Louisiana has more work to do to close funding gap between Southern, LSU, governor says

By Piper Hutchinson
Contributing Writer

(lailluminator.com) — Gov. John Bel Edwards says more work is needed to close the gap in funding between the state’s two land-grant universities.

Across the nation, there is a huge gap between funding for historically Black and historically white land-grant universities within the same state, a report from the progressive think tank The Century Foundation found.

Louisiana is no exception. LSU, one of the original land-grant universities, did not admit Black undergraduate students until the 1960s, and has significantly more resources and state support than Southern University, a historically Black institution.

Land-grant universities were established by states that received federal land to create schools with a focus on teaching agriculture, science, engineering and military science. The schools receive additional federal benefits.

LSU’s endowment at the end of the 2020-2021 school year was over $700 million, while Southern’s was around $12 million, a difference of over $20,000 per student. LSU’s total research expenditures in the 2020-2021 school year were around $230 million, while Southern’s were just over $7 million.

But Louisiana has taken some small steps to remedy the situation.

Between 2018-2021, six of the 19 historically Black land-grant universities have received state matching money for federal dollars, as required by federal law, including Southern. No historically white land-grant university had a problem getting the matching state funds owed.

In an interview, Edwards said putting Southern on par with LSU was on his mind as the state worked to restore funding to higher education that was slashed during the Jindal administration.

“For years, our education leaders in Louisiana weren’t spending their time trying to figure out how they go out and get the best and brightest professors, how they improve research, how they improve academics and so forth,” Edwards said. “They were really trying to keep the enterprise running with historic budget cuts.”

Edwards said now that the state’s higher education systems have recovered, leaders should make a conscious effort to address the disparity.

“We are working to make sure that they have the research dollars, that when we do things in Louisiana, that we don’t just focus on one higher ed institution or system, but we collaborate our efforts between the Southern system, the LSU system at the University of Louisiana system.”

This article originally published in the August 14, 2023 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.