Money Isn’t Free - A Systematic Content Analysis of Hispanic-Serving Community Colleges Title V Awardees Proposals

Oct 15, 2026

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Amid public divestment in higher education, grant acquisition becomes critical for colleges, especially Hispanic-serving community colleges (HSCCs). This study systematically analyzes 400 HSCC Title V awardee proposal abstracts, finding that proposals often reflect local community needs while still pitching race-evasive projects. It also observes an emerging “servingness” framing, yet competitive priorities and race-evasive evaluation criteria may limit how far HSIs, including HSCCs, can advance servingness, informing the need for program reform.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages18

Reading Time45 min

AccessFree to download

Background and Literature Review

Federal Designation as an Hispanic-Serving Institution

AERA Open January-December 2025, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 1–18 DOI: 10. 1177/23328584251321451 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© The Author(s) 2025. [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero) Money Isn’t Free: A Systematic Content Analysis of Hispanic-Serving Community Colleges Title V Awardees Proposals Erin Doran The University of Texas at El Paso Stephanie Aguilar-Smith University of North Texas 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 raceevasive 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: community colleges, Hispanic education, equity, content analysis, Hispanic-serving institutions, Title V, grants 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), Hispanicserving 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 (AguilarSmith, 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 grant

FAQs

What is the main focus of the study?

The study examines grant acquisition in the HSCC context, specifically what characterizes funded HSCC Title V grant proposals with an equity lens.

How was the analysis conducted?

The research performs a systematic content analysis of 400 HSCC Title V awardee proposal abstracts.

What key pattern does the study find about the proposals?

The proposals often ground themselves in local community needs but frequently pitch race-evasive projects, while recent successful applicants increasingly invoke “servingness.”

Why may “servingness” efforts face limitations?

The Department of Education’s competitive preference priorities and race-evasive evaluation criteria may undercut the extent to which HSIs advance servingness with this funding.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Pentious