It was the first-ever cancellation of grants for , a federal program that has helped disadvantaged students across the U.S. enter college and graduate since 1964. While a district court judge recently ruled the Trump administration’s move illegal, TRIO staff and advocates say the loss of funds is hindering thousands of students’ chances to have a successful future after high school.

More than at various colleges around the country shuttered after the Trump administration canceled in September. The , which represents 1,000 colleges and nonprofits that participate in TRIO, sued the government weeks later.

“TRIO comes under existential threat about once every 10 to 15 years,” said Kimberly Jones, the council’s president. “Even during the first Trump administration, there were calls for cuts to the program. But this is the first time we’ve seen grants canceled within our programs and canceled without going through the due process that should be afforded to them.”

In January, a district court judge of the council and the administration to reconsider the grants for colleges that joined the lawsuit. Jones said the government still needs to comply and that there’s no timeline for when funding might be restored. 

The Trump administration canceled funding for a variety of local TRIO , including Talent Search, which exposes students in grades 6-12 to colleges and future career options, and assists high schoolers with college entrance exams, financial counseling and tutoring. Funding for Upward Bound, which brings high schoolers to universities for intensive courses during the school year, was also halted. The other half of TRIO’s services are programs for college students, veterans and adult learners.

In 1980, TRIO was standardized in the and Congress mandated that two-thirds of participants come from low-income families in which neither parent graduated from college. The organization currently serves around 875,000 students in 3,500 programs.

Jones said the affected programs were targeted because of the federal government’s crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion. Some were flagged solely because staff worked from university DEI offices.

The University of California Berkeley’s Talent Search program closed last fall, affecting more than 1,500 students from 14 public schools.

“My team had already gone into schools, done introductory meetings, created workshops, and we had already started helping seniors with their college applications and everything,” said Keyanna Hatcher, the university’s TRIO director. “The immediate pause on the program was completely detrimental to everything that we had already established with our school sites and partnerships.”

Seniors were in the middle of completing college applications when Talent Search shuttered. Low-income and first-generation students were suddenly without key resources before applications were due Nov. 30 — the deadline for California state universities. 

Middle school students lost access to STEM projects and university visits. Ninth graders no longer have TRIO workshops on how to be competitive for college. Berkeley staffers who were a permanent fixture in local middle and high schools are gone. 

“We were actually helping to supplement school staff, because some of our schools have counselors with caseloads of 700 students,” Hatcher said. “We were taking some of that load off and were helping meet with students so that they actually get more individual attention.”

The University of New Hampshire closed its Talent Search program in October after losing grant money, affecting more than 1,200 students from sixth to 12th grades in 29 schools. Close to a dozen staffers who worked with students in their schools were fired.

“It’s going to affect how many students are applying to colleges here in New Hampshire,” said Jes Crowell, the university’s TRIO director. “They aren’t going to have the assistance from (the staff) who normally sit down with them and help them apply, help them with financial aid and scholarships. That’s just not going to be done.”

Nearly 68% of Talent Search students enroll in college immediately after high school, compared with 56% of low-income students not in the program, according to a 2022 report. Upward Bound produces similar positive , with 74% of the 19,549 participants who graduated high school in 2022 enrolling in college. 

The report shows that nearly 43% of Upward Bound students in 2022 received a bachelor’s degree within six years, compared with 11% of low-income students not in the program.

Junior Angelina Dang said she had never imagined a future that included college until she joined Upward Bound two years ago through South Seattle College in Washington state. As a first-generation student, Dang figured she’d enter the workforce right after high school, like the rest of her family.

“Coming from a low-income family, if I hear other low-income families are telling me that this is helping them, I’m obviously interested,” she said. “When I first joined, I was like, ‘This isn’t probably going to help me.’ But I’ve had so much support — I know what I want to do for my future. I know what I need to do for my future.”

Dang said South Seattle College’s TRIO office has provided food that her family can’t buy, staff who support her through decisions about her college future and academic services that have improved her skills in the classroom. 

South Seattle College — which lost funding for its adult learner TRIO services — is where she takes dual-enrollment courses through Upward Bound. The program also helped her visit potential colleges. She plans to transfer to the University of Washington to pursue studies in wildlife biology.

“The support of being able to be at South Seattle College and also visit other schools — it was like, there’s a world outside of high school,” she said. “I don’t want to exaggerate, but I think if I never joined Upward Bound, I don’t know where I would be.”

The pathway to higher education brought me to Rutgers University-Camden in 1981, where I am now a professor and director of the Community Leadership Center. Enrolling there helped me build the social and political capital to establish LEAP Academy — Camden’s first charter school — in 1997. Since then, the school has grown from five trailers on an abandoned lot to a complex of transformed historic buildings along Cooper Street. 

