Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) and Research Funding: A Guide for Research Offices

For a research office, Minority Serving Institution (MSI) status is not a demographic descriptor — it is a federally determined eligibility category that can open specific solicitations, change indirect-cost and cost-sharing conversations, and shape how a proposal is structured for partnership with a larger research-intensive institution. This guide covers what MSI status actually means under U.S. law, how each designation is defined and re-determined, which federal research-funding programs use it, and what it means operationally for a sponsored-programs or research-development office.

What is a Minority Serving Institution?

“Minority Serving Institution” is an umbrella term for several distinct designations created under the Higher Education Act of 1965 (HEA), primarily through Title III and Title V. Each designation has its own statutory definition and, for most categories, an enrollment threshold measured against a specific racial, ethnic, or income population of undergraduate students. Designation is determined by the U.S. Department of Education (ED) using data institutions already report through IPEDS (the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System), not by an institution simply calling itself an MSI.

This distinction matters for grant eligibility: a program officer or peer reviewer checking whether an applicant institution qualifies for an MSI-restricted or MSI-preferenced competition is checking against ED’s own eligibility determinations (and, for research agencies that maintain their own MSI lists, such as NASA’s MSI determination process), not against an institution’s self-description in its proposal narrative.

The MSI designations, defined

Seven designations are commonly grouped under the MSI umbrella. Definitions and thresholds below are as codified in the HEA and its implementing regulations; always confirm current-year status against ED’s own eligibility determinations before relying on it in a proposal, since enrollment-based categories are re-determined annually.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)

HBCUs are defined by history, not by a current enrollment percentage. The HEA defines an HBCU as any historically Black college or university established prior to 1964 whose principal mission was, and is, the education of Black Americans, and that is accredited (or making documented progress toward accreditation). Because the category is anchored to founding date and mission rather than to a recalculated enrollment share, an institution’s HBCU status does not fluctuate year to year the way enrollment-based designations can.

Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs)

TCUs are institutions of higher education formally controlled, sanctioned, or chartered by the governing body of one or more federally recognized tribes, most of them members of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC). TCU status is not enrollment-threshold based in the same way as HSI or AANAPISI; it turns on tribal chartering and control. TCUs are the eligible applicant pool for the National Science Foundation’s Tribal Colleges and Universities Program (TCUP).

Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs)

An HSI is a degree-granting, nonprofit institution of higher education at which Hispanic students make up at least 25% of total undergraduate full-time-equivalent (FTE) enrollment. HSI status is enrollment-based and is re-determined annually from IPEDS data, which is why an institution can gain or lose HSI eligibility as its student body changes — it is not a permanent designation once achieved.

Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs)

An AANAPISI is an institution at which Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander (AANAPI) students make up at least 10% of undergraduate enrollment, combined with a low-income enrollment threshold consistent with other Title III eligibility criteria. Like HSI status, it is enrollment-based and re-determined annually.

Alaska Native-Serving and Native Hawaiian-Serving Institutions (ANNH)

These are two related but distinct designations under HEA Title III, Part A: an Alaska Native-serving institution is one with undergraduate enrollment that is at least 20% Alaska Native students, and a Native Hawaiian-serving institution is one with undergraduate enrollment that is at least 10% Native Hawaiian students. Both are commonly grouped and referred to together as ANNH institutions.

Predominantly Black Institutions (PBIs)

A PBI is an institution with total enrollment above 1,000 students, where at least 40% of undergraduates are Black and at least 50% of enrolled students receive need-based Title IV federal financial aid. Unlike HBCUs, PBIs are not defined by founding date or historical mission — a non-historically-Black institution can qualify as a PBI purely on current enrollment composition.

Native American-Serving Nontribal Institutions (NASNTIs)

A NASNTI is an institution, other than a TCU, at which at least 10% of undergraduate enrollment is Native American (American Indian or Alaska Native) students, again combined with a low-income enrollment threshold. This category exists specifically to cover institutions serving substantial Native American populations that are not themselves tribally controlled.

An institution can and often does hold more than one designation simultaneously — it is common, for example, for a single institution to qualify as both an HSI and an AANAPISI, or as both a PBI and eligible for other Title III programs, if its enrollment mix crosses more than one threshold.

How institutions gain and keep MSI designation

Designation runs through two parts of the HEA:

• Title III covers HBCUs (Part B; Strengthening HBCUs and the HBCU Graduate Institutions program), AANAPISIs, ANNH institutions, PBIs, and NASNTIs, generally under the “Strengthening Institutions” and related programs.
• Title V covers the HSI-specific Developing Hispanic-Serving Institutions Program and Promoting Postbaccalaureate Opportunities for Hispanic Americans (PPOHA).

For the enrollment-based categories (HSI, AANAPISI, ANNH, PBI, NASNTI), ED calculates eligibility annually from IPEDS enrollment and financial-aid data and publishes an eligibility determination. An institution’s designation can therefore change from year to year purely as a function of its enrollment mix — a research office cannot assume this year’s status will automatically hold next year and should re-check ED’s current eligibility list (and, where relevant, a specific funding agency’s own MSI list, since agencies such as NASA maintain their own MSI determination process for award purposes) before citing MSI status in a new proposal.

Eligibility is not the same as funding. Meeting a designation’s threshold makes an institution eligible to apply to programs restricted to (or preferencing) that designation; it does not guarantee an award. Title III and Title V capacity-building grants, and the MSI-specific research programs described below, remain competitive, peer- or merit-reviewed processes. Designation opens a door; it does not fund what is behind it.

Research-funding programs that use MSI status

Several federal research agencies run programs that are either restricted to MSIs or give MSI status explicit weight in review or eligibility. A research office should read the eligibility section of any solicitation closely, since agencies vary in whether MSI status is a strict eligibility gate, a review criterion, or simply a program focus area.

• National Science Foundation (NSF): maintains multiple MSI-focused mechanisms, including the HSI Program (funding STEM education and research capacity at Hispanic-Serving Institutions), the Tribal Colleges and Universities Program (TCUP), and the HBCU-EiR (Excellence in Research) program, alongside a broader Broadening Participation portfolio that MSI-focused proposals typically engage with directly, since NSF Merit Review’s Broader Impacts criterion is where much MSI-related capacity-building activity gets evaluated.
• NASA: runs the Minority University Research and Education Project (MUREP), which enhances research, academic, and technology capacity at HBCUs, HSIs, TCUs, AANAPISIs, and other MSIs, including the newer MUREP Space Technology Artemis Research (M-STAR) track aimed at building MSI research capacity tied to NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate priorities.
• Department of Energy (DOE): runs an MSI partnership program (administered through the National Nuclear Security Administration) aimed at building sustained research collaborations and capacity between MSIs and DOE national laboratories and sites.
• Department of Defense (DoD): operates an HBCU/MI research and education program that funds instrumentation, infrastructure, and research partnerships at HBCUs and other minority institutions.
• USDA/NIFA: runs dedicated competitive grant programs for HSIs, ANNH institutions, and other MSI categories focused on food, agriculture, and related sciences.
• NIH: does not operate a single unified “MSI program” in the way NSF or NASA do, but multiple institutes fund research-capacity-building mechanisms aimed at institutions historically underrepresented in NIH funding, and MSI status is frequently a stated eligibility or priority factor in those solicitations. Because NIH’s approach is distributed across institutes and changes over time, always confirm current eligibility language against the specific Funding Opportunity Announcement rather than assuming a prior year’s mechanism still applies.

Beyond dedicated MSI programs, many general solicitations across agencies include MSI-specific language: set-asides, eligibility restricted to MSIs for a particular competition, additional review points for MSI participation or MSI-led partnerships, or MSI status as a factor supporting a Broader Impacts or broadening-participation narrative in an otherwise open competition.

