The Missouri Legislature is again looking to short-change Lincoln University (LU) in funding - but there's still time to right the wrong.
LU, along with the University of Missouri, are two schools designated as "land grant" universities under a program first signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln in 1862. That designation allows those universities to qualify for federal funding if they contribute matching money.
For several years, the Legislature has built that local match money into the core budget of MU, while LU is left to lobby for the funding each year. Some years, it receives the matching funds, and some years it doesn't.
Sandra Koetting, LU's chief financial officer, told the LU Faculty Senate last week that since the year 2000, LU has struggled to shore up that shortfall. "Since 2000 to this year, it's about $43 million that we've pulled out of our tuition or out of our (state funding) base, to support the land grant match requirement," she said.
Again this year, the budget bills introduced in the Missouri House have no designated funds for the matching land grant funding.
From 2000-17, the federal appropriation awarded to LU was $103.3 million, requiring a state match of $91 million.
But the state appropriated only $10.6 million, while LU's moving money within its budget provided $42.9 million for the match.
Thanks to some federal waivers that covered part of the difference - and are not guaranteed from year to year - Lincoln only had to return $11.3 million due to "insufficient match resources," the school has told lawmakers.
LU isn't the only school in the nation being left out.
An Association of Public Land-grant Universities (APLU) September 2013 policy brief reported: "States are failing to provide the nation's 1890 historically black land grant universities the same level of one-to-one matching dollars they provide other land grant institutions that receive federal funding."
LU President Kevin Rome rightfully argues that the state can't justify funding the land grant match for MU, but not LU.
"We want parity and equity," Rome said in a Sunday News Tribune story. "We are not asking for special treatment - we are asking for equal treatment."
There still is time for the Legislature to fix the inequity, as it's still fairly early in the budget process.
Granted, state funding is particularly tight this year. But if the state continues to pay the matching funds for MU, it should do the same for LU.