Thousands of students have passed through our doors, and we have maintained 100% high school and college graduation rates. That has been our mission for 30 years. It is an ambitious goal, especially in a city like Camden, where nearly 30% of residents live below the poverty line and the district’s high school graduation rate hovers around 65%. Many young people in the city are left without a diploma and few opportunities ahead.

I am incredibly proud of what LEAP Academy has achieved for Camden’s students, families and educators. But K-12 education alone is not enough. Real generational change — especially for Black and Hispanic students — comes from obtaining a college degree and the financial support necessary to make that possible.

While a strong K-12 education provides essential groundwork, access to quality post-secondary education, career training and a broader approach to addressing systemic inequalities are all necessary to truly break the cycle of poverty.

This past June, I watched 160 students — all Black or Hispanic, many first-generation college-goers — walk across LEAP’s graduation stage. Each one took a step toward a degree, a career and a brighter future. For them, college is more than an academic achievement, it is a generational breakthrough.

So how does LEAP’s approach to college access work?

We set high expectations at an early age, remove financial barriers for families and challenge high school seniors to complete a full schedule of college courses.

At LEAP, getting ready for college starts in pre-K. With sponsorship from Rutgers University, young children can attend an early learning program that continues into LEAP’s K-12 school. Parents volunteer 40 hours each year, helping to make the school stronger for everyone. Even in the early grades, students at LEAP spend 10 more days in school than those attending neighboring public schools. We also serve as a community hub, opening our buildings at 7:15 a.m. for breakfast and keeping them open until 6:15 p.m. to provide students with additional instruction, tutoring, extracurricular clubs and intramural sports.

Each of our five buildings has a College Access Center. For students in K-8, center staffers  monitor their grades, explain how their academic progress connects to college readiness and update parents on how their children’s performance stacks up to college-ready skills. These services intensify in high school, as students prepare to apply to college. In addition, the team presents programs that introduce students to career possibilities in areas such as STEM, law, architecture, business and writing — all fields that can be pursued through college study.

In high school, students take real college classes taught by professors at Rutgers and Rowan universities. This helps these inner-city students build strong skills and feel more confident about life after high school. Graduate students from Rutgers-Camden, tutor LEAP students during the school day and after school when needed, for example, in tough classes like statistics.

Over 1,200 LEAP students have graduated with a full year of college credits, positioning them to finish college in three years and saving on tuition costs for families.

In addition, LEAP pays full tuition through the Alfredo and Gloria Bonilla-Santiago Endowed Scholarship for graduates who maintain a 3.5 GPA during their time at LEAP, have four or fewer unexcused absences during the year and need financial aid. Hundreds of students who maintain a 3.0 GPA at Rutgers University’s three campuses receive full tuition. 

An added benefit: As our students achieve college success, Camden receives a surge of intellectual capital.

Without an educated workforce, sustainable economic investment is unlikely. Companies will invest only if they believe they can find prepared, local talent. A city filled with college-educated citizens is not a dream — it is an economic imperative.

Today, Camden’s workforce is expanding, and residents are actively working to revitalize the city. From growing waterfront businesses to local hospitals and universities, LEAP graduates are shaping the city’s future while delivering valuable services to the broader community and helping to renew civic pride.

Yet troubling trends are emerging. Across the country, skepticism about the value of college is growing. One survey found that only have confidence in higher education. Another showed that believe earning a bachelor’s degree is important for getting a good-paying job.

This level of doubt is both misguided and dangerous. While some companies have removed degree requirements from job postings to demonstrate skills-based hiring, is still a criterion that managers use to determine whether a candidate brings the right skills to the table. College isn’t just about skills — it’s about learning to think critically, collaborate effectively and broaden perspectives. It’s where students meet peers from different backgrounds, build lasting relationships and expand their world views. Hiring managers compare job candidates against one another, and having a college degree weighs in favor of applicants who’ve earned one.

Undervaluing higher education risks breaking the very link that lifts up both students and cities. Disrupting the cycle of poverty requires year-round work and unwavering dedication. It takes educators who believe in their students, families who stay engaged and communities willing to invest.

Parents, educators and policymakers invested in K-12 education must never lose sight of what truly matters when transforming urban communities: helping every student envision a future beyond high school, and equipping them with the tools to reach it.

It’s not how most Black History Month workshops begin. 

“I’m streaming live from a hotel bathroom,” said Atnre Alleyne, co-founder and CEO of TeenSHARP, a college access program. 

Alleyne was speaking in February via Zoom to dozens of high school students in Philadelphia, New Jersey, and Delaware. But his hotel bathroom was in western Ukraine, where, after awakening late that month to the sound of Russian bombs exploding, he and his family fled from their home in a Kyiv suburb. 

