The U.S. Department of Education’s bombshell allegation last year that historically Black land-grant institutions are owed billions of dollars by states is being met with widespread skepticism by legislators, higher-education leaders, and circuit-court judges.
In September of last year, the Biden administration released data suggesting that numerous states have underfunded their land-grant HBCUs by more than $12 billion since 1987, violating the Second Morrill Act of 1890.
That’s resulted in widespread disparities between majority-white and historically Black public colleges.
Out of 106 land-grant colleges in the United States, for example, a third are R1 institutions. No HBCU holds that title.
The data spurred legislation, aggressive statehouse lobbying, and a series of lawsuits by HBCU students, alumni, and administrators to redress funding disparities.
But the department’s summation is thin, oversimplistic, and in some instances, flawed, a growing list of opponents say. Lawyers and advocates say they’re having to adjust their strategies.
In January, a federal judge in Florida dismissed a lawsuit from Florida A&M University students that accused the state of using a discriminatory formula that gave up to $4,000 more per student to the state’s white institutions. Judge Robert L. Hinkle of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida ruled that the students’ allegations weren’t derived from state-mandated segregation, and disputed claims of unnecessary duplicate programming at white institutions in Florida.
He dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice, meaning it cannot be brought back to court.
In response, alumni from three Georgia HBCUs last month withdrew their lawsuit against the state over discriminatory funding in order to do more research.
“When that case got dismissed on a motion to dismiss, it caused us to stop and want to be 100-percent sure that our lawsuit will not suffer the same fate,” John A. Moore, one of the lawyers representing the Georgia alumni, said in an interview. “Let’s make sure that we have this thing as tight as we can have it, because once it goes, we’re not going to get a second bite at the apple.”
Moore said that his group intends to re-file their lawsuit.
A History of Underfunding
Although HBCUs account for only 3 percent of the country’s colleges, they produce 20 percent of Black college graduates. But advocates say inadequate funding has impaired their ability to compete with nearby majority-white institutions.
The disparities between majority-Black and majority-white land-grant colleges can be traced back to the institutions’ inception, they point out.
In 1862, the federal government created the Morrill Act, which established 57 public colleges focused on agricultural and engineering disciplines.
Several states refused to enroll Black people, many of whom were still enslaved, into the newly established colleges. In 1890, the federal government passed a second Morrill Act, which established 19 land-grant institutions for Black citizens.
Both acts require states to match funding from the federal government for their land-grant colleges. But since the enactment of the second Morrill Act, states have withheld funding and discriminated against their land-grant HBCUs, multiple lawsuits have argued.
Had more money been given to HBCUs, as was contemplated by the Morrill Act, had the facilities been better, had the faculty and staff been made better because of the additional money, then HBCUs would have even-higher enrollment.
Under the 1890 law, when states do not provide the entirety of the one-to-one federal match, HBCUs are forced to provide the funds themselves or waive up to 50 percent of the match in order to keep federal funding. In doing so, states are not incentivized to match more than 50 percent of the funding for HBCUs, while fully funding white land-grant institutions, a report from the Century Foundation says.
“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,” U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said last September in a letter urging governors to equitably fund their land-grant HBCUs.
In October, alumni from Fort Valley State, Albany State, and Savannah State Universities said the University System of Georgia owes their alma maters over $600 million.
“Had more money been given to HBCUs, as was contemplated by the Morrill Act, had the facilities been better, had the faculty and staff been made better because of the additional money, then HBCUs would have even-higher enrollment,” Moore said.
The Georgia lawsuit alleges that majority-white land-grant colleges were given an 80-year head start on federal research, funding that Black land-grant colleges were excluded from.
In 1977, the federal government released guidelines for Georgia to strengthen its HBCUs. By 1984, following defiance from the state to adhere to the guidelines, the Office for Civil Rights required the state to add five new programs each at Savannah State University and Fort Valley State University, and six programs at Albany State University.
“The programs that were implemented were done so at substantial delay. Two programs were never implemented,” the Georgia lawsuit claimed. A program at Fort Valley State was placed in a building that needed $1 million in renovations.
The lawsuit is the second attempt by Georgia HBCU advocates fighting what they believe is discrimination by the state. In 2010, the Georgia NAACP and students at Fort Valley State and Savannah State sued the university system for allegations of systematic underfunding. That lawsuit was also voluntarily dismissed to be brought back at a later date, according to Moore.
The University System of Georgia was never served the lawsuit, according to a spokesperson.
The spokesperson provided The Chronicle with a response that the University System of Georgia chancellor, Sonny Perdue, sent to the White House in December.
The federal government’s assertion “is disappointingly dependent on a simplified, ‘one size fits all’ analysis comparing” Fort Valley State and the University of Georgia, the letter said, “based solely on state appropriations per enrolled” full-time equivalent student.
Perdue said the university system distributes money to its 26 colleges using a formula based on credit-hour production, graduation rates, retention, and a variety of other factors.
