State-run, land-grant Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have been underfunded for decades, resulting in a more than $12 billion disparity with white counterpart institutions, leaders of the U.S. Department of Education and U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Monday.
U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack sent letters to 16 state governors calculating how each state’s land-grant HBCU, established under the Second Morrill Act of 1890, has been underfunded per student in state funds from 1987 to 2020 and offered suggestions on possible remedies.
“Unacceptable funding inequities have forced many of our nation’s distinguished Historically Black Colleges and Universities to operate with inadequate resources and delay critical investments in everything from campus infrastructure to research and development to student support services,” Cardona said in a statement.
Cardona and Vilsack sent letters to the governors of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, North Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.
The Biden administration said Delaware and Ohio were excluded from the list because they have equitably funded their HBCU land-grant institutions.
The HBCUs affected by the underfunding include:
- Alabama A&M University
- University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff
- Florida A&M University
- Fort Valley State University (Georgia)
- Kentucky State University
- Southern University and A&M College (Louisiana)
- University of Maryland Eastern Shore
- Alcorn State University (Mississippi)
- Lincoln University (Missouri)
- Langston University (Oklahoma)
- South Carolina State University
- Tennessee State University
- Prairie View A&M University (Texas)
- Virginia State University
- North Carolina A&T State University
Tuskegee University in Alabama is also a land-grant HBCU, but it is a private state-related institution and therefore was not mentioned in the letter to Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey.
According to the letter, in Florida, Louisiana, Tennessee, Texas, and North Carolina, the gap between majority-Black and majority-white land-grant institutions ranged from about $1 to $2 billion.
North Carolina A&T University has a $2 billion funding disparity, compared with North Carolina State University at Raleigh the letter said.
Florida A&M University, an 1890 land-grant HBCU, has a $1.9 billion funding gap, according to the letter.
Tennessee State University has a $2.1 billion disparity in funding, compared to the University of Tennessee- Knoxville, the 1862 land-grant institution.
Prairie View A&M University in Texas and Southern University and A&M College in Louisiana both have $1.1 billion in underfunding, compared to the 1862 land-grant institutions in their states.
“This is a situation that clearly predates all of us,” Cardona and Vilsack said. “However, it is a problem that we can work together to solve. In fact, it is our hope that we can collaborate to avoid burdensome and costly litigation that has occurred in several states.”
