About » Media Center

SCHEV & News in Higher Education

Print
Share & Bookmark, Press Enter to show all options, press Tab go to next option
Font Size: + -

Most States Have Acknowledged The Debt Owed to Public HBCUs. Almost None Have Paid It.

Post Date:08/14/2026 11:25 AM
debt for hbcuFour years ago, a landmark Forbes investigation put a number on something Black college leaders had argued for generations: their institutions had been systematically short-changed by the states that were legally obligated to fund them. The figure — at least $12.8 billion in missed state and federal appropriations to the nation’s 18 public land-grant HBCUs between 1987 and 2020 — became a rallying cry from campus rallies in Tallahassee to congressional hearing rooms in Washington.

Today, the number is still the number. What has changed is smaller, messier, and far more uneven than the headlines once suggested.

The disparity traces to the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890. The first gave states federal land to build public colleges — almost exclusively for white students. The second, passed after decades of exclusion, required states with segregated systems to either integrate or establish separate land-grant institutions for Black students, with an explicit mandate: equitable distribution of state funds between the two. Most states chose separation. Few chose equity.

In September 2023, the Biden administration escalated the pressure. Education Secretary Dr. Miguel A. Cardona and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack sent individual letters to the governors of 16 states — Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia — using federal data to spell out exactly what each state owed its land-grant HBCU. Only Delaware and Ohio, the letters noted, had funded their institutions equitably.

The response split almost immediately along partisan and institutional lines. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin disputed that his state had underfunded Virginia State University. West Virginia introduced legislation to close the funding gap going forward but ruled out retroactive payment. Missouri lawmakers pushed for a formal study of Lincoln University’s losses, modeled on an earlier Tennessee review. Georgia legislators threatened legal action over a roughly $600 million gap between the University of Georgia and Fort Valley State but produced no new appropriation. Most states, in short, acknowledged the letter arrived, and moved on," reports The EDU Ledger.

Photo: The EDU Ledger.
Return to full list >>