Race-based scholarships becoming more scarce as legal challenges mount

US race-based scholarships are disappearing as legal challenges mount following the 2023 Supreme Court affirmative action ruling,

Legal pressure has already reduced race-based eligibility criteria, sparking debates over equality versus historical redress.

Universities are exploring race-neutral alternatives, such as geographic or socio-

economic markers, to maintain student diversity.

Whenever serve as a mentor to Black college students here in the US, | often mention

how there's no excuse not to apply for scholarships when they're so easy to find,

‘All you have to do is search for the words ‘scholarship’ and ‘Black’, and you'll find a whole bunch of scholarships,” have often said, typically pointing out how searching for scholarships is much easier now than when I went to college before the advent of Google.

My advice has paid off For instance, two of my protégés won $5,000 scholarships from the Luther Vandross Foundation, named after the legendary soul singer, so beloved ‘among Black people in the US that he is often referred to solely by his first name — Luther ~ sort of how older generations refer to Elvis,

fat University proudly announces the renewal ofthe National Architectural Accrediting Board (NAAB) accreditation forits Architecture program fr an additional sx years, reaffrming its commitment to intemationa standards of ‘excellence in architectural education

Thisachiovement refects the collective efforts of faculty, leadership, and supporting teams, as welas the valuable

Race-based Ladle becoming more scarce as legal challenges mount

Race-based scholarships are vanishing from US campuses. As challenges mount, universities are being forced to rethink how they support underrepresented students.

‘Thereneval denonsiatesthe sng he porn dank quay ans eon prepa re B | ve vioe dies conne meaning tothe but eneonment ——E = TE penis Lube Os (Gate ag | pions (Fg Jaen

Luther's foundation awards scholarships to students enrolled in HBCUs,or historically.

Black colleges and universities. These are institutions established during legalised racial segregation ~ prior to 1964, to be specific ~ to educate Black students in the US. A handful were established before the Civil Wer.

‘One of my protégés ~ Malik Castro-Devarona — won the $5,000 Luther Vandross scholarship two years in a row. That put a significant dent in Malik’ financial obligations, to his now-alma mater, Howard University, an elite, Washington, DC-based HBCU where the average annual cost of attendance exceeds $50,000. The median total debt after ‘graduation is $2400

For the most part, my advice to search for “Black scholarships" is still useful

For instance, if a person went to scholarships360.org and typed "Black" into the search bar, they'd find a "Scholar Dollars” Essay Scholarship for Black Students, worth $1,000; the Black at Microsoft, or BAM scholarship, which offers up to $5,000 for students majoring in STEM or business; and the Ron Brown Scholarship, a four-year, $40,000 scholarship for “intellectually gifted" African American students,

Nevertheless, recent developments suggest | may have to update my advice to Black students on how to find scholarship money. That's because ever since the Supreme ‘Court ruled in 2023 that colleges and universities can no longer legally consider race in admissions, conservative activists — and the second Trump administration itself — have been seeking to apply the same principle to scholarships. That is to say, they don't want to see any scholarships designed specifically for Black students and other historically

underrepresented groups. They only want to see scholarships that everyone can win,

regardless of race,

2025. Photo credit Jamaal AbduicAim ‘Asalongtime journalist who specialises in higher education, I've written extensively about the life-changing role that Black-oriented scholarships have played in the lives of Black students.

"Being a Ron Brown scholar has allowed me to take my college experience to the next level” Christopher Lyle told me in 2012 during @ Ronald H, Brown American Journ ‘Awards ceremony that | covered. Lyle ~ who received the Ron Brown scholarship in 2008 and went on to earn an MBA in 2019 from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, the same business school from which President Trump graduated in 1968 ~ is currently Senior Manager of Revenue Strategy & Operations at DoorDash, according to his Linkedin profil

The Ron Brown scholarship is named after President Clinton's Secretary of Commerce — ically killed ina plane

and the first African American to hold the position — who was trac

crash in 1996 during an official trade mission to Eastern Europe. But scholarships such as the Ron Brown scholarship are becoming more scarce.

In my home state of Wisconsin, for example, the state's Supreme Court struck down a state taxpayer-funded scholarship known as the Minority Undergraduate Retention Grant Program. The programme, established by law in 1985, provided grants of up to $2500 for low-income students of colour, specifically those who are Black, Native ‘American, Hispanic, or certain Southeast Asian students who arrived in the US after December 31, 1975. The rationale behind offering the retention grant to such students is that they tended to leave college without a degree at higher rates than white and Asian students. But the Wisconsin high court rejected the idea, saying the scholarship could

have been offered in a race-neutral way. The Wisconsin case is part of a much larger trend in the US.

Since the Supreme Court outlawed the use of race in college admissions in 2023, the percentage of scholarships that base eligibility on race, ethnicity, gender or other

demographic factors has dropped to ll percent, down from 15 percent at the time of the

decision, the Washington Post reports, citing data from the National Scholarship

Providers Association.

