The Department of Education Office of Civil Rights named the University of North Texas among the universities it is investigating for “race-exclusionary practices” in their graduate programs.
UNT officials said Monday they will work with the federal office in its investigation.
“The University of North Texas has received formal notice of the investigations and is fully cooperating,” Devynn Case, the university’s director of media relations, said in an email.
In a Friday news release, the civil rights office announced a number of investigations into universities. It named UNT among 45 universities that had allegedly violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by partnering with the PhD Project, an organization that helps students earn their doctoral business degrees in a effort to broaden the talent pipeline of current and future business leaders.
Friday’s release claims that the PhD Project “limits eligibility based on the race of participants.”
UNT officials deny any involvement with the organization.
“UNT is not affiliated with The PhD Project,” Case said.
The Office of Civil Rights didn’t offer details about the allegations that led to the investigations, but the investigations highlight confusion over universities that have legally broadened their outreach to underserved student populations.
The federal government began designating universities and colleges as Minority Serving Institutions in a program established through the Higher Education Act of 1965. The law expanded the federal role in higher education and created funding programs for universities and colleges serving minority populations. In 1992, Congress formally recognized Hispanic Serving Institutions through the Higher Education Act, designating institutions with at least 25% Hispanic student enrollment as eligible for federal funding.
UNT earned its designation as a Minority Serving Institution in 2020 and became a Hispanic Serving Institution the same year.
The designations come with federal funding, given through competitive grants under Title III and Title V of the Higher Education Act. The grants are intended to support student populations who have faced historical barriers to and within public higher education.
In just one example, in 2022, UNT joined 19 peer Tier One research institutions in founding the Alliance for Hispanic Serving Research Universities, which included an initiative to attract more Hispanic students to graduate programs, especially programs centered on research. The alliance also set a goal to hire the graduates of member universities’ programs onto the faculty of alliance schools by 2030. Former UNT President Neal Smatresk was part of the alliance leadership as it got up and running. His successor, Harrison Keller, is a member of the alliance board.
While the alliance and the push to increase Hispanic enrollment followed UNT’s outreach and support to the very students who made it eligible for the federal designations — and were cheered regionally as a pathway to STEM and other research-centered or affiliated careers in North Texas — programs and projects like it appear to conflict with officeholders’ growing hostility toward public programs that benefit people of color. Efforts to support or promote students of color, students with disabilities, women and LGBTQ+ college students have been decried as discriminatory, as have university courses about those groups, in Congress and the Texas Legislature.
The Department of Education’s investigations come on the heels of sweeping presidential executive orders to root out programs, trainings or initiatives that promote diversity, equity and inclusion.
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