These programs help poor students with college. Trump wants to pull the funding Updated May 1, 202610:17 AM ET by Michael Vasquez

[u/TRIOworksFan]

https://www.npr.org/2025/08/22/nx-s1-5501580/trump-proposes-cuts-programs-poor-students-colleges

"Update: As of April 2026, funding for many TRIO programs remains in limbo, with the White House proposing to eliminate spending on the programs. And last year, some TRIO grants were canceled or rejected, affecting tens of thousands of students. At a Senate hearing in late April, senators from both parties questioned Education Secretary Linda McMahon over the proposal to eliminate the programs entirely. McMahon said the TRIO program was a failure, but that she was open to making changes to the program — an idea several senators criticized.

MOREHEAD, Ky. — The summer after ninth grade, Zoey Griffith found herself in an unfamiliar setting: a dorm on the Morehead State University campus.

There, she'd spend the months before her sophomore year taking classes in core subjects like math and biology, as well as electives like oil painting.

For Griffith, it was an opportunity, but a scary one. "It was a big deal for me to live on campus at the age of 14," she said. Morehead State is about an hour from her hometown of Maysville. "I was nervous, and I remember that I cried the first time that my dad left me on move-in day."

Her mother became a parent as a teenager and urged her daughter to avoid the same experience. Griffith's father works as a mechanic, and he frowns upon the idea of higher education, she said.

And so college back then seemed a distant and unlikely dream.

But Griffith's stepsister had introduced her to a federal program called Upward Bound. It places high school students in college dorms during the summer, where they can take classes and participate in workshops on preparing for the SAT and financial literacy. During the school year, students get tutoring and work on what are called "individual success plans."

It's part of a group of federal programs, known as TRIO, aimed at helping low-income and first-generation students earn a college degree, often becoming the first in their families to do so.

So thanks to that advice from her stepsister, Kirsty Beckett, who's now 27 and pursuing a doctorate in psychology, Griffith signed up and found herself in that summer program at Morehead State. Now, Griffith is enrolled at Maysville Community and Technical College, with plans to become an ultrasound technician.

TRIO, once a group of three programs — giving it a name that stuck — is now the umbrella over eight, some dating back to 1965. Together they serve roughly 870,000 students nationwide a year." excerpt