An updated budget request from the Trump administration proposes cutting funding for the Department of Education by 15%. Within the $12 billion that the agency is at risk of losing, college access programs such as TRIO and GEAR UP would be eliminated.
TRIO and GEAR UP programs are federal programs that offer pathways for underresourced K12 students to postsecondary education. They provide early exposure programs for students as early as middle school and then advise them through the college application process and support them while enrolled.
President Donald Trump’s first “skinny budget” argued that the programs are no longer necessary because “the pendulum has swung and access to college is not the obstacle it was for students of limited means.”
The threat of cuts is forcing colleges and universities that enroll high proportions of low-income and marginalized students to quickly reallocate resources to plug the gaps.
“The White House’s proposal to eliminate GEAR UP and TRIO programs will have catastrophic ramifications for marginalized students who depend on college access programs to have a shot at attending postsecondary education,” William Ruiz, the director of the Neighborhood Partnership Program at Occidental College in Southern California, said in an email.
Neighborhood Partnership is a GEAR UP program that partners with organizations and over 20 high schools in Los Angeles to provide students with tutoring, admissions workshops, college field trips and more.
At Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, 50% of students are the first in their families to attend college, nearly half are Pell Grant-eligible, and a quarter come from households earning less than $25,000 annually.
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There are currently 160 students enrolled in the TRIO Student Support Services Program at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. The ongoing support offers career guidance, scholarship assistance and personal development. The retention rate for students returning for the fall 2024 school year was 72%.
“The TRIO program has been great for us, and we’re disappointed that it’s on the chopping block because it has produced really great success for our students,” said James Birge, president of the public liberal arts college. “Without TRIO, we’re going to lose something. There’s no question about that.”
Still, Birge believes the institution is ready to absorb the responsibility for TRIO programs if they were cut by the Trump administration.
The school has replaced its orientation program with a 10-day onboarding process that familiarizes all incoming students with roommates and various support services. Students also engage with faculty success coaches who offer personalized academic and social support.
The Massachusetts legislature is also providing assistance. A new student success program allocates $14 million to public institutions—including $680,000 to the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts—to hire new staff to assist with academic and personal advising. One position has been appointed at the liberal arts school to focus solely on first-generation students.
“We kind of knit this web of support for those students, and it works, frankly,” Birge says.
How student success programs are already under attack
While the requested budget cuts to TRIO and GEAR UP have yet to be finalized by the Senate, the student success programs already face severe scrutiny from policymakers due to their alleged ties to DEI, the ire of the Trump administration.
The Trump administration’s characterization of minority student success programs as discriminatory has led the University of California, Berkeley to reevaluate some of its programs.
“TRIO is written within the Higher Education Act to serve low-income and first-generation students, but there is still worry that there’s going to be retaliation towards our programs just for the work we do to create more opportunity for all students,” says Cameron Schmidt-Temple, a project policy analyst at the UC Berkeley Center for Educational Partnerships. “Even just saying that could be a problem.”
The Center for Educational Partnerships houses 10 college access programs, two of which are directly tied to TRIO.
“It doesn’t really matter whether we decide to censor or not,” Schmidt-Temple says. “The work is the thing that’s under attack, not necessarily the words. Even if [the administration] is using AI to comb for phrases like ‘first-generation’, ‘low-income’ and ‘race’, at the end of the day, the work is what they’re coming for.”
