Telayah Richards, a junior and communications major at Harris-Stowe State University, is a first-generation college student. As a freshman, she and about 20 other students from similar backgrounds attended a summer program that helped them transition into the college lifestyle.
But funding for the program – as it is for many other things at Harris-Stowe – was limited, she said.
“I wish we could have opened it up to more students like myself who come from a background where I wasn’t familiar with college,” Richards said. “We could have helped more students in my same boat who just need an extra push or pull.”
During her three years at Harris-Stowe, she’s come to realize that there are some grave disparities in the resources that Missouri’s two historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) – Harris-Stowe and Lincoln University – receive compared to predominantly-white universities in the state. And it’s time to take a stand, said Richards, president of the university’s NAACP chapter, at a press conference on April 30 at Harris-Stowe.
On Monday, Richards and St. Louis City NAACP President Adolphus Pruitt announced the formation of the Coalition for Equity and Excellence in Higher Education that will advocate for change of educational inequities. They said that the state needs to address its disparate funding and the unnecessary duplication of academic programs that put HBCUs at a disadvantage.
“We further believe that the state’s educational policies are unconstitutional and violate the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause,” Richards said, “because they deprive its two HBCUs of academic programs that are unique, high demand and high quality.”
The coalition sent a letter on April 30 to the governor, leaders of the state legislature and the Missouri Department of Higher Education detailing these issues.
The Missouri Department of Higher Education told the American that it is “in the process of a comprehensive review of how we fund higher education, including facilities, operating budgets, financial aid, and workforce initiatives. This work will be viewed through the lens of our blueprint goals, which include access, success, and equity. We have no further comment at this time.”
Harris-Stowe administrators declined to comment on the issue.
Harris-Stowe and Lincoln enroll about 3 percent of the state’s total student population, Richards said, but nearly 20 percent of the state’s entire black undergraduate population in the public four-year sector. Richards argues that colleges enrolling the highest share of black students tend to have the smallest budgetary “boost.” The campuses receiving the largest budgetary gains from the state’s new funding model are those enrolling the smallest share of Pell Grant students, she said.
“The State of Missouri has the responsibility to be fair,” she said.
The state department provided the American with a list of Pell Grant recipients for all the state universities. Nearly every one of Harris-Stowe’s 1,400 undergraduates are Pell Grant recipients, and about half of Lincoln’s 2,800 undergrads are. Less than a fourth of students at University of Missouri college campuses are Pell Grant recipients.
St. Louis’ coalition modeled its name after a community-based group composed of alumni from Maryland’s four HBCUs. In the case Coalition for Equity and Excellence in Maryland Higher Education et al. v. Maryland Higher Education Commission, a federal district judge ruled in 2013 that Maryland violated the constitutional rights of students at Maryland’s HBCUs by unnecessarily duplicating their programs at nearby white institutions.
The coalition’s letter gave an example of unnecessary duplication in Missouri. Although Harris-Stowe had more than 100 years of teacher education and preparation by 1963, the University of Missouri–St. Louis was allowed to establish an education school that year, offering both undergraduate and graduate programs. However, Harris-Stowe was restricted from offering graduate degrees. This provided “an unfair long-term competitive advantage” to other institutions, the letter stated.
The St Louis City NAACP has entered into discussions with legal experts on Missouri’s treatment of Harris Stowe and Lincoln universities, Pruitt said.
Two bills introduced this legislative session, sponsored by state Rep. Courtney Allen Curtis (D-Ferguson) and state Rep. Karla May (D-St. Louis), would provide more funding for the two universities, but Pruitt said they’ve had little traction.
Since the press conference, Curtis has requested that the state legislature’s Joint Committee on Education study the funding of HBCUs. The committee unanimously agreed to do so. This move could be “proactive” in preventing a lawsuit, Pruitt said.
The coalition hopes that the committee makes a recommendation of what needs to happen going into the next legislative session – which could be a combination of legislation, policy and budget changes, Pruitt said.
“Hopefully, they will see it and understand our argument,” Pruitt said. “If not, we know what we need to do. We’re definitely prepared for that.”
