The U.S. Education Department announced nearly $30-million in grants on Thursday to 22 public and private colleges and universities in Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas that were damaged, and in some cases forced to close temporarily, by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. The grants ranged from $64,438 for Jones County Junior College, in Mississippi, to $6-million each for Dillard University, in New Orleans, and the University of Southern Mississippi.

This latest round of grants followed by two weeks the release of a report that said tens of thousands of college students, particularly black students, in the affected states had never resumed their education after the hurricanes’ devastation — a pattern that contributed to plunging enrollments in the area’s colleges. —Andrew Mytelka