simultaneously limit their competitiveness for funding” (p. 9). Bearing this in mind, we address competitive grantmaking, particularly the Title V Program.
Competitive Grantmaking and Title V Grants
The literature on competitive grantmaking is clear: funders rarely give money without strings attached—money isn’t free. Rather, funding agencies award grants to advance their needs and interests. For example, funders like the Lumina Foundation have injected millions into the community college sector, seeking to reform developmental education through initiatives like Achieving the Dream (Hagedorn, 2015). To safeguard their investment, they generally set tight eligibility criteria, prescriptive project foci, and extensive reporting and evaluation requirements. However, public and private funders frequently do not consider resource differences among beneficiaries, including differences that complicate complying with these expectations (Jager, 2023). Importantly, considering our focus on HSCCs, they often impose higher administrative burdens and restrictions on racialized organizations like minority-serving institutions (MSIs; McCambly & Aguilar-Smith, 2024; McCambly & Colyvas, 2023).
In the context of Title V, the ED establishes absolute priorities, competitive preference priorities (CPPs), and invitational priorities. More specifically, the Secretary of Education sets the CPPs in line with the ED’s strategic plan (N. Clark, personal communication, October 17, 2023). These priorities reflect objectives of interest to the ED that applicants must or should cover in their proposal for reviewers to score it well (Nguyen et al., 2023). With the growing competitiveness of Title V grants, these “priorities influence the institutional strategies of HSIs and how they conceptualize their role as an HSI for serving their Latino population” (Arroyo & Santiago, 2023, p. 7). Indeed, emergent work reveals that MSIs, including HSIs, tailor their proposals to a given year’s CPPs (Aguilar-Smith, 2023; Aguilar-Smith & Villarreal, 2025; Arroyo & Santiago, 2023; Lujan & McNaughtan, 2024; Nguyen et al., 2023).
Scholarship on Title V funding
In terms of the still limited scholarship on Title V, the bulk of research (mainly in the form of dissertation studies) has examined, generally quantitively, this program’s effectiveness, specifically its impact on Latine/x student success (e.g., Castillo, 2019; Espinoza & Genna, 2024; Lacagnino, 2019; Perez, 2020; Piñeda, 2010). Focusing specifically on HSIs, the research on Title V grant-seeking has typically narrowly focused on 4-year HSIs or on all HSIs, thus potentially overlooking meaningful differences between HSCCs and their 4-year counterparts.
That said, other work has provided rich accounts of how specific Title V awardees’, often 4-year HSIs, have invested this money in various capacity-building efforts, including peer mentoring programs (e.g., Amaro-Jiménez et al., 2023; Moschetti et al., 2018; Rodriguez & Gonzales, 2020), curricular innovation (e.g., Cramblet Alvarez et al., 2023), intrusive advising systems (e.g., Hernandez, 2020), academic skills workshops (e.g., Espinoza & Genna, 2024), and centers for minoritized and first-generation college students (Roberts & Lucas, 2022).
Scholars have also addressed the usage of Title III and Title V funds more broadly. For instance, Boland (2018) developed a typology of Title III and Title V-funded programs across MSIs in which he identified various project outcomes (i.e., retention and persistence rates and course completion) and project mechanisms (e.g., professional development, online and distance education, and career coaching). While finding commonalities among these funded projects across MSIs, Boland also pointed out that community colleges were most likely to focus on local workforce needs.
Other work has similarly taken a field or population view but focused more specifically on the use of Title V funds. In particular, several scholars have conducted content analyses of Title V awardees’ proposal abstracts, which primed them to offer insights about HSIs’ proposed use of Title V dollars (e.g., Perdomo & Guajardo, 2024; Santiago et al., 2016; Vargas & Villa-Palomino, 2019). For instance, Vargas and Villa-Palomino (2019) analyzed how HSIs on the U.S. mainland have used Title V grants to serve Latine/x students, discouragingly finding that most awardees decentered and/or deficiently described Latine/x students. More recently, Perdomo and Guajardo (2024) analyzed 2022 Title V awardees’ (i.e., mainland HSIs) proposals to see if/how they planned on using these funds to serve Latine/x students or, in effect, to advance servingness (i.e., the multidimensional ways an HSI may explicitly serve Latine/x students; G. A. Garcia et al., 2019). As previous work warned (e.g., Aguilar-Smith, 2021), Perdomo and Guajardo found that many awardees were opportunistic in how they structured activities, proposing activities that would generally benefit all students, not specifically Latine/x students. Collectively, this literature calls much-needed attention to most Title V awardees’ race-evasiveness and, concerningly, limited attention to servingness (e.g., few, if any, awardees offer concrete measures to demonstrate how Latine/x students directly benefit from Title V-funded activities). However, this work similarly does not address potential sectorial differences in this regard, leaving it unclear if/how HSCCs mirror their 4-year peers in their approach to grants, including how they may leverage Title V funding to advance servingness.
Finally, a few critically bent studies have examined the distribution of Title V funding and the overall design of this public program, paying specific attention to equity concerns given the diversity of the HSI population (e.g., Aguilar-Smith, 2023; Aguilar-Smith & Villarreal, 2025; Burbage & Glass, 2023; Perdomo, 2019; Vargas, 2018). Like the strand of research on Title V’s effectiveness, most of this scholarship typically jointly analyzes 2-year and 4-year HSIs.
