Dive Brief:
- Pending lawsuits in South Carolina and Maryland claim historically black colleges and universities have been underfunded compared to their peers — a practice Diverse magazine argues isn't new.
- According to the magazine, a similar lawsuit in Mississippi dragged on nearly 25 years before ending in a $500 million settlement in favor of the state’s HBCUs.
- In highlighting a 2013 report from the Association of Public Land Grant Universities, the article points to double-losses to HBCUs when states do not match federal funding to the land-grant institutions, sometimes forcing them to give back the original federal funding.
Dive Insight:
While there are definite examples of thriving historically black colleges and universities, many of them are struggling. The group was disproportionately represented on the Department of Education’s financial watch list of schools under heightened cash monitoring. HBCUs enroll a larger population of students in financial need and cannot rely on large endowments like elite Ivy League institutions, for example. Financial downturns and cuts in state and federal funding to higher education therefore affect many HBCUs more than peer institutions. Resolution to the South Carolina and Maryland lawsuits may bring changes to the higher ed landscape in at least those two states, however.