Congress appropriated funds for minority-serving institutions. The Education Department says it won’t dole them out.

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The U.S. Department of Education plans to end discretionary grant programs for a slew of minority-serving institutions, officials announced Wednesday —after Congress had already appropriated hundreds of thousands of dollars to those programs. The move stunned MSI advocates, who argue the department doesn’t have the authority to nix them.

The Education Department asserted that these programs amount to “discrimination” and are “unconstitutional” because they require colleges to enroll a certain percentage of students from a particular racial or ethnic background to qualify. For

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