Scholarships for Racial Minorities and Women Are Disappearing

College scholarships aimed at students of color, women and others are becoming less common in the face of lawsuits, legal complaints and pressure from the Trump administration.

The National Scholarship Providers Association, which has compiled a database of 33,000 scholarships from a wide range of organizations, found the percentage of scholarships with eligibility requirements for race, ethnicity, gender or other demographic factors has dropped to 11 percent, down from 15 percent in 2023, the year the Supreme Court ruled colleges cannot use race in admissions decisions.

Scholarships are generally not being eliminated, but organizations are instead opening them up to people of any race or gender and using other qualifications to help underrepresented groups, said Jackie Bright, president of the National Scholarship Providers Association, an organization for people working in the scholarship field. For instance, some providers are aiming scholarships toward low-income students or those who are the first in their families to go to college.

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Conservative activists who have filed lawsuits and complaints to stop colleges, nonprofits, and others from using race and ethnicity as factors in scholarships argue the financial assistance amounts to illegal discrimination.

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Regardless, the Trump administration has argued civil rights laws bar favoritism on the basis of race or gender and has taken steps to make sure schools follow that interpretation.

In February 2025, the Education Department warned schools they “must cease using race preferences and stereotypes” in scholarships and other areas. (The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups successfully challenged portions of the guidance in court, but the Trump administration has continued to push schools to stop using racial preferences through other efforts.)

Several organizations, including McDonald’s and the San Diego Foundation’s Black Alumni Scholarship Fund, changed their scholarship criteria or agreed to stop using race after lawsuits filed by Blum’s group and others. Illinois repealed the racial eligibility requirements for a scholarship program for aspiring teachers after the state was sued. One of the groups, the American Bar Association, said the changes were already in the works. More lawsuits are still pending.

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Blum’s group and at least one other advocacy group, Do No Harm, have also filed complaints with the IRS about nonprofits that offer race-based scholarships. The complaints cited a 1983 Supreme Court ruling that the IRS could revoke the tax-exempt status of schools that engage in racial discrimination, such as segregation.

One of the nonprofits targeted by Blum’s group, the Gates Foundation, dropped the racial eligibility requirements from its scholarship website after the IRS complaint.

The Gates Foundation said it had already decided internally to make the scholarship available to low-income students who qualified for Pell Grants, rather than underrepresented racial and ethnic groups.

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