In the end, although HSCCs represent a sizable share of the applicants and beneficiaries of Title V dollars, there is still an incomplete understanding of HSCC Title V awardees. Therefore, like other studies (e.g., M. G. Cuellar et al., 2023; Perdomo & Guajardo, 2024; Vargas & Villa-Palomino, 2019), we also examine Title V proposal abstracts but go about this work in unique ways. First, while M. G. Cuellar et al. (2023) zeroed in on HSCCs in California, we broaden our gaze, analyzing the abstracts of HSCCs Title V awardees across the country. Second, although we pay attention to the (race-evasive) language used within these proposals, we are interested in what characterizes funded Title V grant applications, not expressly how applicants describe Latine/x students, like in the case of Vargas and Villa-Palomino (2019) and Perdomo and Guajardo (2024). Third, M. G. Cuellar et al. (2023) and Perdomo and Guajardo (2024) briefly discuss CPPs as background context in the former or recommended policy changes in the latter. In contrast, we put Title V-funded projects within the larger context of competitive grantmaking and the community college sector and scholarship. From this vantage point, we consider how HSCCs structure their proposals to meet the CPPs and, ultimately secure Title V dollars. Through these ways, this study expands the literature, shedding light on the ED’s priorities and reward incentives, which do not match the needs or capacity of all HSIs equally or equitably. In sum, unlike previous work, we surface what defines success in this competition among HSCCs and, in turn, posit what this means for HSCCs’ pursuit and use of this funding, particularly amid the mounting diversification of the HSI population.
Conceptualizing Hispanic-Serving Community Colleges’ (Ir)rational Pursuit of Grant Funding
To inform our thinking and analysis for this study, we primarily leaned on two strands of organizational theory: resource dependency theory (RDT) and Cohen and colleagues' (1972) garbage can theory. Widely applied across fields, RDT acknowledges that external factors influence organizations and that organizations seek to minimize environmental uncertainty by managing their resource dependencies (Pfeffer & Salancik, 2003). Seeking stability—or less dependence—organizations extract resources from their environment. In the context of continued public divestment in higher education, per RDT, colleges and universities look externally for additional revenue streams (e.g., patents, philanthropic gifts, and extramural grants). Accordingly, RDT assumes an essentially rational approach to organizational decision-making and action.
A few scholars have applied this rationalist lens to understand community colleges’ actions and outcomes. For example, using data from 781 public community colleges, Askin (2007) examined the implications of RDT on mission differentiation depending on the college’s funding structure. Soon after, McAllister-Spooner and Kent (2009) applied RDT to study effective website site design within the community college context, arguing that this lens was especially appropriate given that community colleges are highly resource-dependent organizations.
In contrast to RDT, garbage can theory refutes rationalist assumptions about organizational behavior, suggesting that organizations anarchically and irrationally retrofit prefabricated solutions to problems. Specifically, Cohen et al. (1972) offer the following oft-quoted description of organizations: Organizations can be viewed for some purposes as collections of choices looking for problems, issues and feelings looking for decision situations in which they might be aired, solutions looking for issues to which they might be an answer, and decision makers looking for work. (p. 1)
Essentially, behavior is “non-purposive and often random” (Hardy et al., 1983, p. 420), as multiple streams—problems, solutions, participants, and choice opportunities—flow in and out of a metaphorical garbage can and generate “decisions.” Such a chaotic approach to decision-making pervades colleges and universities, as ill-defined preferences, unclear technology, and fluid participation characterize organized anarchies like higher education. Over the years, scholars have used Cohen and colleagues’ theorizing or adaptations of this work to study university decision-making and relevant policy processes (e.g., Hardy et al., 1983; Ness & Mistretta, 2009).
Collectively, these two theories, alongside the literature on competitive grantmaking—particularly work highlighting the strings routinely attached to grant funding—frame our thinking about HSCCs’ pursuit of Title V funds and what success in this competitive arena entails. Furthermore, these theories enabled us to understand why HSCCs may “rationally” pursue Title V funding but also propose “irrational” projects—ones seemingly outside the scope of their missions and/or immediate organizational needs.
Positionality and Research Design
Before describing our overall research design, as critical scholars, we recognize that our positionalities inform our research (Martínez-Alemán et al., 2015). The first author has engaged with HSIs as a student, an adjunct instructor at an urban HSCC, and a tenured faculty member at a large 4-year HSI. She identifies as Latina who studies how both HSIs and community colleges create conditions for Latine/x student success. The second author is a Latina faculty member who works at and primarily studies HSIs. Given her professional context and personal commitment to Latinx/e uplift, she is interested in elevating HSI-related funding opportunities and their implications for equity. Both of us have first-hand experience reviewing large federal grants, including ones targeting minoritized institutions and investigators. Ultimately, our collective experiences have shaped our thinking about successful grant acquisition with an eye toward equity, particularly within the HSI context.
Regarding our study design, like other scholars have done (again, see, e.g., M. G. Cuellar et al., 2023; Perdomo & Guajardo, 2024; Santiago et al., 2016; Vargas & Villa-Palomino, 2019), we performed a content analysis of Title V awardees’ proposal abstracts. More specifically, we conducted a systematic content analysis. Encompassing multiple steps to collect and analyze secondary data, systematic content analyses reduce selection bias and enable scholars to synthesize and assess a corpus of data (Petticrew & Roberts, 2006). Specifically, they adhere to the following steps: unitizing, sampling, recording/coding, reducing data, inferring, and narrating (Krippendorff, 2004). We briefly discuss our approach to each of these steps next.
Data Selection and Collection
Per Krippendorff (2004), first, scholars “unitize” or define what they intend to observe and analyze. Specifically, we analyzed publicly available Title V awardees’ proposal abstracts from 2009–2021, as these data were the most current at the time of analysis. 3 Shifting to the sampling stage, we narrowed our analysis to HSCCs’ proposal abstracts for individual and cooperative Title V Part A grants during this period (again, HSCCs are ineligible for Title V Part B or PPOHA funding). For clarification, we included abstracts for 334 individual awards to HSCCs and 66 cooperative grants where an HSCC was the lead or partner institution. With these sampling parameters established, we downloaded the publicly available abstracts from the ED’s HSI Division website, ultimately collecting 400 proposal abstracts from HSCC Title V awardees from 2009–2021 for analysis.