What this means practically for a research office

• Confirm designation status before citing it. Because enrollment-based categories are re-determined annually, verify current MSI status against ED’s published eligibility data (and the relevant funding agency’s own list, if it maintains one) each funding cycle rather than relying on institutional folklore or a prior year’s proposal boilerplate.
• Read solicitation eligibility language precisely. “Eligible applicants include MSIs as defined in [specific HEA section]” is a hard eligibility gate; “MSI participation is encouraged” or “MSI status will be considered in review” is a review-criterion signal, not a restriction. Misreading which one applies is a common proposal-development error.
• Watch limited-submission rules on MSI-restricted competitions. Some MSI-specific programs still cap the number of proposals a single eligible institution may submit or lead; treat these the same as any other internal limited-submission competition, with an internal call and selection process rather than a first-come-first-served submission.
• Plan partnership and subaward structure deliberately. MSI-focused capacity-building programs often explicitly fund collaborations between an MSI and a research-intensive (often R1) partner institution. Decide early who is the prime recipient and who is the subrecipient, since that determines who negotiates the award terms, who carries primary compliance responsibility, and how subrecipient risk gets assessed and documented on both sides.
• Factor in indirect-cost and capacity realities. MSIs, particularly smaller and less research-intensive ones, sometimes negotiate lower federally negotiated indirect cost (F&A) rates than larger R1 institutions, and often have a smaller cognizant-agency negotiation history to draw on. Capacity-building awards frequently exist precisely to help an MSI build the sponsored-programs, compliance, and research-administration infrastructure that supports a higher future indirect-cost rate and a larger, more competitive proposal pipeline — a research office should treat these awards as infrastructure investment, not just as project funding.
• Use capacity-building funding as intended. Programs like NSF’s HSI Program, TCUP, and NASA’s MUREP are explicitly designed to fund the underlying research infrastructure — instrumentation, faculty research time, graduate and undergraduate research training, data and computing capacity — not just a single discrete research project. Framing a proposal around institutional capacity growth, not only the immediate research question, is usually central to how these programs are reviewed.

Common misconceptions

• MSI status is not a quota or a diversity requirement imposed on an institution. It is a description of an institution’s existing student population (or, for HBCUs and TCUs, its founding mission and governance) measured against a federal statutory threshold, not a target an institution is required to meet.
• MSI status is not permanent for enrollment-based categories. An institution can gain HSI, AANAPISI, ANNH, PBI, or NASNTI status as its enrollment shifts, and can also lose it the same way if the relevant population share drops below threshold in a later year’s IPEDS reporting cycle. HBCU and TCU status, by contrast, is anchored to founding history and governance and does not fluctuate with enrollment the same way.
• Being eligible is not the same as being funded. MSI-restricted and MSI-preferenced competitions remain genuinely competitive; designation opens eligibility, it does not guarantee an award.
• “MSI” is a federal higher-education eligibility category, not a business or procurement classification. It should not be confused with minority-owned business enterprise (MBE) certification, which is a separate federal contracting classification for businesses, not institutions of higher education.

Frequently asked questions

Can an institution hold more than one MSI designation at the same time?

Yes. Because each designation is measured against a different population threshold, an institution can qualify as more than one type simultaneously — for example, as both an HSI and an AANAPISI, if its enrollment crosses both thresholds. Solicitation eligibility language should be checked against each specific designation named, since a program restricted to one category does not automatically include institutions that qualify only under a different one.

Does HSI or other enrollment-based MSI status expire?

It is re-determined, not granted permanently. The U.S. Department of Education recalculates eligibility for enrollment-based categories annually from IPEDS data, so an institution’s status can change from year to year as its student population changes.

Who determines whether an institution qualifies as an MSI?

The U.S. Department of Education makes the underlying eligibility determination using institutional data reported through IPEDS. Some research funding agencies, including NASA, additionally maintain their own MSI determination process for award-eligibility purposes, so it is worth checking both ED’s list and any agency-specific list referenced in a given solicitation.

Does MSI status guarantee a lower proposal bar or automatic funding?

No. MSI-restricted and MSI-preferenced programs are still competitive, peer- or merit-reviewed processes. Designation determines who is eligible to apply or what review weight is given, not whether a given proposal is funded.