West Virginia State University image.
INSTITUTE, W. Va.–Federal officials say a state funding gap for West Virginia State University added up to almost $853 million over three decades.
“These funds could have supported infrastructure and student services and would have better positioned the university to compete for research grants,” wrote the U.S. secretaries for Education and Agriculture in a letter to Gov. Jim Justice.
“West Virginia State University has been able to make remarkable strides and would be much stronger and better positioned to serve its students, your state, and the nation if made whole with respect to this funding gap.”
Similar letters from U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and U.S. Agriculture Secretary Thomas Vilsack were sent to 15 other states concluded to have allowed a funding gap for many of the nation’s land grant institutions. Altogether, they assessed, land grant institutions at Historically Black Colleges and Universities have been shorted by $13 billion over 30 years.
West Virginia State is one of the nation’s historically Black colleges established with the intention of primarily serving African Americans. It was established as the West Virginia Colored Institute in 1891 under the second Morrill Act that provided for land grant institutions for Black students that had segregated schools.
The financial comparison being made by federal officials is to a separate category of land-grant institutions, the ones established in those states for white students in 1862. Those first land grant institutions were established by the first Morrill Act for institutions teaching teaching military tactics, engineering and agriculture. West Virginia University was the state’s first land grant.
“West Virginia State University, the 1890 land-grant institution in your state, while producing extraordinary graduates that contribute greatly to the state’s economy and the fabric of our nation, has not been able to advance in ways that are on par with West Virginia University, the original Morrill Act of 1862 land-grant institution in your state, in large part due to unbalanced funding,” the federal officials wrote to the governor.
Federal officials used a data set from 1987 to 2020 to calculate the amount institutions would have received if their state funding were equal to that of their 1862 counterparts.
“These funds could have supported infrastructure and student services and would have better positioned the university to compete for research grants. West Virginia State University has been able to make remarkable strides and would be much stronger and better positioned to serve its students, your state, and the nation if made whole with respect to this funding gap,” the federal officials wrote.
One challenge of assessing what West Virginia State’s land grant funding should have been over all those years was that the land grant status — contingent on state matching funds — lapsed over an extended period.