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Bordering Oregon and boasting more redwoods than people, Del Norte is one of the most isolated counties in California. Nearly two hours by car from the nearest community college, students here are often chronically absent from school and are some of the least likely in the state to earn a bachelor’s degree.
Former Cal Poly Humboldt adviser Julie Aicher was working here and across the rural North Coast with over 500 disadvantaged middle and high school students to put higher education on their radar when she received an update last September: the federal government had defunded her longtime program known as TRIO.
TRIO is not an acronym, but rather named for the trio of initial programs: Upward Bound, Talent Search, and Student Support Services. These War on Poverty-era programs offer higher education counseling and academic support to low-income, first-generation students interested in or currently attending college.
“It was really heartbreaking when we found out,” Aicher said. “I definitely cried when we told our students.”
In its push against diversity and equity programs, the U.S. Department of Education canceled over $40 million in funding across the country for more than 100 TRIO programs serving nearly 45,000 students.
Current and former program staff at Cal Poly Humboldt and Cal Poly Pomona confirmed that the federal government had terminated their TRIO grants because they included program goals the Department of Education said violated its equal treatment laws or merit-focused policies.
In particular, the Department of Education cited Cal Poly Humboldt’s grant goal to train students to be aware of microaggressions and systemic racism as its primary reason for terminating the university’s grant. For Cal Poly Pomona, the department took issue with its program goal of having a fair mix of grades, genders, and students with disabilities among its student cohorts.
The cutoff was particularly harsh for rural areas, as TRIO projects are often the only organized forms of college counseling, financial aid support and college visit access available to students, according to TRIO advocates.
A court order recently swayed the Trump administration to restore funding to over 30 of the terminated programs, but did not require them to reinstate funding. Dozens are still waiting for their funding to be lawfully reconsidered, according to the Council for Opportunity in Education, the advocatory nonprofit that led two lawsuits last year that spurred the court order.
Officials from the nonprofit said those waiting include several California schools, but wouldn’t say how many. In California, historically the state with the highest number of TRIO grant awards, 13 colleges and universities housing 19 of the outreach programs had lost over $6 million in funding. In total, 7,000 students lost services across the state.
Cal Poly Pomona is one of the schools fighting to have their TRIO Talent Search funding reinstated through a lawsuit filed by the Council for Opportunity in Education. Although the university has submitted three reconsiderations to get its funding back, it has received three denials from the Department of Education, according to its associate executive director of TRIO Pre-College Programs Mary Claire Gager.
Eyeing funds for a new cycle, both Cal Poly Humboldt and Cal Poly Pomona applied for new TRIO grants this spring. They are hopeful they will see funding again for their Talent Search programs, which provide middle and high school students from disadvantaged backgrounds with resources to succeed in higher education, including college application help, financial aid information and campus visits.
Sofia Santos-Arriola was a Talent Search adviser for Cal Poly Humboldt. She said the sudden cancellation left disadvantaged students across the state “high and dry,” with many grants being terminated mid-cycle and schools unable to provide equivalent resources.
“This does seem like it was so directly targeted against poor people, against first-generation immigrants, against first-generation college [students],” Santos-Arriola said.
For in-need students living in rural areas like Del Norte County, the ramifications of being cut off from higher education resources are even more severe. Rural students are less likely to enroll in college, less likely to graduate college, and more likely to come from households in poverty and lacking internet access.
Now, Cal Poly Humboldt TRIO program director Rama Rawal says the rural Northern Californian students her program used to serve have practically no other avenue to be exposed to higher education opportunities.
“They are oftentimes in communities where the college-going culture isn’t really a thing,” said Rawal. “They are in a remote place where [without TRIO], the access is gone for that exposure.”
TRIO supported high school counselors’ massive caseloads
Multiple sources affirmed TRIO provided a crucial depth of support which schools are unable to fully supplant. Talent Search advisers at both Cal Poly Humboldt and Cal Poly Pomona assisted with college applications, hosted workshops on financial aid and college exploration, took students on campus visits and provided other key support for them to enter and succeed in college. Their numbers also supplemented high school counselors’ often hefty caseloads, helping to offer more individualized support.
Anything Cal Poly Humboldt could provide its students would simply be “a bandaid” compared to the long-term, deep rapport Talent Search advisers build with students and high school faculty, Rawal said.
“We’re talking about close to $2 million worth of resources that were lost,” she said. “That can’t just appear.”
Similar programs don’t make up for the scale of Talent Search, TRIO administrators said. Upward Bound, a separate TRIO program aimed at students who are fully intent on attending college, still operates at Cal Poly Pomona, supporting 85 local high school students. But Talent Search was able to support 500 middle and high school students.
“Without that added support, fewer students will complete [their applications] on time, or they’ll do them inaccurately, or they just will take the easy way out [and not apply],” said Gager.
After losing their TRIO jobs at Cal Poly Humboldt, Aicher and Santos-Arriola were hired by Del Norte County Office of Education as college-career advisers. Their caseloads tripled.
“Our TRIO students are the ones hurting — they are not getting the same attention and prioritization,” said Santos-Arriola. “I’m starting to forget my TRIO students’ names, and it’s heartbreaking, because they were our kids for so long.”
A program permanently changed — or on the chopping block
Amid battles to get particular TRIO programs reinstated, the Trump administration has announced plans to defund the program completely. The Department of Education’s 2027 fiscal year budget, released in April, proposes to eliminate all $1.2 billion in federal funding for TRIO alongside more higher education support programs, calling them ineffective, redundant or “unconstitutional,” as part of a push to “return education to the states.”
Although lawmakers are pushing back with their own data hailing TRIO as a success, the Department of Education asserts that TRIO has failed to meet the majority of its own goals. In a Senate subcommittee hearing in late April, Education Secretary Linda McMahon asserted that reforming TRIO to focus less on getting students into higher education and more on providing general postsecondary opportunities is necessary to revitalize the program.
“There might be alternatives to higher education other than college, given that we do have a lack of a skilled workforce in the country,” McMahon said at the hearing.
Even if TRIO’s funding remains intact, program leaders worry the federal government has lost sight of the program’s original purpose. In a joint partnership announced in March, the Department of Labor was placed in charge of managing grants for a slew of programs under the Department of Education, including TRIO.
Since then, two grant cycles run by the Department of Labor included new priorities for career and technical education opportunities, such as apprenticeships and building skilled trades. In the same subcommittee hearing, McMahon said reorienting TRIO to focus on workforce development was crucial to revitalizing the program.
Program leaders like Gager say the decision strays from the program’s original college focus.
“TRIO grants were never designed or intended to be just job training… It was always about accessing higher education in some form,” said Gager. “We build a better society, and we build better students and better people, by expanding their horizons beyond just getting a job.”
Kahani Malhotra is a contributor with the College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. CalMatters higher education coverage is supported by a grant from the College Futures Foundation.
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