One Mississippi lawmaker has proposed a bill to close three of the state’s public universities as a way to conserve state funds allocated to higher education institutions in the wake of dropping college enrollment rates.
State Sen. John Polk authored Senate Bill 2726 which, if passed, would require the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning (IHL) to shut down three of the eight schools it governs by 2028.
“We do not have enough appropriation right now to support eight universities, and with a cliff, or downward spiral in enrollment, it will even be worse,” Polk told WAPT.
The proposal is troubling some HBCU advocates who believe the state’s historically Black colleges would be targets if the bill passes despite only one suffering from low enrollment rates. The IHL board presides over three of Mississippi’s HBCUs — Alcorn State University, Jackson State University, and Mississippi Valley State University.
The latter is among the three lowest performing schools governed by IHL.
HUD Regional Administrator for the Southeast and Alcorn alumna Jennifer Riley Collins posted her personal opinion on LinkedIn, stating that the “criteria stated within the bill places Alcorn and other HBCUs at high risk if the bill becomes law.”
Morehouse College English and American literature professor Corrie Claiborne wrote on X, “This bill is definitely aimed at Mississippi HBCUs which are owed 400+ million dollars by the state for illegal underfunding. We need to buy JSU, Alcorn, MVU and turn them private.”
Senator Polk insisted if his intentions were to put HBCUs on the chopping block, he’d stated as such. “If I were trying to close an HBCU, I would’ve put that in the bill,” he told Mississippi Today.
In 2009, then-Gov. Haley Barbour proposed merging all three of those historically Black colleges into one university because it was too costly to keep all of the IHL schools. Many state lawmakers and alumni groups opposed…
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