With Alleyne’s wife and co-founder, Tatiana Poladko, her 81-year-old father, and their three young children on the other side of the bathroom door, Alleyne loaded a virtual background — a 1968 of high school students on their way to a memorial service for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. — and kicked off the workshop. 

“Injustice anywhere, as Dr. King said, is a threat to justice everywhere,” Alleyne told the students as he drew parallels between the fight against racial tyranny in the United States and political tyranny in Ukraine. “It is really important to be globally aware, globally conscious, and also to think of ways that you can stand up for what’s right.”

The couple’s commitment to their work and their students has been tested in recent years, first through the pandemic, when they transitioned to a virtual program, and then in January 2021, when they moved from Delaware to Poladko’s native Ukraine. The war and the family’s displacement further complicated matters.

But Alleyne, 37, and Poladko, 38, are steadfast. TeenSHARP, they say, is more than just a college access program serving low-income, Black, and Latino students; it is a leadership program. Their goals are more than just getting students accepted to, enrolled in and graduated from college; they are trying to close the gap that, on average, has left Black households with of the wealth of white households.

“I was an excellent student, a 4.0 student, but my parents never sugarcoated it. In this country, with the level of corruption that existed, that didn’t mean a whole lot,” Poladko said of Ukraine. “What I always tell students is that … someone sold you a lie in America that this is not also the case for you as a student of color. Your chances of success are as fleeting as mine were, and they are as dependent on luck as mine were. So what I always tell them is that at TeenSHARP, we are trying to diminish the percent of luck, and we do so by following the blueprint that affluent families have been following for years.”

Replicating that blueprint with fewer resources was already an uphill battle, requiring intensive work from families and the TeenSHARP staff, particularly Poladko, who serves as the college counselor. Living seven time zones and more than 4,000 miles away heightened the degree of difficulty. 

Earlier this year, before Russia invaded Ukraine, Poladko would start one-on-one meetings with early-rising high school seniors at 5:30 a.m. ET, or 12:30 p.m. in Ukraine. After four hours of consulting on waitlists and competing financial aid packages, including calls that Poladko often took while waiting outside her children’s ballet class or piano lesson, she would continue from 2:30 p.m. ET (9:30 p.m. in Ukraine) to around 8 p.m. ET (3 a.m. in Ukraine). 

“They realize that we’re going to go fricking hard for you, and you’re going to go fricking hard for yourself,” she said. “We have to show you how privileged America works — and you don’t know it.”

A flight to safety

The couple’s dedication is such that Russian bombs caused only a momentary pause in TeenSHARP’s programming. After the explosions woke the family on Feb. 24, Alleyne and Poladko, who don’t own a car, began searching for ways out. On Feb. 25, they celebrated their daughter’s Zoryana’s 7th birthday. The next day, they crammed eight people into an acquaintance’s Volkswagen Passat. The family only brought sandwiches and their clothes. After a 2.5-hour drive west, they reached the city of Zhytomyr, where Alleyne hosted the Black History Month workshop. 

“I couldn’t go to sleep [afterward], I was restless,” said Asquith Clarke II, a TeenSHARP alum who logged onto the workshop from Oberlin College in Ohio. “At first I thought to myself, ‘This is crazy, I’m not sure what I can do to support them, I have college things going on.’ But knowing how much Ms. Tatiana and Mr. Atnre have done for me, am I just going to sit here and go to sleep knowing that they’re in danger?” 

For the first time, Clarke wrote to his elected representatives, encouraging them to help Ukraine defend itself. The rising junior posted their replies to Instagram and encouraged his followers to act, too. 

Meanwhile, Alleyne, Poladko, their kids — 7-year-old Zoryana, 4-year-old Nazar and 2-year-old Taras — and her elderly father took a train, another train and a car driven by volunteers to get closer to the Polish border. They reached it after a 5-mile walk, Poladko ushering the children and Alleyne assisting her dad, already weakened from a long case of COVID. 

A series of temporary accommodations, some requiring the family to sleep side-by-side, heads next to toes, led them to Warsaw. 

By March, Alleyne and Poladko were able to enroll their children in day care and elementary school and rent a two-bedroom apartment in Warsaw that overlooks a tree-filled public park. Poladko’s father sleeps in one bedroom, and the couple and their children share three mattresses in the other. The family’s furniture is still in their rental house outside Kyiv, so decorations are limited to artwork the kids bring home from school. “You Are My Sunshine,” says a handmade painting in the living room.

To work, Alleyne perches his laptop on a bookshelf next to a Paw Patrol puzzle and calls it a standing desk. Poladko turned the dining room table into her workspace. When they have calls at the same time, Alleyne often retreats to the bathroom — just as he did in the hotel in western Ukraine. 

And when the couple’s Ukrainian nanny joined them in Warsaw, they developed a routine where she fell asleep in their bedroom while Alleyne and Poladko worked. In the early morning hours, after the couple finished up, they would switch spots, with the nanny sleeping on a tan couch in their otherwise barren living room. 

Ukraine meets Ghana in New Jersey

Alleyne and Poladko have been finding a way forward since 2005, when they met at the Camden campus of Rutgers University, in New Jersey while they each pursued master’s degrees. Poladko had earned a full ride through a fellowship that supports students from overseas. She clicked with Alleyne who, after completing his K-8 schooling in New Jersey, went to Ghana by himself to attend a boarding school. He could relate to Poladko’s experience as a non-native student navigating a thicket of challenges in order to reap educational — and life — opportunities. 

“To understand TeenSHARP, you have to understand Ukraine and Ghana,” Alleyne said with a laugh. “We’re tough.” 

Together, they decided to apply what they’d learned and help historically marginalized students access college and become student-leaders who are successful, high achieving, and reaching their potential (these traits stand for the SHARP in TeenSHARP). These students face hurdles during the entirety of the college process, from being encouraged to apply to colleges beneath their capabilities to , on average, than white students. 

TeenSHARP launched in 2009 with 10 students in the Philadelphia area, and has since expanded across New Jersey and Delaware, graduating more than 500 students and reaching thousands more in one-off programming. At points, Alleyne has taken on outside jobs, including a stint at the Delaware Department of Education and as the founding executive director of DelawareCAN, part of the that advocates for high-quality educational opportunities for all students, regardless of where they live. His salary from those roles allowed Poladko to donate hers back to TeenSHARP, she said, noting that she has not accepted any compensation from the group she co-founded. 

For TeenSHARPies, as they’re called, activities start in 9th grade. A seven-person team communicates with students and their families, offering sessions on the college application process and financial aid applications and promoting the idea of spending 33 hours a week on schoolwork. 

When the pandemic hit, TeenSHARP made its programs virtual and started serving students from across the United States, including Georgia, Ohio, Oregon and Texas. But the staff soon realized that remote instruction was causing their students’ math skills to falter. Alleyne, who as CEO oversees operations and development, reallocated $130,000 from their roughly $1 million annual budget— a “crazy amount of money,” for them, as Poladko said — to provide small-group tutoring. TeenSHARP is largely funded by a constellation of corporations and foundations that have offices in Wilmington, Delaware, including Capital One Bank and WSFS Bank. 

The heart of the program is the intensive advising that Poladko leads for high school juniors and seniors. While carrying a caseload of more than 70 students, Poladko provides one-on-one and group instruction. She estimates spending five to seven hours working with each student just on their personal statement. 

The goal is to be as well-prepared as a student from a wealthy family. TeenSHARP organizes more than two dozen college visits each year. Students are encouraged to apply early to their first choice, and Poladko is not above getting on the phone with an admissions counselor to lobby for one of her students. Lest they get saddled with debt, she encourages students to enroll in the college that is offering them the best overall package, not the best name recognition.

During the program’s College Signing Day event in May — starting at 6 p.m. Eastern, midnight in Warsaw — Poladko passed the Zoom spotlight from one student to another to tick through their acceptances and announce which they’d selected. One student had been accepted by 16 schools. Another by 17. 

“And who is getting your talent this fall?” Poladko asked. 

Back came the responses. 

Carleton College. 

Princeton. 

Yale. 

Macalester College. 

Poladko knows the acceptances — and the decision to attend the school that’s the best fit financially — are hard earned. The program has seen student outcomes remain consistent even through the shift away from in-person support. “Trust-building virtually is definitely not easy,” she said. “But it is definitely possible if students and parents see the commitment to students’ success.”

The couple took a brief pause in June before ramping up for a month-long summer program in July. In the meanwhile, they are still making rental payments on their house in Ukraine, which is 11 miles from Bucha, where the Russian military this spring . They’re paying partly to support the landlord, who recently sent them a video of the two-story property, their stroller still parked outside the front door, and partly because Alleyne and Poladko still hope to return there when it feels safe. They like the quality of life, and Poladko needs to fulfill a residency requirement for the fellowship she received before she can apply for U.S. citizenship.

“We could technically be in our house now,” Alleyne said. “You’re just living with this risk of an air strike.”

The couple is also — now more than $35,000 — that they donate to grassroots leaders and organizations in Ukraine. (Donations are processed through a nonprofit, ; designate Ukraine Grassroots Leaders Fund.)

Wherever they end up, Alleyne and Poladko are confident that TeenSHARP will continue to work with students and families to achieve racial and economic justice. Clarke, the Oberlin student, agrees. 

“It’s really hard to stop them from doing what they do,” he said. “A pandemic, war, they just keep going. It’s really inspirational. I think to myself, ‘If they can do that, then I think anyone can’ — or I don’t see it as impossible.”

This story was supported by a reporting grant from The Pulitzer Center.