William Jacobson, a Cornell Law School Professor and Founder of the Equal Protection. Project, an initiative that challenges race-based scholarships as discriminatory, welcomes the trend of moving ‘away from the race-obsessed Diversity, Equity and

Inclusion agenda’.

“To the extent scholarships are eliminating race and ethnicity as eligibility requirements, that is a good thing,” Professor Jacobson told me via his legalinsurrection.com email address. "Scholarships should be available to students without regard to race or

ethnicity.

Professor Jacobson noted that institutions can still legally take a student's hardship into account, but “we cannot assume hardship merely based on skin pigmentation or ancestry, which reinforces negative stereotypes that some races and ethnicities are

inherently less capable’ Not all justices on the Wisconsin Supreme Court agree with that sentiment.

“Why, instead of wielding the Equal Protection Clause as a sword against racism, do we ‘employ it to shield against the promise of equality for all2" Justice Jill Karofsky asked. ‘She argued that programmes such as the Minority Undergraduate Retention Grant Program “could be constitutional under an interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment

‘that honours its purpose ~ to combat oppression’

Wisconsin State Senator Dora Drake, a Democrat, worries that people are going too far in seeking to apply the 2023 Supreme Court ban on race-conscious affirmative action to scholarships. Drake benefitted from the Minority Undergraduate Retention Grant during her time at Marquette University. She graduated in 2015.

‘One of Drake's staffers told QS Insights the Wisconsin lawmaker is looking at creating a scholarship that would use a factor such as a student's zip code ~ rather than race ~ determine eligibility.

Not all cases that concern race-based scholarships are being brought on behalf of aggrieved white or Asian individuals who — as was the case in Wisconsin — purportedly felt discriminated against because their race or ethnicity precluded them from being

able to compete for a scholarship.

In 2025, the University of lowa sought court approval to modify a scholarship named after Dr Ezra L. Totton, a distinguished Black chemistry professor who bequeathed the fund to show his gratitude to the university for admitting him to its graduate chemistry

programme during the racial segregation period known as Jim Crow.

Dr Totton's estate specifically stated that the $35,000 he willed to the university should be invested and that 90 percent of the interest should go to scholarships for Black students majoring in the physical sciences, preferably chemistry. But the university, fearing reprisals under the emergent view that the 2023 Supreme Court ruling against race-conscious affirmative action applies to scholarships, sought court approval to

change the words “Black students” to first-generation students.

lowa’s high court disagreed, stating that while the university had a valid concern about the legal risks of administering a race-based scholarship, there was no basis not to honour the intent of the donor, who in this case indicated that the funds should be

returned if the university could not distribute the funds as he requested.

The high court in lowa also rejected the university's argument that giving the scholarship funds to first-generation students would honour Dr Totton’s wishes,

“There is a world of difference between Dr Totton’s experience asa victim of a pernicious regime of de jure racial segregation and the life ofa first-generation college student today at the University,” the lowa Supreme Court wrote. The high court sent the ‘case back to a lower court for further proceedings.

Not all disputes are being settled in court.

For instance, when the University of North Carolina Wilmington told the family of the late Dr Leroy Upperman that, under new diversity restrictions, a scholarship the family had been awarding could no longer be directed toward Black students, the family yanked the $1 million endowment that supported the scholarship and transferred it to Howard University, a HBCU.

"There's no way that we're going to not follow my father's wishes for the money to go to ‘an African American student, so we're not changing the wording,” Dr Upperman's <daughter, Linda Upperman Smith, told WHOR in explaining the rationale behind moving the endowment to Howard, where her father earned a medical degree in 1938 before becoming one of the first Black physicians to practice in Wilmington.

Experts warn that that stance may be harder to take in the future.

“think that, going forward, donors and colleges will have to design scholarships around legally permissible factors related to educational inequality,” Marybeth Gasman, chair and Distinguished Professor at the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University = New Brunswick, told QS insights.

‘She said the new criteria could include family income, eligibility for federal student aid,

being a first-generation student or living in an area where few students attend college.

“| do think it's important to be honest about these substitutions, however,” Professor Gasman said. "Being first gen is not the same as being Black in America, for example. ‘There can be overlap, but erasing attention to race and racism is very dangerous given

‘our history of discrimination.”

Professor Gasman said that if race-neutral criteria are used, colleges will need to regularly evaluate whether they are reaching the students whose barriers actually were the reason for the scholarship.

Mark Kantrowitz, a financial aid expert, said scholarships could expand outreach to underrepresented minorities, even as they shift the selection criteria to racially neutral

criteria,

“If you increase the number of minority applicants, you will increase the number of minority recipients even if the criteria are purely neutral,” Kantrowitz said

In terms of my advice to Black students going forward, no matter how lamentable the loss of race-specific scholarships as a remedy to past racial injustices may be, it isnot something worth dwelling on.

Itd be far better, in my opinion, to study, volunteer in the community, pursue extracurricular activities and find one’s purpose in a way that makes one amore ‘competitive candidate for scholarships of all kinds, not just the ones set aside for Black

students.