ED Announces Additional $39M for TRIO Grantees

The Education Department announced an additional $39 million in federal college-access funding, bringing the total awarded for two TRIO programs this year to more than $225 million.

The second slate of awards allocated almost $32 million to 52 new grantees for the Talent Search Program and $7 million to 22 new grantees in the Educational Opportunity Center program, according to a list of the latest awardees provided by the Council for Opportunity in Education.

The new awardees, many of which are colleges and universities, were announced five weeks after ED announced $186 million to first-slate awardees. The announcement came as a relief to education advocates who had worried that the Talent Search money that typically goes to institutional programs would be funneled to states instead, and that Educational Opportunity Center grants would be given to workforce-pathway programs.

Kimberly Jones, president of the Council for Opportunity in Education, congratulated the grantees in a letter to TRIO program leaders. Still, she said, we “continue to push forward with our advocacy to secure sufficient funding in the final FY27 appropriations legislation for additional applicants.”

In total, $174.5 million went to 376 grantees through the Talent Search program, which aims to increase the number of students from disadvantaged backgrounds who go to college, and almost $52 million went to the 124 grantees in Educational Opportunity Center program, which seeks to increase the number of adults in college.

The largest Talent Search awards in the second slate were given to the Puerto Rico Science, Technology and Research Trust, which received $8 million; the University of Alaska, Anchorage, with $2 million; the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission with $1.8 million; and the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of Arizona State University with $1 million.

In the second slate of Educational Opportunity Center awardees, the largest sums went to Connecticut Talent Assistance Cooperative Inc., which received $896,000; the Board of Regents Montana with $588,000; South Louisiana Community College with $476,000; and Neauxlarise, an education and career development nonprofit in Louisiana, which got $420,000.