Regarding the proposal abstracts, most are approximately a page in length and include a general overview of the proposed project. Typically, they delineate the proposed grant activities and objectives, and some abstracts even briefly address the applicant’s evaluation plans. Also, more recent abstracts often indicate the specific CPPs to which the proposal responds. Although admittedly an incomplete representation of awardees’ entire materials, these abstracts still provide telling information about successful applicants and Title V-funded projects.
To facilitate further analysis, we also collected other public documents. First, we gathered all the publicly available notices inviting new applications for the Title V Part A Program (which we refer to as funding notices, henceforth, for brevity) published in The Federal Register from 2000 to 2022. These funding notices provide key information for this study, like the ED’s absolute, competitive, and invitational funding priorities, the expected number of awards, and slated maximum and minimum award amounts for each given cycle. Tracing these funding priorities over time allowed us to identify patterns and consider if/how the ED’s preferences align with HSCCs’ missions and needs. Second, we accessed training materials for prospective Title V applicants released by the ED. These materials offered insight into this grant program’s application and review/selection process, thus further informing us on what it takes to successfully secure this money. Collectively, these documents enabled us to characterize grant winners, specifically HSCC Title V awardees, and parse out equity-laden implications of this specific funding competition considering the diversity of the HSI population.
Data Analysis and Reliability
Moving into the recording/coding steps, we first read all the funding notices and methodically listed all the indicated funding priorities over time. We migrated this comprehensive list into an Excel spreadsheet, including each unique funding priority within its own row. Then, we created columns for each year: 2000–2022. Using this schema, a research team member then coded each funding notice, marking the applicable CPPs for each given cycle. This approach allowed us to identify patterns in funding priorities over time and see whether awardees aligned their proposals with the ED’s funding priorities for each respective cycle. Table 1 offers a summary of the CPPs from 2000 to 2022.
Competitive Preference Priorities Between 2000 and 2022
Note. CADGs = Cooperative arrangement development grants, IDGs = Individual development grant. ✓ signals that the CPP applied to the given year. Years without CPPs because the ED did not invite new applications or any other reason were not included in the table for readability. The table also only includes CPPs, meaning it excludes absolute priorities as those are required, not optional, for grant obtainment.
Regarding the recoding/coding process of proposal abstracts, we cataloged attributes of each proposal abstract in Excel, including (a) year of award; (b) type of award (individual or cooperative); (c) name of the lead institution; (d) name of the partner institution(s), if applicable; (e) state location; and (f) requested dollar amount. Then, we carefully read and inferred the proposals, summarizing their (a) key activities; (b) expected objectives and/or outcomes; (c) project foci (e.g., professional development, online education, transfer, etc.); and (d) alignment with that year’s respective CPPs. Specifically, we both coded 2009–2015 proposals and convened to check for agreement. Realizing our analyses tightly aligned, we divided the remaining proposals for analysis. However, as before, we still reconvened to discuss and resolve any coding issues, ultimately agreeing on the coding of each abstract in the dataset.
As part of this process, we also noted our initial observations and thoughts about each proposal abstract. To guide this initial wave of analysis, we relied on a set of analytic questions, which we developed based on our conceptual grounding and orienting research question. Examples of these analytic questions include: How does the proposal reflect (ir)rationality on the part of the organization? How does the funded project seemingly align or diverge with the organization’s mission and needs? What throughlines in terms of projects’ descriptions and objectives/outcomes span the proposals? What may explain why these awardees framed themselves and their projects in the ways they did? Relatedly, what may explain why they proposed the projects they did (as opposed to some alternative)? For instance, are they reacting to external/community pressures or needs? As suggested by these questions, we were attentive to forces at play in organizational decision-making, particularly HSCCs’ approach to grant-seeking. Ultimately, these preliminary notes, in addition to our analytic memos, helped round our budding interpretations of the data, curtail reliability issues, and enabled us to identify themes across the proposals (Merriam & Tisdell, 2015). Specifically, upon considering our research question in line with our conceptual grounding, we arrived at the following three main themes: Recognize that money isn’t free; Ground proposals to local needs; and Nod to Intermediaries.
Limitations
Regarding limitations, we relied on proposal abstracts of HSCC Title V recipients, as awardees’ full grant application materials are not publicly available. Although these abstracts are a valuable data source on institutions’ intended use of this funding, we cannot address what recipients actually did with this money. In balance, our approach—and attention to intentionality—aligns with our focus on successful grant-seeking, not grant management and implementation. Certainly, HSIs’ (and other institutions’) usage of competitive federal grant funding is a prime area of future study. Second, our explicit focus on HSCCs means it is beyond the scope of this analysis to make cross-sector comparisons (i.e., comparison between HSCCs and 4-year awardees), although, again, that presents a fruitful line of future research. Finally, we systematically analyzed funding notices, noting each year’s funding priorities (i.e., CPPs), and, in turn, addressed potential implications of these patterns for HSCCs in the forthcoming discussion. However, without access to un-funded applicants’ materials, we do not know if meeting these priorities is de facto required to obtain funding. Similarly, without access to such data, the quality of applicants versus awardees’ materials as well as their respective preparedness for grant acquisition is unclear, as is if/how applicants have adjusted their approach to grant-seeking, including how they frame their proposals, over time. While data on un-funded proposals would certainly deepen our findings, awardees’ proposal abstracts, alongside the CPPs, still communicate what the ED ultimately rewards in this competition and, thus, allow us to air implications for HSCCs moving forward.
