Growing rapidly in numbers and institutionally diversifying, Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) play a critical role in the postsecondary education of Latinxs and other traditionally underserved college students in the United States. However, congressional allocations to Title V—a federal grant program for HSIs—have not increased in step with the growth of HSIs. Ultimately, HSIs’ ongoing institutional diversification and Title V’s anemic funding levels present a ripe condition for inequity. In response, in this critical qualitative study, I interviewed 29 institutional agents at 17 HSIs across the United States and asked: How do institutional agents at Hispanic-Serving Institutions understand their competitiveness for Title V grants? What sources of inequity does this reveal about Title V?Based on my analysis, I identified four primary themes, with participants highlighting the ways in which institutional capacity, actions, knowledge, and leadership collectively come to shape an HSI’s competitiveness for Title V grants. The findings also made clear, however, that HSIs do not universally share these organizational conditions, thereby calling into question the meritocratic logic ungirding the Title V Program. Even more, considering HSIs’ ongoing institutional diversification, the findings of this study provide strong reason to suspect that Title V (re)produces inequity among the very institutions Congress intended to support through this program. In the end, as anemic federal support fosters even greater competition for these grants, HSIs will vie for this funding on increasingly unequal terms, meaning Title V will perpetuate, rather than ameliorate, educational inequity. To address sources of inequity of the Title V Program, I offer specific recommendations for policy, practice, and future research.
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