Dive Brief:
- Kentucky State University students and alumni are asking a federal court to block a massive state-mandated overhaul of the historically Black university.
- The restructuring, codified in April through state legislation, requires the public institution to transform from a liberal arts university to a polytechnic institution, shedding programs and employees in the process.
- Plaintiffs argued in a class action lawsuit filed Monday that the state-enforced changes would violate federal civil rights law after decades of underinvestment in Kentucky State beginning in the segregation era.
Dive Insight:
Plaintiffs called on a federal judge to block the state-mandated restructuring of Kentucky State, including barring any program or employee cuts. They also asked the judge to require state officials to come up with a plan to remediate years of underfunding the university.
Their attorneys point to multiple laws, findings and federal directives going back to the passage of federal civil rights legislation in the 1960s that have required state officials to bring Kentucky State’s funding in line with that of University of Kentucky, the state’s other land-grant university.
Kentucky State was founded in 1886 as part of a segregated higher education system. In 1890, it became one of 19 land-grant HBCUs in the U.S. created under the Second Morrill Act that directed states to establish such institutions if their existing land-grant universities excluded Black students.
In 1981, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights concluded that Kentucky had continued to operate a segregated public higher ed system and mandated improvements at Kentucky State.
The federal government under the Biden administration found that Kentucky, along with 15 other states, systematically shortchanged their land-grant HBCUs.
In a 2023 letter to Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, the U.S. agriculture and education secretaries wrote that the state had underfunded the HBCU by $172.1 million over the previous 30 years.
“The longstanding and ongoing underinvestment in Kentucky State University disadvantages the students, faculty, and community that the institution serves,” the officials wrote at the time.
The state hasn’t responded to the calls for parity, according to Monday’s lawsuit. “Rather than make [Kentucky State] whole, adopt a parity plan, or build a court-reviewable remediation process, Kentucky enacted Senate Bill 185” in April, the complaint states.
Under SB 185, Kentucky State must enter financial exigency for up to five years, during which time the university’s president could fire any employee, including tenured professors, with only 30 days’ notice.
The law also mandates that Kentucky State offer no more than 10 academic areas of study for the next five years and that it submit a list of programs it wishes to shed or keep by June. SB 185 provided exceptions to the program cap for education and exclusively online programs, and it also granted the state’s higher education council the power to carve out other exceptions.
Additionally, the law gives the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education strict oversight of Kentucky State’s finances during the exigency period, requiring its approval for any university purchases over $20,000.
At the same time, SB 185 calls for $50 million for a new health sciences building and up to $50 million for campus infrastructure upgrades.
Beyond those specifics, the law directs a wholesale change of mission. It directs Kentucky State to become a technology and workforce-focused polytechnic institution rather than a liberal arts university, which plaintiffs say is a protected feature of Kentucky’s desegregation commitments.
Kentucky State President Koffi Akakpo supported SB 185 after several rounds of revisions that "explicitly preserves Kentucky State University as a four-year institution, an 1890 land-grant university, and the Commonwealth’s only public HBCU," he said April 29. Prior to the restructuring proposals, some lawmakers mulled closing the university entirely, according to local media reports.
But plaintiffs argue that the changes threaten Kentucky State’s accreditation and represent a “substantial narrowing and/or elimination" of Kentucky State's historic HBCU mission.
Current and prospective students face irreparable harm if Kentucky State’s "academic breadth, institutional mission, and educational character are narrowed before the Commonwealth remedies the federally identified funding disparities,” they add.
In a Monday statement, Kentucky State said it had no involvement in the lawsuit and had no knowledge of it before it was filed.
“As a public institution, Kentucky State University will continue to follow all applicable laws and work collaboratively with state and federal partners in fulfillment of its mission,” the university said.