Findings
Our review of HSCC Title V awardee proposal abstracts shows that community colleges overwhelmingly used their Title V funds to support their transfer mission by, for example, improving developmental education services, strengthening articulation agreements, and creating various academic support programs. Accordingly, they focused less on career and technical education (CTE) or workforce development, which constitute a significant part of community colleges’ missions and enrollment (D’Amico, 2016; Grosz et al., 2022). However, some HSCCs proposed using Title V funding specifically to create new or support existing CTE programs. For example, in 2009, Moreno Valley College secured funding to redesign the curriculum for its Fire Academy, Peace Officer, and Law Enforcement programs. In 2014, New Mexico State University-Grants (NMSU-Grants) requested this money to establish simulator labs for its Automotive and Welding Technologies programs, among other activities. Additionally, in line with Santiago and colleagues’ (2016) report, HSCC awardees consistently proposed using Title V funding for faculty professional development and curricular innovation. For instance, the 2020 grant awarded to Otero Junior College (Colorado) provided funds for “implementing professional development related to cultural relevance” to support the college’s goals of increasing student retention and completion rates.
Beyond gleaning HSCCs’ proposed use of Title V funding, we identified three major themes that characterize these grant winners. Specifically, we found that successful community college applicants first and foremost recognize that “money isn’t free.” Interconnectedly, they also ground proposals in local needs, and nod to intermediaries.
Recognize that Money Isn’t Free
Successful HSCC Title V applicants recognized that money isn’t free, as evidenced by them directly tying their “asks” to funders’ interests and corresponding solutions (in this case, the ED’s prescribed priorities). Specifically, akin to previous work (e.g., Arroyo & Santiago, 2023), our analysis revealed that HSCC Title V awardees consistently aligned their proposals with that cycle’s listed CPPs. From 2009 to 2012, only three of 97 abstracts directly addressed how the corresponding projects met the CPPs. From 2013–2022, approximately half of the proposals clearly tied their proposed work to CPPs. And our review of the ED’s training materials and scoring rubrics for these grants support this pattern, with these documents outlining the incentives to address these priorities. For example, the ED (2020a) made informational slides publicly available to eligible HSIs for the 2020 application cycle. The presentation clearly outlines the two CPPs for that cycle and the additional points applicants would receive for meeting each of these priorities. 4 Before presenting how these awardees responded to these priorities, we first take a step back and share general trends in these CPPs based on our analysis.
Regarding the focus of these priorities over time, we found that they ranged from improving dual enrollment (i.e., 2010), to increasing graduation rates (i.e., 2010 and 2011), to advancing students’ holistic well-being (i.e., 2022). As a whole, they prioritized broad institutional outcomes, programs (e.g., dual enrollment), or teaching modalities (i.e., online learning) and comparatively underemphasized any specific mention of Latina/o/e/x students (again, refer to Table 1). Ironically, the one CPP that specifically mentions Hispanic students from 2019 focused on graduate students, thereby excluding community colleges from meeting this priority.
Moreover, we identified that these priorities have shifted over time in terms of their level of specificity. Early on, the ED’s priorities were more general and leaned toward rewarding collaboration and cooperation between and among institutions. For instance, a CPP in 2009 supported cooperative projects that were “geographically and economically sound,” allowing applicants to define how they met this priority. Similarly, among the CPPs in 2010 was a preference for proposals that generally increased persistence and college completion.
In contrast, the CPPs were more specific later in this period, which translated into tightly tailored proposals addressing these ED’s narrowing asks. Illustratively, although only about four proposals before 2019 included a financial literacy component, once the ED set that as a specific CCP in 2019, most HSCC Title V awardees proposed projects specifically focused on addressing this issue. For instance, Del Mar College in Texas stated that it planned to “build a culture of financial literacy” with this funding by providing peer financial coaching and access to mobile credit improvement applications. Similarly, in 2020, we saw an increased focus on experiential and work-based learning among this group of awardees, which coincides with that year’s CPPs. For example, Hartnell College in California proposed creating learning experiences aligned with high-demand jobs to meet industry needs while boosting students’ employability post-graduation. In 2022, many awardees shifted to emphasize students’ holistic wellness, including their mental health and sense of belonging—one of that year’s CPPs. For example, Angelina College and College of the Mainland in Texas budgeted for the expansion of mental health support services on their respective campuses in their 2022 Title V grant proposals.
In this conversation around CPPs and the importance of addressing them, it bears noting that the ED has moved away from funding cooperative projects since 2018. At the same time, it has issued CPPs, based on our analysis, that disadvantage HSCCs because of their more limited degree offerings compared to 4-year HSIs. In particular, we found that two of the 2019 CPPs were ill-suited for HSCCs. Specifically, one of them rewarded: “Projects designed to expand courses and resources to serve more Hispanic and underrepresented graduate and professional students (Department of Education, 2019, para. 11-12).” The other CPP privileged “Projects designed to qualify teacher candidates to teach in public elementary and secondary schools.” Although a growing number of community colleges have started offering baccalaureate degrees in teacher education (Park et al., 2018), such programs remain largely a function of 4-year institutions (Floyd & St. Arnauld, 2007). Without cooperative grants, HSCCs’ ability to meet such a priority is limited. In effect, as we expand on in our discussion, the ED has prescribed increasingly specific solutions to strengthen HSIs’ institutional capacity without fully considering this population’s heterogeneity.
