UT Austin, 19 other schools form Alliance of Hispanic Serving Research Universities

AUSTIN, Texas - The University of Texas at Austin is joining 19 of the nation's top research universities to form an alliance to increase opportunity for those historically underserved by higher education.

The 20 universities represent every university that has been both categorized as R1 (very high research activity) by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education and designated as a Hispanic Serving Institution by the U.S. Department of Education, says UT Austin.

The Hispanic Serving Research Universities Alliance aims to achieve two key goals by 2030:

Double the number of Hispanic doctoral students enrolled at Alliance universities
Increase by 20% the Hispanic professoriate in Alliance universities

Representing nine states, the universities together enrolled 766,718 students in Fall 2020; of those, roughly 33% (254,399) were Hispanic. In 2020, the combined research spending of these universities totaled more than $5.9 billion.

UT Austin says the four UT institutions in the alliance collectively enrolled more than 152,000 students, of which almost 43% (65,061) were Hispanic. Their combined research spending totals $1.1 billion.

The universities have already begun working together on several initiatives, starting with a project funded by the Mellon Foundation focused on supporting more doctoral students in Latino humanities studies and guiding them to academic careers. A second initiative, funded by the National Science Foundation, expands opportunities for Hispanic students in computer science.

Universities in the Alliance are: