In 2023, the U.S. secretaries of Education and Agriculture did something Missouri can’t shrug off: They told Gov. Mike Parson that from 1987 to 2020 the state underfunded Lincoln University by about $361 million in per-student support compared with the University of Missouri.
It was a figure highlighted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and outlets such as KCUR as part of a broader pattern of underfunding Black land-grant universities.
As lawmakers hammer out this year’s higher education budget, that letter still sits on the table. It is not just a historical audit. It is a warning about how Missouri treats its Black land-grant university and about the risk that the state squanders federal dollars meant for farmers, rural communities and students.
Missouri actually has two land-grant universities. The state first designated the University of Missouri under the Morrill Act of 1862. After Congress passed the Second Morrill Act in 1890, segregated states that wanted to keep their white land-grant campuses had to create and equitably fund a separate institution for Black students. Missouri chose that path.
Lincoln University — founded in 1866 by Black Civil War veterans pooling their pay to build a school — became the state’s 1890 land-grant institution.
On paper, MU and Lincoln share the same mandate: use research, teaching and extension to support the state’s agricultural base and workforce. In practice, the federal government’s analysis shows Lincoln was shortchanged by roughly $361 million over three decades. You can see traces of that gap on Lincoln’s hilltop campus: patchwork repairs on aging buildings, labs with outdated equipment and too many courses and advising responsibilities loaded onto too few full-time instructors.
Land-grant status comes with obligations, not just benefits. For Black land-grant universities created under the 1890 law, federal “capacity” grants for research and extension typically require a 100% state match, with the U.S. Department of Agriculture allowed to waive part of that requirement only in limited circumstances.
Missouri’s own budget documents acknowledge that Lincoln must match its federal land-grant appropriations dollar for dollar with state resources.
For years, Missouri failed to provide the full match for Lincoln that it provided for MU. Analyses describe how 1890 campuses have had to seek waivers and reshuffle internal budgets simply to approach the required match, leaving federal dollars on the table and feeding the slow decay of buildings, farms and academic programs.
In 2022, Missouri lawmakers finally took what Lincoln called a “historic step”: For the first time, the Legislature appropriated the full state match Lincoln needed to draw down its entire federal land-grant allocation. That is real progress. But better budget years do not erase three decades of shortfalls — or the message those shortfalls send to Washington, where Cardona and Vilsack have urged concrete catch-up plans for the 1890 campuses.
Governance matters as much as money. Lincoln’s accreditor, the Higher Learning Commission, expects effective boards, adequate resources and a meaningful faculty role in academic decisions.
In 2020, Lincoln declared financial exigency — an emergency status that allows sweeping cuts — and moved to close its history department and loosen protections for tenured faculty, drawing scrutiny from national higher education media and from the American Association of University Professors. For a small land-grant HBCU already under financial strain, the chain is easy to trace: Years of underfunding lead to crisis; crisis invites emergency decisions; emergency governance weakens faculty voice and heightens accreditation risk.
Missouri has already shown it can do better; now it needs to make that commitment durable and transparent. Lawmakers should lock in parity by statute, guaranteeing Lincoln the same per-student operating support and land-grant match percentage that MU receives.
The state should also begin paying down the $361 million gap federal officials have documented, whether through a dedicated fund, bonds or scheduled appropriations, with a clear timetable for repairing the damage to Lincoln’s facilities and core academic programs. New investments should be tied to public metrics so Missourians can see how each dollar strengthens the state’s agricultural base and workforce.
Lincoln University is not a special-interest line item; it is one of Missouri’s two land-grant trustees. How lawmakers respond now will show whether “land-grant” really means “for all Missourians.”
Emir Phillips is an associate professor of finance at Lincoln University in Jefferson City. This commentary was originally published by the Missouri Independent.