Ground Proposals in Local Needs
In addition to responding to the ED’s priorities, we observed that these winners tended to ground their proposals in local needs, including the needs of the institution’s current students, surrounding community, and local industry. For example, in 2009, NMSU-Grants described its local context, positioning itself and its proposed project (i.e., faculty professional development on delivering online education) as a way to respond to community needs. Specifically, they wrote, “With just 10 percent of adults holding bachelor degrees and a family poverty rate of 31 percent, area residents look to [NMSU-Grants] as a first step out of hardship (Department of Education, 2009, p. 25).” Similarly, awardees often responded to community needs by attending workforce development. Unsurprisingly, this was especially prevalent in 2020, given the focus of that year’s CPP, again, on experiential and work-based learning. For example, in 2020, Chaffey College in California explicitly tied local needs to work-based learning, specifically to requesting this money to “provide internships, apprenticeships, and other work-based learning experiences that align with in-demand industry sectors and occupations (Department of Education, 2020b, p. 99).”
As part of this local grounding, HSCC Title V awardees also often foregrounded their institution’s changing student demographics and pressing needs. Nearly every abstract in our sample offered at least one sentence to a full paragraph offering basic contextual information about the college’s location, enrollment, and demographics. Colleges used this information to set the stage for their funding needs. For instance, in 2009, Citrus College stated, “Over the past decade, the college has served an increasing influx of students with diverse needs that severely test its ability to reach and maintain the levels of student progression and goal completion that it strives to achieve (Department of Education, 2009, p. 13).” To respond to these evolving needs, they proposed a project to increase degree completion by focusing on student progression from developmental education into college-level coursework, strengthening academic support services, and developing stronger resource development capacity.
Notably, we also noticed patterns in how awardees tended to talk about Latine/x students. Specifically, like prior research (i.e., Perdomo & Guajardo, 2024; Vargas & Villa-Palomino, 2019), we found that HSCC Title V awardees’ tended to conflate student identities (particularly Latine/x and low socioeconomic status); position Latine/x identities in a deficit-focused manner; and/or propose deracialized or race-evasive projects. Among this sample of HSCCs, we found that the vast majority (approximately 80%) of abstracts either conflated Latine/x identity with other identities (i.e., low-income students, generally underserved students, English Language Learners) or proposed deracialized projects without clear outcomes tied to Latine/x students specifically. There were three proposals we coded as deficit-focused. For example, a 2009 cooperative grant between Eastern New Mexico University and Clovis Community College described their local community as “an isolated rural area of small towns surrounded by ranching and other agricultural enterprises, characterized by low educational attainment and poverty (Department of Education, 2009, p. 5).” It emphasized their high percentage of “underprepared students,” contributing to each institution’s low retention and graduation rates. However, the abstract did not mention Latine/x students (i.e., their representation at each institution or the grant’s potential impact on or benefit for Latine/x students). Such a race-evasive approach to grant-seeking was not isolated to the more distant past, but an enduring pattern. Illustratively, despite naming their proposed program ÉXITO (Spanish for “success”), GateWay Community College’s 2019 abstract only quickly mentioned the goal of raising attainment rates for Hispanic and low-income students with general activities—not ones focused on Latine/x students.
While many HSCC awardees’ abstracts reflected these race-evasive patterns, some (approximately 15%) took a decidedly different approach, explicitly attending to racialized educational inequalities within their proposals. For example, with nearly 40% of its incoming class identifying as Latine/x, Norwalk Community College (NCC) in Connecticut stated in its 2016 abstract: “NCC’s service areas are among the most inequitable counties in the country, where 17 percent of Hispanic families live in poverty. . . . NCC is the cornerstone of efforts to combat poverty in Fairfield County (Department of Education, 2016, p. 19).” To address this racialized inequity, they proposed increasing academic support structures within specific gateway courses. Pasadena City College and California State Polytechnic University Pomona likewise touched on racialized inequalities within their 2012 cooperative proposal, maintaining: The proposed cooperative project . . . will focus on increasing Hispanic and underrepresented student participation, improving milestone achievement, smoothing transfer, and ensuring equitable degree completion for Hispanic and underserved high school students, students who are currently most negatively impacted by a broken transfer system.
In effect, these community colleges were explicit about how their activities served Latine/x students while also describing opportunity gaps as systemic failures rather than blaming Latine/x students, their families, or communities.
Nod to Intermediaries
Finally, HSCC Title V awardees routinely nodded to intermediaries such as the What Works Clearinghouse, the Lumina Foundation (via Achieving the Dream), the Community College Research Center ([CCRC] specifically, CCRC’s Guided Pathways program), the New Mathways Project, and Excelencia in Education. McCambly (2023) explains that intermediary organizations act as “brokers or boundary spanners between policymakers or funders and the implementers to effect changes in roles and practices in a field” (p. 178). Following this understanding, multiple recipients invoked these organizations by name or relied on their proposed reform strategies on issues like developmental education and student support programs. Specifically, HSCC Title V awardees often cited these entities and/or their supported “best practices,” seemingly to legitimize their proposed activities. Intriguingly, we also found that research(ers) represented a type of intermediary. Post-2019, several of these awardees leaned on G. A. Garcia and colleagues’ (2019) notion of servingness, situating their projects as ways to become or better be “Hispanic-serving.”
