The U.S. Department of Education announced Wednesday investigations into five universities, including the University of Michigan and Western Michigan University, for potential Title VI violations.
The investigations by the Office of Civil Rights hopes to determine whether the universities are granting scholarships only for illegal immigrant or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals students, which it says would violate Title VI’s prohibition against national origin discrimination.
“On Jan. 20, 2025, President Trump promised that ‘every single day of the Trump Administration, [he] will, very simply, put America first,’” said DOE Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor. “Neither the Trump Administration’s America first policies nor the Civil Right Act of 1964’s prohibition on national origin discrimination permit universities to deny our fellow citizens the opportunity to compete for scholarships because they were born in the United States.”
Along with the Michigan universities, the University of Louisville, the University of Nebraska Omaha and the University of Miami are also under investigation.
DACA was a program established in 2012 by President Barack Obama and protects certain undocumented individuals who were brought to the United States as children before 2007, allowing them to live and work legally in the U.S. for renewable periods of two years.
According to a statement from the DOE, the investigations are based on complaints submitted by the Legal Insurrection Foundation’s Equal Protection Project, a nonprofit that seeks to ensure equal protection and non-discrimination.
“Protecting equal access to education includes protecting the rights of American-born students,” said William A. Jacobson, founder of the Equal Protection Project. “At the Equal Protection Project, we are gratified that the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is acting on our complaints regarding scholarships that excluded American-born students. Discrimination against American-born students must not be tolerated.”
In addition to investigating the schools for those scholarships, the DOE is also expected to look at additional scholarships that it says appear to exclude students based on other aspects of Title VI, which would include all race-based scholarships.
Some of the specific scholarships under investigation are:
• University of Michigan’s Dreamer Scholarship, which “is intended to support undocumented students or students with DACA status”
• Western Michigan University’s WMU Undocumented/DACA Scholarship “for undergraduate students who are ineligible to receive federal student aid due to an undocumented or DACA status
• University of Louisville’s Dawn Wilson Scholarship for “undergraduate LGBTQ+ students of color” and the Louisville Tango Festival Scholarship for “Latino/a/x and Hispanic students”
• University of Nebraska Omaha’s HDR Scholarship, which gives “preference…to underrepresented minority students”
• University of Miami’s U Dreamers Program, which “is available to academically talented and admissible [DACA] and undocumented high school seniors and transfer students”
This comes as the University of Michigan is already under investigation by the Trump Administration for a number of different issues, including a Title VI investigation that was announced earlier this year into other race-based scholarships.
“As we mark President Trump’s historic six months back in the White House, we are expanding our enforcement efforts to protect American students and lawful residents from invidious national origin discrimination of the kind alleged here,” Trainor said.
