Biden administration says Tennessee State University has been underfunded. Here's what that means.

Last month, the Biden administration sent letters to 16 governors telling them their states had underfunded their historically Black land-grant universities. The letter to Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said the state had underfunded Tennessee State University by $2.1 billion, more than any other state.

The letters noted the success of these historically Black universities despite their relative lack of funding. And the federal government offered to work with states like Tennessee to better fund these schools in the future.

How did the federal government calculate the underfunding? Why do states owe money to historically Black land-grant schools? Our explainer answers these questions.

What is a land-grant university?

In 1862, Congress passed the Morrill Act to create public colleges focused on agriculture and mechanical arts. The U.S. government gave states federal lands, which could be sold to fund the new schools. More than 10 million of the acres given to states were lands taken from Native Americans.

Today, many of these land-grant schools are flagship state universities. The University of Tennessee is a land-grant school. Although the schools now teach a broad range of subjects, most still have strong agriculture programs and receive federal support for agricultural research and extension services.

Why is there a separate land-grant system for historically Black universities?

In 1890, a second Morrill Act was passed. The law gave states a choice: admit Black students to their land-grant colleges or create separate schools for Black students. In the South, states chose to create separate schools for Black students. These schools are often called 1890 universities because of the year the law was passed.

Although these schools were funded directly with federal money and not grants of land, they are still called land grants.

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In 1994, Congress provided money for land-grant schools that serve Native American students.

Tennessee State University is an 1890 land-grant school.

What do states owe land-grant universities?

The original Morrill Act requires states that chose to create a new college for Black students rather than integrate their existing land-grant school to provide “just and equitable” funding to both institutions.

“We found over time there was no just and equitable distribution of monies because of the ambiguity in the legislation,” said Denise A. Smith, senior fellow and deputy director of higher education policy at The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank.

Land-grant schools also receive money for research and community extension work from the federal government. Today, those funds are allocated by the Farm Bill.

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No ambiguity exists about states’ obligations with these grants. The schools should get a one-to-one match from the state in order to receive those federal funds.

Few states provide that one-to-one match to historically Black land-grant schools. Smith, based on U.S. Department of Agriculture records, found that between 2018 and 2021 Tennessee State University received no matching funds from the state for research and extension services.

Black land-grant schools can request a waiver so they can still receive federal research grants without matching state funds. Waivers do not exist for the original, historically white land-grant schools because states provide them with matching funds.

How much has Tennessee underfunded TSU?

In 2021, Tennessee’s Office of Legislative Budget Analysis found the state failure to match federal research funds for TSU shortchanged the school by $151 million to $544 million since 1957. The state responded by allocating $250 million to TSU for infrastructure.

The Biden administration, in the letter it sent to the governor, said that over the last 30 years Tennessee has underfunded TSU by $2.1 billion.

"There are different buckets of funding that go to them,” said state Rep. Harold Love Jr., D-Nashville, who led the 2021 effort to calculate the underfunding of TSU.

Love looked at the matching funds that Tennessee did not provide for federal grants. The Biden administration, using data from the National Center for Education Statistics, compared how much money Tennessee spent per student at the University of Tennessee and compared it to what was provided to TSU. (If the table fails to load automatically below, it can be found at this link.)

Todd A. Price is a regional reporter for the USA TODAY Network. He can be reached at taprice@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Tennessee State has been underfunded. Here's what that means.