As for intermediary organizations, many of these awardees proposed investing Title V dollars to adopt Achieving the Dream and Guided Pathways strategies. From 2010–2022, a total of 134 HSCCs used Title V funds for activities related to Achieving the Dream or its successor Guided Pathways. For context, Achieving the Dream, founded in 2004 by the Lumina Foundation, focused on community colleges with high enrollments of racially/ethnically minoritized students and students from low-income backgrounds (González, 2015). Initially implemented at 26 colleges across five states (González, 2015), this program expanded to 220 colleges across 39 states by 2018 (Torres et al., 2018). Of note, Achieving the Dream specifically called for colleges to use data to drive decision-making, and it eschewed what it referred to as “boutique programs” (González, 2015, p. 76), those targeting specific populations rather than the broader campus community. Aligned with this thinking, Bergen Community College in New Jersey—a member of the Achieving the Dream initiative (Achieving the Dream, 2024)—pitched overhauling the college’s developmental education courses and training in its awarded 2016 Title V grant proposal, maintaining that “Staff and 50 gateway instructors will work together as stewards of student success, and participate in rigorous, data-driven assessments (Department of Education, 2016, p. 14).”
In time, however, researchers determined that Achieving the Dream failed to make large-scale improvements to retention and graduation rates as promised (Mayer et al., 2014). Thus, this program was largely replaced by Guided Pathways. Introduced in the monograph Redesigning America’s Community Colleges, Guided Pathways is a comprehensive reform program that includes broad changes to streamline the structure of majors, curriculum, and support services (Bailey et al., 2015). Like its predecessor, community colleges, including HSCCs, grabbed onto Guided Pathways. For instance, based on our analysis, by 2017, only two colleges (i.e., Porterville College and the University of New Mexico-Taos) included Guided Pathways in their projects. A mere 3 years later, however, 26 HSCC Title V awardees did. For instance, Howard County Junior College in Texas nodded to intermediaries, evoking the Guided Pathways model to substantiate its alignment with the CPPs, stating: “The project includes strong elements of career exploration and financial literacy, both hallmarks of Guided Pathways (Department of Education, 2020b, p. 98).” Such an example again reaffirms awardees’ consistent attention to addressing the ED’s priorities.
Again, beyond these intermediary organizations, HSI scholars also appear to inform successful HSCC Title V proposals. In recent abstracts, we found that several colleges specifically invoked the language of “servingness.” As touched on earlier, developed by G. A. Garcia et al. (2019), servingness is a multidimensional construct that refers to providing Latine/x students not only an equitable educational experience, but a culturally informed and enhancing experience. For instance, in 2022, MiraCosta College in California stated that its activities would “Drive a college culture shift to embrace the identity of a Hispanic-Serving Institution, increasing diversity and cultural competence among faculty and staff (Department of Education, 2022, p. 79).” To accomplish this objective, it proposed, among activities, establishing a formalized professional development program for faculty and staff. Antelope Valley College, also in California, connected its proposed first-year experience program with servingness, stating: “The proposed project will accelerate our trajectory toward a new, research-based HSI model of student success—one that emphasizes ‘servingness’ and builds on the cultural assets of Hispanic students (Department of Education, 2022, p. 6).”
Discussion
To recap, HSCC Title V awardees’ proposal abstracts illustrate how these institutions frame themselves and their asks to respond the ED’s incentivized priorities (i.e., CPPs). At the same, we noted how the CPPs prescribe solutions for Title V-eligible institutions in ways that HSCCs may struggle to meet. Previous research (Aguilar-Smith, 2021; Aguilar-Smith & Yun, 2023) has noted that the competition among awardees is tough enough that the failure to meet the CPPs could mean the difference between being funded or not being funded. In essence, these CPPs become unofficial mandates rather than optional, and, as discussed in the findings, not all CPPs take into account the institutional diversity among HSIs.
Additionally, we observed that these awardees have proposed investing this racialized funding to respond to community needs and systemic inequities affecting their students, suggesting that HSCCs leverage this money to fulfill their multiple missions. These project abstracts also showed how certain intermediaries inform applicants and position them for success in this competition, enabling them, for example, to address the CPPs set forth by the ED. We discuss these findings below, considering the literature on competitive grantmaking and our conceptual grounding, particularly RDT and Cohen and colleagues' (1972) garbage can theory.
Meditated Access to Resources
Again, as both community colleges and HSIs, HSCCs are multiply marginalized (McCambly et al., 2023) and chronically underfunded institutions (Hillman & Corral, 2017; Ortagus et al., 2024) with limited philanthropic support (Gasman et al., 2023). To fulfill their multiple missions and serve the needs of their local communities and students, community colleges have sought public dollars to boost traditionally valued outcomes like the number of degrees and certificates offered and awarded (Kisker et al., 2023). With this context in mind—specifically community colleges’ overall poor resource conditions—both RDT and garbage can theory help explain HSCCs’ (ir)rational pursuit of Title V funding. As noted, in the face of declining revenue, community colleges look for opportunities to augment their budgets toward fulfilling their multiple missions. However, access to funding (including funding source, focus, and total dollar amount) varies widely across the higher education system and between predominantly White institutions and racialized organizations like HSIs (McCambly et al., 2023). Furthermore, access to funding is often mediated by political actors who frequently prescribe solutions to problems rather than allowing a beneficiary—be it an individual or organization—to define their own problems and solutions. In the case of Title V grants, some HSCC Title V awardees have seemingly rationally vied for this federal funding to address pressing local area needs, such as developing CTE programs for first responders.