Perdue said the University of Georgia, an R1 institution, has more than 250 graduate programs and produced 308,000 graduate and professional credit hours in the 2023 fiscal year, compared to Fort Valley State, which has only nine graduate programs and produced 4,665 credit hours.
Perdue did not mention the decades before 2015, where Moore and the Biden administration say funding at Fort Valley State was misappropriated.
Fort Valley State’s president, Paul A. Jones, said the university works closely with the state to receive state funds.
“We are pleased with the University System of Georgia and the support of the general assembly in achieving the one-to-one match requirement,” Jones wrote in a statement to The Chronicle.
While Jones said that the university is not involved in the most recent lawsuit against the university system, he said “our goal is to ensure all of the 1890 land-grant institutions are supported and receive their one-to-one match. Because when they do, communities win. We will continue to advocate for all 19 institutions.”
Moore uses his HBCU experience as fuel in the legal battle for the institutions’ funding.
As an undergraduate student at Florida A&M University in 1996, Moore recalled waiting in line at the financial-aid office for hours, seeing other students camped out near the office doors seeking assistance.
It was a stark difference, he said, to the seamless financial-aid process less than a mile away at Florida State University, where he received his law degree. “These are things that stick in my mind.”
Across the country, other lawyers are threatening legal action if states don’t provide increased funding.
“You could potentially have multiple lawsuits on the same issue in different federal circuits throughout our country,” Moore said. “And so you want to be strategic, from a legal standpoint, in which ones go first, how they’re adjudicated.”
Legislators Remain Unswayed
Compared to the white land-grant Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge, Southern University and A&M College was deprived of more than $1 billion in funds over the past 30 years that could have supported infrastructure and student resources, according to the Biden administration.
In March, Dennis Shields, the Southern University system president, asked Louisiana lawmakers to increase the Black land-grant university’s funding to help maintain its campus, recruit more faculty, and apply for research opportunities that would aid in the university’s pursuit of R1 status — a designation that Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge holds.
In response to Shields’ request, Rep. Jack McFarland, a Republican and chair of the House Appropriations Committee, said he needed to know more details about the university’s underfunding before making a commitment to provide more money, according to The Louisiana Illuminator.
In Virginia, the Biden administration reported that the state owes $277 million to its land-grant HBCU, Virginia State University. State officials say that the national report relies on data that is not accurate.
“Based on reliable data from state-maintained finance, accounting, and education systems, the Commonwealth has funded VSU well above Virginia Tech on a per-student basis in aggregate, since 1994,” Aimee Rogstad Guidera, Virginia’s secretary of education, wrote in a response to Cardona’s letter. “The Commonwealth has met its obligations for our 1862 and 1890 land-grant institutions.”
There’s a long history of litigation between public HBCUs and states that predates this year’s spurt of activity.
In 2021, Maryland HBCUs won a $577-million settlement from a 15-year-old lawsuit that accused the state of underfunding its Black institutions while creating duplicate programming at competing traditionally white colleges. The money, which will be paid out to Morgan State University, Coppin State University, Bowie State University, and the University of Maryland-Eastern Shore over the next decade, can be used to create new academic programs and strengthen financial aid for students.
The settlement was reached with the support of Maryland lawmakers who signed legislation to appropriate the money required by the lawsuit.
Rep. Harold Love Jr., a Democrat of Tennessee, who in 2020 created the bipartisan Joint Land-Grant Institution Funding Study Committee, said advocates must do the groundwork to get government officials to see and feel the disparities at HBCUs.
When land-grant HBCUs aren’t given equitable state funds, they have to match the federal government funds by pulling from their own budget, often to their detriment, Love said.
“Oftentimes, that source was money that the school had set aside for student scholarships, or it was money that school set aside for building maintenance, or it was money that the school set aside for going into teacher salaries, any number of things,” he said.
To illustrate the impact that pulling from its budget had on an HBCU, Love brought his colleagues to Tennessee State University and had them walk around the 100-year-old campus to see for themselves the magnitude of backlogged maintenance issues.
“This was going to be our vehicle to say this is how much damage was done when the school was underfunded,” Love said.
The committee later discovered $544 million in state funds from 1957 to 2020 that were never given to the university. (The Biden administration said the money that the state owes TSU due to decades of underfunding is closer to $2 billion.)
In 2022, following Love’s report on how Tennessee has historically underfunded TSU, the state government pledged $318 million to the university for deferred maintenance.
Love and his legislative colleagues said there is still more work to be done in equitably funding the HBCU. While the reports on underfunding and letters to state governors have helped, many HBCU advocates are at the beginning of a lengthy process, both legislatively and in the courts.
“What we’re saying is our colleagues did it during a time in our nation’s history where Black folks and Black schools were undervalued and mistreated,” Love said. “Given this information, we should do the right thing and rectify what was done improperly.”
