Students at NYU’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service are not among those affected by numerous McNair scholarship program cancellations across U.S. universities, despite the school housing the program.
The McNair Scholars program is part of the federal college-access educational program TRIO, where President Donald Trump recently withheld $660 million in grants. At NYU, the McNair scholarship covers 50% of tuition for two program alumni that are pursuing a Master of Urban Planning or Master of Public Administration at NYU Wagner.
“No students at Wagner are affected by the changes,” Wagner spokesperson Robert Polner told WSN in a statement.
The McNair program currently serves more than 6,000 first-generation, low-income and racially underrepresented students for graduate studies across 206 U.S. universities. However, in September, despite its congressional allowance of $1.19 billion, Trump pulled the grant for over 2,000 TRIO programs and caused 18 McNair scholarship grant cancellations.
In August 2024, two students and the conservative group Young America’s Foundation sued the Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achieve Program, alleging that its race-based eligibility violated equal protection laws. The case was dismissed by a federal judge in January after the students failed to prove that they were harmed by the criteria.
Undergraduate TRIO program grant status from the Department of Education rolled out after Sept. 15 — a delay, given that universities are typically notified around late August or early September. McNair program funds have been frozen at Murray State University and are at risk of a shut down at the Vermont State Colleges System.
Multiple NYU research grants were revoked following Trump’s federal freeze order in February, and many continue to face tight budgets due to federal spending cuts. Early education program Jumpstart, which provides work-study grants to students who help improve English literacy rates for preschool children in low-income neighborhoods, announced its NYU chapter cancellation in May after the Trump administration revoked $400 million in funding from its parent agency, AmeriCorps.
Contact Noah Kim at [email protected].