Additionally, our findings show that successful Title V applicants—specifically HSCC grant-seekers—know and acknowledge relevant intermediaries, including intermediary organizations and research(ers). As a reminder, we observed this group of awardees invoking the language of servingness in their recent proposals. Read generously, this shift promisingly suggests that HSCCs are more intentionally considering how these racialized funds can positively transform their organizational cultures and practices in ways that ultimately better support Latine/x students. Without clear federal direction on what it means in practice to be “Hispanic-serving,” this shift is notable, as this federal designation is a political construct or “manufactured identity” (Contreras et al., p. 7), not one based on an explicit organizational mission or culture centered on serving Latine/x students (Garcia, 2017). Indeed, only recently have scholars clarified more concretely this organizational identity (Garcia, 2017) and the notion of servingness (G. A. Garcia et al., 2019). Notably, as mentioned earlier, G. A. Garcia et al. (2019) identified HSI grants among various structures for servingness. Accordingly, this shift among this subset of Title V awardees supplies reasons for hope, and, more concretely, they provide praxis-oriented examples of how HSIs may enact servingness on their campuses. Separately, HSCCs Title V awardees’ attention to intermediaries and CPPs shows how external forces—a key part of the Garcia and colleagues’ framework—influence servingness in real life.
Governmental Priorities and Incentivized (Ir)rationality
Most strikingly, our findings underscore how HSCC Title V awardees recognize that money isn’t free. Navigating often dire financial straits, they understand that they are beholden to funders’ whims, with these external actors’ priorities effectively circumscribing their agency. More specifically, our analysis suggests that HSCCs, many of which are acutely cash-strapped, rationally frame their proposals in ways that bolster their likelihood of securing this much-needed funding, justifying their asks not only in local needs but also by drawing from intermediaries’ established “best practices” and aligning their proposed projects with the ED’s CPPs. In this way, in line with RDT, these institutions attempt to mitigate their financially uncertain or precarious circumstances. Such an approach to grant-seeking likely resonates well across other systematically underfunded institutions.
At the same time, in proposing projects tightly aligned with the ED’s CPPs, some could argue that HSCCs are incentivized to behave somewhat irrationally, particularly as CPPs can be understood as prescribed, one-size-fits-all solutions—or solutions in search of problems. More aptly, following a garbage can perspective, some HSIs may rationally pitch irrational projects—efforts incongruent with genuine organizational problems or priorities. Of concern, this approach to grant-seeking risks undermining institutional buy-in, which ample research suggests is critical to the sustainability and institutionalization of grant-funded work within colleges and universities (Arroyo & Santiago, 2023; Cobian & Ramos, 2021; Rosser & Chameau, 2006). Altogether, our analysis underlines the problematic nature of funders’ tight strings and government-issued priorities, especially within the context of institutionally heterogeneous populations. Our findings also invite the question: What would HSCCs (and other HSIs) request Title V money for in the absence of CPPs? More broadly, what would these promising colleges and institutions, more generally, request in the context of a highly generous but low-burden investment—a funding portfolio that McCambly and Aguilar-Smith (2024)describe as racially reparative?
Governmental Priorities and Constrained Agency
Aside from these more foundational questions, given the mere presence of CPPs, the increasing specificity of the ED’s expressed and rewarded priorities over time further complicates matters. Broader CPPs allow greater flexibility, empowering applicants to determine how best to allocate this money based on their individualized and/or community needs. In contrast, with more targeted or narrow CPPs, the ED prescribes solutions, pressuring colleges to mold themselves accordingly to be competitive for funds. McCambly and Colyvas (2023) help explain why such an approach to grantmaking proves problematic and, even more, may (re)produce racialized inequality, writing: Although GMOs [grantmaking organizations] confer legitimacy on policy problems and solutions in education, GMOs’ priorities may or may not align with the highest levels of social need (INCITE! et al. 2007; Mosley & Galaskiewicz 2015; Suárez 2012). Similarly, GMOs may not incorporate a community’s understanding of a problem when they set their sociopolitical agendas, and data indicate that values and priorities of the white and wealthy are not representative of minoritized communities (see, e.g., Francis, 2019; Reich et al., 2016; Villanueva, 2018). (p. 204)
Despite the ostensibly good intentions undergirding the ED’s priorities (i.e., CPPs), they are also presumptuous by design, effectively determining “solutions” for HSIs’ supposed shortcomings. Furthermore, given the highly competitive nature of this program, the ED pushes HSIs, including HSCCs, to privilege their interests over perhaps more pressing institutional needs through these CPPs. As already mentioned, this tension sets up applicants to rationally propose potentially irrational projects.
Governmental Priorities and the Neutralization of Difference
Also, the CPPs apply equally to applicants, regardless of the institution’s mission and corresponding offerings. In other words, the ED treats HSIs as a monolith within the context of this funding opportunity. Disregarding the significant institutional diversity among HSIs bakes potential inequities into this federal program (Aguilar-Smith, 2023). As shown by the case of the CPP focused on teacher preparation, inattention to the heterogeneity among HSIs may limit opportunities for HSCCs to access this funding and presumably other HSI grants. Moreover, highlighting how CPPs may disadvantage HSCCs, this study affirms recent calls for differentiated and culturally responsive approaches to setting CPPs and determining awards (e.g., Burbage & Glass, 2023; Perdomo & Guajardo, 2024).
Lastly, regarding CPPs, none, to date, explicitly reference any specific racial/ethnic student group. Thus, in the absence of any federal guidance or expectations insofar as using this money to serve Latine/x students, many awardees have pitched race-evasive projects slated to serve all students (Perdomo & Guajardo, 2024; Vargas-Villa-Palomino, 2019). Our analysis revealed that many HSCC Title V awardees have proposed race-evasive efforts related to implementing Achieving the Dream and Guided Pathways. Although these initiatives targeted community colleges, which educate large proportions of racially/ethnically minoritized students, neither were explicitly focused on unseating racialized inequities. As Bragg and colleagues’ (2019) explain, “Unless reforms identify explicitly how [community colleges implementing Guided Pathways] will address racial disparities in student outcomes and undo structural racism that contributes to these disparities, it is unlikely that equity gaps will close” (p. 2). As such, without an explicit call to action to combat systemic racism, especially focused on Latine/x students, it is unclear whether Title V grants are an appropriate source of funding for these projects. Even more, the architects of the Guided Pathways framework specifically dissuaded colleges from using grant monies to implement the program (Bailey et al., 2015).
