Eye on MSI (Minority-Serving Institutions)

Discussing President Obama's goal that America would "once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world," an Education Department official recently argued that increased funding for minority-serving institutions-and historically-black colleges and universities, in particular-was the key to increasing the number of American graduates.

"We are going to educate our way back to greatness by the year 2020 and as a nation we know we can't do that without MSIs, minority-serving institutions, and HBCUs," argued John S. Wilson, executive director of the White House Initiative on HBCUs at the April 22 Education Sector event.

At the forum, Deborah Santiago, the Vice President for Policy and Research at Excelencia in Education said that she had reporters and other people ask her "'well why, why should we give them [Hispanics] a hand out?'"

"So, [I was like], we are having a great conversation and handout, whoa!" she exclaimed.

"Um, and for me it's looking at it, if you think of it as [a] handout you're looking at it the wrong way and again this speaks to how we frame this and talking about these institutions and it's not that it's a hand out," she argued.