iStockPhoto // jacoblund
GED to PhD: How the McNair Program Changes Lives and our Nation
I come from a family of 10 children. Neither of my parents went to college. I dropped out of high school and earned my GED at 16. I was a teen mom. Stories that begin like mine often end in a predictable way because a lack of resources continues to breed inequality and poverty. Two turning points altered the course of my life—and that of my family for generations. The first came when I was 21 and learned about how the Pell Grant could help low-income students pay for college. I applied at the public library and began college the following fall. But starting college was not an easy feat. I failed my first semester, took time away, and restarted later at a community college before transferring back to the state university.
This steady persistence led me to my second turning point: The TRIO Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program (widely known as just “McNair”). The purpose of McNair is simple but transformative: to prepare a new generation of students for graduate school. I began the two-year McNair program at Boise State University as a curious undergrad who had a lot of questions about the world—questions that couldn’t be contained in a 400-level seminar or answered in professors’ office hours. McNair introduced me to the idea of a Ph.D., a term I was wholly unfamiliar with. The program connected me with research opportunities, took me to academic conferences, provided me with one-on-one application support, and prepared me for the rigors of academia.Because of McNair, I went on to earn a doctorate in sociology from the University of Maryland, College Park, have my research supported by the National Science Foundation and the Russell Sage Foundation, and have my work published in the top Family Science journal in the country.
A recent budget proposal from the Trump administration dismissed TRIO programs as “a relic of the past.” But the data consistently show otherwise. Family income still strongly predicts whether a young person attends college, whether they persist once enrolled, and whether they ultimately graduate. According to the Pell Institute, just 16% of students from the lowest income quartile complete a bachelor’s degree by age 24, compared to 58% of students from the highest income quartile. And if students are both low-income and come from households where their parents do not have college degrees, they are 45% less likely to enroll in college and far less likely to pursue graduate education than their peers.
While all TRIO programs are at risk of being defunded, McNair is uniquely vulnerable. It is the only TRIO program that explicitly includes being from a group “underrepresented in graduate education” as a possible criterion for eligibility. Although this can be interpreted narrowly through a racial lens, it was intended to encompass any student underrepresented in graduate education, regardless of race or ethnicity. In the current political climate, this mission places McNair in the crosshairs, and the program faces imminent cancellation. Since June 2025, more than 80 TRIO programs nationwide have been cancelled. If McNair had not existed at Boise State, I would never have known what graduate school was, much less have had the support to pursue it. If McNair is terminated, the consequences will be devastating not only for students but also for academic disciplines and society as a whole.Today, there are 216 McNair programs around the country serving over 5,000 McNair scholars who are preparing to enter doctoral programs. That means 5,000 potential dissertations, 5,000 original research projects, 5,000 contributions to science. I was one of those scholars years ago, and my own dissertation began with the foundation McNair provided me. If McNair is cancelled, those questions may never be asked, those discoveries may never be made. And that is just this year’s cohort. Each year, scholars graduate, and a new group is welcomed. The cumulative loss over a decade would be staggering.
Universities and disciplines—from sociology to life sciences—are enriched by McNair scholars and alumni. These scholars bring perspectives shaped by their unique experiences that are much needed in the worlds of academia, science, and leadership. In my own field of sociology, my work on family processes would not exist without McNair. Multiply that loss across disciplines, and the silence becomes deafening. If McNair is cut, sociology itself risks intellectual stagnation, as the discipline loses the very voices that push us to interrogate inequality in new ways. And beyond sociology, the absence will be felt in every field: fewer social workers in rural areas, fewer microbiologists developing life-saving medicines, fewer policy experts tackling pressing issues like climate change and poverty.
Sociologists have long shown that institutions reproduce inequality unless deliberate interventions disrupt that cycle. McNair was that disruption for me. It expanded my opportunities not by chance, but by design. To cut it would not be a neutral cost-saving measure. It would be a deliberate choice to shut the door on students who could change their fields, their families, and our future for the better.If McNair disappears, the loss will not only be felt by the 5,000 scholars who may not have the resources to apply to graduate schools this fall, but by all of us. Every dissertation that is never written, every community-informed project that never begins, every student told graduate education is not for them—these represent a collective and communal loss we simply cannot afford. To cut McNair is to accept a narrower, poorer intellectual future for our nation.
If we envision a future where knowledge, science, and leadership reflect the true sum of our nation, McNair must survive. The time to act is now: call your representatives and demand they protect McNair.
Chandra Reyna is an alum of the McNair Scholars Program. She researches Latina mothers, family processes, and educational equity and access.
