The Trump administration said Thursday that its campaign to end diversity programs in higher education prompted dozens of universities to cut ties with an organization known as The Doctorate Project, which helps racial minorities earn doctoral degrees.
The Doctoral Project was a little-known nonprofit group until it came to the attention of conservative strategists last year and became the focus of an investigation by the U.S. Department of Education. The Republican administration says school diversity programs often exclude white and Asian American students.
The department’s Office for Civil Rights said Thursday that the investigation, which began in March 2025, led to 31 universities agreeing to end their partnerships with the group. She added that negotiations are continuing with 14 additional schools.
The department said in its statement that the doctoral project “unlawfully limits eligibility based on the race of participants” and that its partner institutions are violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in educational programs and activities that receive federal funds.
“This is Trump’s effect on the ground: Institutions of higher education agree to cut ties with discriminatory organizations, recommit themselves to abiding by federal law, and restore equal opportunity on campuses across the country,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said.
Several schools immediately severed their ties with the PhD project after the investigation was opened, to avoid entanglement with the administration. It launched the investigations after schools were warned they could lose federal money because of “race-based preferences.”
The Doctoral Project is one of many nonprofit organizations that help underrepresented groups access higher education.
“The PhD Project was founded with the goal of providing more role models to business classrooms, and that remains our goal today,” the organization said in a statement on Thursday. The website says it has “helped more than 1,500 members earn doctoral degrees.”
The group of 31 colleges listed by the ministry included major public research universities such as Arizona State, Ohio State and the University of Michigan, along with prestigious private schools such as Yale, Duke and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
MIT, like many of the schools mentioned in the investigation, paid PhD Project a “nominal fee” to participate in the group’s university fairs or conferences, allowing MIT to send representatives to answer questions about admission to their school, MIT spokeswoman Kimberly Allen said.
MIT informed the government in April 2025 that it had ended its participation in such conferences and was notified months later that the Office for Civil Rights had found they violated Title VI. The school signed a “resolution agreement” with the administration about a week ago to resolve the issue “but has not explicitly admitted any liability, error or violation of any law or regulation,” Allen said.
The University of North Dakota said it also immediately terminated its membership in the doctoral project two weeks after the investigation was announced last year.
“The university has become a member of the Doctoral Project to gain access to the Doctoral Project member directory and applicant database, to be able to recruit a larger pool of qualified applicants for faculty positions,” project spokesman David Dodds said in a statement.
The University of Utah said it has a table at annual conferences hosted by the nonprofit in the 2024-25 academic year and the previous two years. Rebecca Walsh, a university spokeswoman, said it cut ties with the project in October after settling with the department.
Of the 170 doctoral students accepted into Utah State’s business school over the past 14 years, only two participated in a doctoral project, Walsh said.
The Department of Education said all 31 universities also agreed to review partnerships with other organizations “to determine which university is violating Title VI by restricting participation based on race.”
The administration targeted a wide range of practices it described as diversity, equity, and inclusion.
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