Missouri has underfunded Lincoln University, an HBCU, by $361 million, federal agencies say

States engaged in decades of underfunding of land-grant Historically Black Colleges and Universities, leading to a more than $12 billion disparity with comparable white institutions, leaders of the U.S. Department of Education and U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Monday.

“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,” Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a statement.

Cardona and USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack sent a letter to each of 16 governors calculating how each state’s land-grant HBCU, established under an 1890 law, has been underfunded per student in state funds from 1987 to 2020.

During that period, Missouri underfunded Lincoln University in Jefferson City by $361 million.

That figure was arrived at by comparing the HBCU funding to that of land grant institutions that were established in those states for white students in 1862.

Six of those states — Arkansas, Florida, Maryland, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia — have not participated in one-to-one federal match funding for the 1890 land grant HBCU institutions in recent years, but did so for the 1862 land grant institutions.

The secretaries said that inequitable funding of the 1890 institutions “caused a severe financial gap, in the last 30 years alone.”