Let’s Get in (Racial) Formation: A Three-Paper Exploration of Dual- and Multiple-Designated Minority-Serving Institutions

In 2015, a bipartisan, bicameral bill was proposed to amend Title III of the Higher Education Act to “strengthen minority-serving institutions” by allowing institutions awarded a Title III grant to receive concurrent funding from other sections under Titles III and V (Minority-Serving Institution Fairness Act, H.R. 4098 114th Cong., 2015; Minority-Serving Institution Fairness Act, S. 2317 114th Cong., 2015). While the identical bills never made it out of committees, they point to a legislative conundrum: institutions are forced to choose between grants despite meeting eligibility for more than one Minority-Serving Institution (MSI) classification. This issue is more pronounced as institutions racially diversify and meet the federal criteria for two or more enrollment-based MSI designations, such as being a dual-designated Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institution (AANAPISI) and Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI), institutions meeting criteria that is contingent, in part, on racial enrollment thresholds. Yet, beyond this funding restriction, institutions may still be grappling (or not) with even being an MSI generally, let alone grappling with being MSIs tied to specific racially minoritized student bodies. Race is constantly being (re)made. In this three-paper dissertation, I argue that dual- and multiple-designated MSIs are critical, emerging sites of racial formation in the United States. I project that institutions are increasingly meeting dual or multiple MSI designations and hypothesize that as institutions increasingly become dual- or multiple-designated, this can intensify racial phenomenon (e.g., race-making, reifying or reorganizing racial hierarchies and positions). Situating this legislative conundrum and its implications against a backdrop of racial logics (e.g., monoracial normativity or monoracialism; Ford et al., 2021; Johnston-Guerrero & Renn, 2016), the overall purpose of this inquiry is to explore (a) the current landscape context of and institutional variation among and within multiracial dual- and multiple-designated MSIs; (b) the racial logics undergirding the charge of MSI policy in the Higher Education Act; and (c) how institutions negotiate meeting dual and multiple MSI designations. First, I chart institutional characteristics and diversity among and within dual- and multiple-designated MSIs and report any trends over time. Then, turning to MSI policy in the current version of the Higher Education Act and using Critical Race Discourse Analysis or Critical Discourse Analysis grounded in Critical Race Theory (CRT; Delgado & Stefancic, 2017; Matsuda et al., 1993) and drawing on relational race formation (Molina et al., 2019), I explore how race is (re)made in federal policies. Finally, using differential racialization from CRT (Delgado & Stefancic, 2017) and relational race formation (Molina et al., 2019), I explore how institutions negotiate dual and multiple designations through an exploratory multiple case study of four public AANAPISI-HSIs across three U.S. Census Divisions (i.e., East North Central, Mountain, Pacific) drawing on the perspectives of key campus actors involved in MSI efforts as my primary data source. I attend to how institutions negotiate designations that are racially minoritized themselves, as well as how institutions negotiate these racially minoritized designations in relationship to one another. Together, these separate and interrelated studies exploring dual- and multiple-designated MSIs highlight the role of overarching racial logics, federal policy, and key campus actors in racial formation or race-making. I offer implications for policy, practice, and research, including ideas around how cross-racial coalitions can better contribute to collective advocacy for investing in and strengthening MSIs.