Nassau Community College to lose $1.8M in Hispanic-Serving Institution funding after Education Department claims racial discrimination
Nassau Community College is set to lose about $1.8 million in funding from the federal Department of Education. Credit: Barry Sloan
A new Nassau Community College program that helps struggling students remain in school will end this summer, after the federal Department of Education pulled its funding, college officials said.
The Uniondale college launched Project Beacon last fall to provide academic counseling and other services to students who were dismissed for academic reasons last year but appealed their dismissal.
The program was funded by what was initially expected to be a four-year, $2.4 million federal grant from the Department of Education’s Hispanic-Serving Institutions, or HSI, program. The HSI program is open to certain schools whose student population is at least 25% Hispanic, though the services it funds are open to all students, regardless of background.
But shortly after Project Beacon was started, the Education Department announced that funding for the HSI program had been canceled. In a release at the time, the agency said such programs “discriminate by conferring government benefits exclusively to institutions that meet racial or ethnic quotas.” The agency cited a Department of Justice determination that the programs “violate the equal-protection component of the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause.”
Project Beacon is now expected to end as soon as August, after about one year of services, school officials said. NCC expects to miss out on $1.8 million in federal funding over the next three years.
The Department of Education referred to its previous statement in response to a request for comment Thursday.
'Literally a big help'
Among the participants in the NCC program is Shelsea Andrades, 20, a Hempstead High School graduate who was dismissed from the college last year for academic reasons. Her older brother, now 24, helped her appeal the dismissal and she joined Project Beacon, she said.
Her grades have since improved, for which she credits to the academic counseling she received through the program.
Next semester, Andrades said she’ll be taking especially hard classes, including statistics. “I’m a little scared, but I know I got it,” she said.
Her goal is to become a sonographer, a career with a median annual salary of nearly $90,000 — a big improvement from the $17 an hour she earns at a bagel shop, one of two jobs she works while attending school, Andrades said. Eventually, she said, she wants to help reassure expectant mothers about the health of their babies, as health care workers did for her own mother before her little brother, now 4, was born.
NCC student Shelsea Andrades said she has benefited from Project Beacon. Credit: Shelsea Andrades
Andrades said she didn’t understand why the HSI program’s funding was ending early. “Why would they take it away when there’s actually people struggling?” she said. “This is literally a big help.”
A spokesman for Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said negotiations are underway in the Senate Appropriations Committee over whether funding for HSIs and other Education Department programs will continue. No further information was available Thursday.
In a letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon last fall, Schumer wrote that the cancellation of $350 million to Minority Serving Institutions like NCC — those designated as having large shares of ethnic and racial minority students — “needlessly disrupts the fiscal stability of thousands of colleges and universities that educate millions of students of all ethnicities and backgrounds.”
Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-Glen Cove) said in a statement that he has contacted the Department of Education “to urge them to make right by the students at Nassau Community College.”
Suozzi said, “The decision to cut funding for Nassau Community College is wrong. This funding has been crucial in helping students remain in school, improve their academic performance, and get on track toward pursuing careers in essential fields like health care. Ending this program prematurely hurts students and undermines our commitment to creating better opportunities for the next generation.”
The NCC program provides tutoring, academic counseling and other support, including help obtaining food, housing and mental health counseling, for 42 students, school officials said. One third of the students in the program are Hispanic, according to NCC.
The college had planned to expand the program by about 50 additional students each year and open it to students who are struggling but have not been dismissed, the school said.
The goal is to “retain those students and ensure they either graduated or transferred to a four-year institution,” said Melissa Koppenhafer, a grant director at the college.
Some of the students participating in Project Beacon didn’t gain all the academic skills they needed in high school due to learning disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic, and some face personal struggles, including caring for a family member or needing to balance work and school, said Chris Muller, an educational counselor and assistant professor at NCC.
“They wanted to be successful at the college and get the degree,” Muller said. “I think they were just lacking a support system … and having that kind of one-on-one counseling relationship helped.”
Maura McDermott covers education. Since joining Newsday in 2012, she also has worked on the investigations team and covered real estate and the business of health care.
