Changes may be coming to a federal program designed to help low-income middle and high school students access college.
The program, called Talent Search, funds support like academic advising, college visits, and assistance navigating financial aid. It’s one of a collection of competitive grants awarded under the federal TRIO umbrella of programs that supports students from disadvantaged backgrounds in postsecondary education.
But the latest grant competition, announced on March 17, has made workforce development a more prominent priority in the program—encouraging grantees to develop proposals that “demonstrate connections with the workforce system” and position apprenticeships and career and technical education as “equally viable and often faster routes to economic mobility” as the college programs the grant has historically served.
But that change could close off college options for low-income students, contends the Council for Opportunity in Education, a group that lobbies for TRIO programs.
“This is a direct assault on educational opportunity,” said Kimberly Jones, COE’s president, in a statement earlier this month.
The U.S. Department of Education is positioning apprenticeships and on-the-job learning credentials as “a better alternative to a traditional degree,” Jones said in an interview. “Fundamentally, that’s an enormous problem, because that’s really a change in scope and mission of TRIO.”
“Just the same way we need machinists and ship builders and medical technologists, we need doctors, we need lawyers, we need engineers,” she continued.
The new competition notice also signals potential changes to how grants are made, allowing for states to receive large awards in a program that typically funds mostly colleges, universities, and nonprofit organizations.
COE has called on the Education Department, and the U.S. Department of Labor, which issued the grant opportunity on behalf of the Education Department, to rescind and revise the notice.
In an emailed statement, Ellen Keast, the Education Department’s press secretary for higher education, said the competition would proceed as outlined.
“The purpose of higher education is to improve the lives of Americans and ensure they are well-equipped to enter in-demand, high-wage careers—regardless of which educational pathway they choose,” she said. “It’s a shame that an advocacy group claiming to promote opportunity would instead stand as a barrier to upward mobility and student success.”
TRIO programs have faced an uncertain year
The TRIO programs, which date back to the 1960s, represent $1.19 billion in federal funding and serve about 817,000 low-income and first-generation students nationwide.
Research shows that low-income students have uneven access to higher education, and that socioeconomic gaps persist in which students enroll in and complete college.
TRIO programs aim to step into that gap. Some, including Talent Search, are designed to help middle or high school students get to college; others aim to support students once they’re enrolled.
Over the years, some researchers and policymakers have called for more evaluation of the programs to determine whether they are meeting their goals. In 2006, President George W. Bush’s budget proposal recommended reallocating the funding. Still, the program has long received bipartisan support in Congress.
Grantees have faced new uncertainty over the past year, as President Donald Trump’s administration’s grant cancellations and other federal funding disruptions have affected the program.
Trump’s K-12 budget proposal called for eliminating TRIO programs entirely, calling them “a relic of the past” and arguing that “access to college is not the obstacle it was for students of limited means.” Congress rejected that proposal, though, and funded the programs at 2025 levels.
Then in September of last year, the Education Department canceled more than 100 active TRIO grants, saying the projects didn’t align with the Trump administration’s policies on diversity, equity, and inclusion. COE sued, and in January a federal judge issued a court order invalidating the grant cancellations.
Now, new grants will be “fully aligned with America’s Talent Strategy and the reindustrialization agenda of the Trump Administration,” the Education Department’s webpage for the program reads.