The Biden administration says Kentucky and other states with historically Black land-grant universities have been short changed $12.6 billion in funding over the last three decades.
Published reports say Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack sent letters to the governors of each state asking them to increase funding to HBCU’s.
Kentucky has two HBCUs, Kentucky State University and Simmons College of Kentucky.
The letter said the largest disparity was in Tennessee, where Tennessee State University has been underfunded by $2.1 billion.
These land-grant universities were founded on federal land to further agricultural instruction and research.
Federal agencies used national education data to find the funding disparity in 16 of 18 states that house Black land grants. Equitable funding was found only in Delaware and Ohio.
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