North Carolina is one of 10 states in the nation that failed to provide more than $56 million in mandated state appropriations to historically black colleges and universities, according to a new report by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities.

HBCUs across the country are scrambling to provide adequate services for their students due to major cuts in funding, according to the report.

The federal government, in part, funds land-grant universities, and states are required to match the federal government’s contribution. According to the APLU, predominantly white institutions received more state funding than HBCUs between 2010-2012.

Under the 1862 Morrill Act, which created the majority of U.S. land-grant institutions, and the Morrill Act of 1890, which established 18 historically black land-grant universities, the federal government became obligated to provide financial support to schools and states were required to match the federal funding levels.

Randy Mills, associate vice chancellor of the financial planning and budget department at Winston-Salem State University, said he has witnessed underfunding routinely in his time with the institution.

“During the economic recession, we started getting state budget reductions that, through this year, have amounted to $32.6 million,” Mills said.

Last year alone, Winston-Salem State University had 600 students, of at least junior status, who were academically qualified to return for the next school year, but did not return due to financial reasons, Mills said.

“Financial aid sources need to return to more normal levels to help our students,” Mills said.

Financial burdens have severely affected, not only student life at Winston-Salem State University, but also advancements in faculty employment.

“This has impacted our ability to attract and retain better faculty,” Mills said. 

Wendell Davis, vice chancellor of administration and finance at North Carolina Central University, said that although state support has diminished, there are ways to compensate for the underfunding.

“Underfunding has been a challenge in general for our institution at NCCU, considerably, over the last five years,” Davis said. “As a result of state budget cuts, we have lost somewhere in the neighborhood of $65 million.”

As a result of these setbacks, NCCU cut many of its operations.

By utilizing an academic program review, NCCU has scaled back on multiple bachelor’s degree programs, such as degrees in public administration and sociology.

“We have looked at how we can create greater efficiency in all of our university operations,” Davis said. “We evaluated, we consolidated and we eliminated academic programs and services that stakeholders deemed not central to the university’s core mission.”

Davis noted that these cutbacks have become the “new normal” around campus.

A few years ago, reductions in state funding forced NCCU to merge the College of Science and Technology and the College of Liberal Arts to form the College of Arts and Sciences.

On Oct. 7, a federal judge in Maryland ruled that historically black colleges in the state were harmed when better-funded traditionally white institutions offered the same degree programs in the state.

According to NPR, Judge Catherine Black said that, when certain HBCU academic programs were duplicated in historically white institutions, HBCU suffered losses in retention of new students.