This use of soft money (i.e., Title V grants) for Guided Pathways and other efforts requiring institutionalization again illustrates the (ir)rationality of grant-seeking and serves as a cautionary tale for funders and awardees alike. Specifically, these awardees’ concerningly deracialized and race-evasive proposals again uphold a rational understanding of organizational behavior. As noted, from a resource dependency perspective, colleges will adapt to environmental conditions to mitigate uncertainty, including uncertainty brought on by dwindling financial coffers. So, if applicants come to understand that the ED favors deracialized or race-evasive projects—which our analysis and existing reviews of Title V awardees’ proposals suggest (i.e., Perdomo & Guajardo, 2024; Vargas & Villa-Palomino, 2019)—more applicants, including more HSCCs, may follow suit, thus jeopardizing the potential of this money to intentionally support Latine/x students—the very students Congress established this grant program with in mind. Altogether, our findings, particularly regarding CPPs, call into question if the government, namely the ED, is behaving rationally, assuming their goal is to meet this program’s expressed purpose and aims.
Implications for Policy and Future Research
The study’s findings present implications for policy and future research. Regarding policy, our findings underline the pressing need to reassess the use and development of competitive preference and invitational priorities in federal grantmaking. At a minimum, they call for greater transparency about this process, implicitly questioning who develops CPPs and, more so, who should (governmental actors or HSIs themselves). Like Perdomo and Guajardo (2024), we recommend that both 2-year and 4-year HSIs help craft CPPs. Furthermore, we echo other HSI scholars and leaders who have called out the need to develop accountability measures to ensure HSI-related grant funding benefits Latine/x students (e.g., G. Garcia & Hernandez-Reyes, 2023; Perdomo & Guajardo, 2024).
Furthermore, as noted in the findings, the ED pivoted away from cooperative grants after the 2018 award cycle for unknown reasons. Perhaps this shift was in response to ongoing concerns that these cooperative arrangements were performative—a way for some institutions to amass money (Aguilar-Smith, 2023). However, in doing so, they quashed possibilities for collaboration between community colleges and 4-year institutions, and created conditions for inequality over time among HSIs. Specifically, since the vast majority of cooperatives (57 out of 66) were between 2-year and 4-year institutions based on our analysis, the ED also axed an avenue for HSCCs to access Title V dollars, which is critical considering that (a) HSCCs are ineligible for Title V Part B or PPOHA grants and (b) the increasing competitiveness of this federal funding. Indeed, with the growth of Hispanic-serving research universities, we speculate that competition for Title V funding may become even more fierce since research institutions typically have more developed grant-related infrastructure. In the end, we argue that if the ED is concerned about opportunity hoarding among a few HSIs, they need not do away with cooperative grants altogether. Instead, they could build in measures to support meaningful collaboration between partners or reformulate the eligibility criteria, prohibiting institutions from concurrently receiving Title V monies from individual and cooperative grants. 5
Separately, large-scale reforms like Achieving the Dream and Guided Pathways require institutions to have robust data infrastructures, among other resources (e.g., technology and staff), which necessitate substantial upfront financial investments on the part of community colleges. Again, many community colleges operate with shoestring budgets, making these sorts of investments unaffordable luxuries only possible through external funding like Title V. However, these large-scale efforts are not sustainable with soft money, which grants represent. Instead, HSCCs and other community colleges need reliable revenue streams to implement and institutionalize these efforts. As such, we join the choir of voices (e.g., Aguilar-Smith, 2023; Kahlenberg, 2015; Mullin, 2010; Ortagus et al., 2024) strongly urging federal, state, and local policymakers to deepen their investment in community colleges and HSCCs, in particular.
Regarding future research directions, this study sets the groundwork for additional in-depth qualitative studies on competitive grant-seeking and -making within higher education. Specifically, researchers should interview a range of campus stakeholders involved in grant-related work to understand institutions’ grant-seeking priorities and behavior better. Relatedly, considering our findings, studies should further examine external influences on grant-seeking, including the role of state funding, political pressures from governing boards and state legislatures, as well as funders’ evolving expectations of, and incentives for, community colleges.
Conclusion
In exploring HSCC Title V grant winners’ proposals and identifying strategic moves HSCCs do to secure this federal funding, this study adds to extant research. For one, like Aguilar-Smith and Yun’s (2023) quantitative study of Title V applicants and awardees over time, our qualitative analysis similarly demonstrates that HSCCs are successful Title V Part A grant applicants. Second, this study extends the scholarship by explicitly examining HSCC Title V awardees across the United States over the last nearly decade and half. Third, rather than taking the abstracts at face value and solely describing how they portray HSIs and Latine/x students, we examine what characterizes success within this competition and, in turn, consider what this means given HSCCs’ unique missions and resource conditions relative to the larger HSI population. Ultimately, in highlighting what it takes to be successful within this competition, this study points to ways Title V may under-realize its potential to build HSIs’ institutional capacity and uplift Latine/x students.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge and thank the masked peer reviewers for their constructive suggestions on this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Notes
Authors
ERIN DORAN is an associate professor of educational leadership and foundations at the University of Texas at El Paso. Her research centers on community colleges, Latinx/e student success, and Hispanic-Serving Institutions.
STEPHANIE AGUILAR-SMITH is an assistant professor of counseling and higher education at the University of North Texas. Broadly, her research focuses on advancing educational equity and justice, particularly at Hispanic-serving institutions.