'Theft At A Scale That Is Unprecedented': Behind The Underfunding Of HBCUs
Tennessee could owe a historically Black university over $500 million. Andre Perry, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, believes the problem cuts much deeper: "We're throttling the economy."
Tennessee could owe a historically Black university more than a half-billion dollars after it withheld funding for decades.
A bipartisan legislative committee determined last month that the state failed to adequately fund Tennessee State University in matched land grants going all the way back to the 1950s, costing the public university between $150 million and $544 million.
When the school was founded, the federal government designated it a land-grantTennessee was required to match the federal money sent to the schools each year.
