Tennessee

[jimbogumbo]

This seems like a pretty big deal (at least to me):  https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2021/04/08/tennessee-state-owed-millions-state

[apl68]

I saw that yesterday.  Wonder what the rationale was for not giving TSU the full amount, given that it seems to have been a clearly spelled out requirement?

It would help to explain a comment from somebody I knew back in the day who taught history at TSU.  He said that when he gave his students an assignment to do a one-page annotated bibliography on a subject of their choice, for most subjects there was "basically a right answer."  That's how threadbare their library's collection was.

[Hibush]

I saw that yesterday.  Wonder what the rationale was for not giving TSU the full amount, given that it seems to have been a clearly spelled out requirement?

It went on for 50 years, so presumably someone in state government back in the 1950's established the principle that the Black students did not deserve any money, and nobody thought that was an unusual situation.

[Mobius]

It's going to take a lawsuit to get that money.

[clean]

It's going to take a lawsuit to get that money.

Cant get what they aint got! 

I doubt that TN has it piled on the floor somewhere!  Even if they sued, and were successful, (meaning that you need the state's permission to sue it in the first place), even if the school won, what would be the victory?  And at what cost? 

"Ok, we agree to give you this back money... But now that you have this back money, you dont need this money we were GONNA send you"


Similarly, think of all the un and underfunded state retirement obligations.  IF you forced the states to pony up, they would kick and scream, raise taxes on everyone, AS WELL AS increase the employees' contribution rate!  IN addition, they would do all they could to cut the state's obligation (cut retirement benefits!). 
It is a no win situation!

[jimbogumbo]

It's definitely a no-win for the state of TN clean. Not so much for TSU. There are nine publics in the state (two very small specialized ones). The land grant designation monies split was for the UT Knoxville (I'm not sure Martin and Chattanooga get any of those funds) campus and TSU only. If I were on that Board or a member of the admin/faculty there I'm pretty sure I wouldn't care if someone else lost.

I know you are a firm believer that of they put it in one pocket they'll take it out of another. That happens all the time at my place, but I think you still have to fight for the new pocket money and hope they take out a little less from the other. I'm also not sure it will actually take a suit to reach some kind of resolution if the Feds get involved.

[Hibush]

It's definitely a no-win for the state of TN clean. Not so much for TSU. There are nine publics in the state (two very small specialized ones). The land grant designation monies split was for the UT Knoxville (I'm not sure Martin and Chattanooga get any of those funds) campus and TSU only. If I were on that Board or a member of the admin/faculty there I'm pretty sure I wouldn't care if someone else lost.

I know you are a firm believer that of they put it in one pocket they'll take it out of another. That happens all the time at my place, but I think you still have to fight for the new pocket money and hope they take out a little less from the other. I'm also not sure it will actually take a suit to reach some kind of resolution if the Feds get involved.

The unfortunate thing is that the 1890s continue to get shortchanged. Tennessee is one of the few states that matches the full allocation. Here is a report with the details: https://www.aplu.org/library/land-grant-but-unequal-state-one-to-one-match-funding-for-1890-land-grant-universities

[apl68]

It's definitely a no-win for the state of TN clean. Not so much for TSU. There are nine publics in the state (two very small specialized ones). The land grant designation monies split was for the UT Knoxville (I'm not sure Martin and Chattanooga get any of those funds) campus and TSU only. If I were on that Board or a member of the admin/faculty there I'm pretty sure I wouldn't care if someone else lost.

I know you are a firm believer that of they put it in one pocket they'll take it out of another. That happens all the time at my place, but I think you still have to fight for the new pocket money and hope they take out a little less from the other. I'm also not sure it will actually take a suit to reach some kind of resolution if the Feds get involved.

If there's a clear agreement that TSU was supposed to get a certain proportion of state money, and it hasn't been getting it for years, then they've at minimum got a solid case for claiming more of the state's money going forward.  And a good case for some more to at least start gradually paying down the backlog.  Different colleges in a state system are always arguing that their school deserves more.  TSU now has something to back that up with.

[Hibush]

It's definitely a no-win for the state of TN clean. Not so much for TSU. There are nine publics in the state (two very small specialized ones). The land grant designation monies split was for the UT Knoxville (I'm not sure Martin and Chattanooga get any of those funds) campus and TSU only. If I were on that Board or a member of the admin/faculty there I'm pretty sure I wouldn't care if someone else lost.

I know you are a firm believer that of they put it in one pocket they'll take it out of another. That happens all the time at my place, but I think you still have to fight for the new pocket money and hope they take out a little less from the other. I'm also not sure it will actually take a suit to reach some kind of resolution if the Feds get involved.

If there's a clear agreement that TSU was supposed to get a certain proportion of state money, and it hasn't been getting it for years, then they've at minimum got a solid case for claiming more of the state's money going forward.  And a good case for some more to at least start gradually paying down the backlog.  Different colleges in a state system are always arguing that their school deserves more.  TSU now has something to back that up with.

The rules are even clearer because there are two separate pots of money rather than one pot to be split. USDA provides capacity funds to land grant colleges in an amount specified by Congress. UT gets one amount, TSU a different amount, based on the particular formula in use. The state was required to provide an equal amount of money to each school. They gave the required allocation to UT, but not to TSU. This went on from 1957 to 2007. The amount is not in question, but paying a debt that old, even if required by the Federal government, is not simple.

[apl68]

I was in a situation somewhat like this in my work.  Public libraries in our state can only collect state aid to libraries funding if they have a director with a professional degree.  This is the state's way of encouraging libraries to employ professional staff.  Many years ago, our library agreed to become nominally a branch of a neighboring library so that that their librarian, who had a degree, could collect per capita state aid money on our behalf.  Later she did some consulting for our library, and tried to claim our share of the state aid in perpetuity as her fee.  She wasn't allowed to get away with it.  Her grab created a big stink and a lot of bad blood that remained between the two libraries for decades.

Neighboring Librarian did not have a degree from an accredited school, and technically lost her eligibility to collect state aid when the state tightened the standards.  However, she was grandmothered in and could keep collecting state aid for as long as she kept working.  And she kept working for a long time, long after she had all but retired on the job.  She let her place get decades behind in terms of technology (checkout and cataloging were still entirely manual into the 2010s!) and services.  But she kept collecting that state aid, and giving our library our per capita share. 

Eventually I came along and became director of our library, and earned an MLS degree from an accredited school.  This entitled our library to collect an MLS grant through state aid, as well as our per capita money.  Again, the state's idea was to encourage libraries to employ fully qualified librarians.  We could have dissolved the relationship between the libraries at that point, but I believed it would be in the best long-term interests of both to keep going.  Eventually Neighboring Librarian was going to retire, and then we might have a colleague nearby that we could actually work with.  So Neighboring Librarian continued to collect the state aid and forward it to us.

Except that she kept most of the MLS grant that was supposed to go entirely to our library!  I knew that if our Board of Trustees ever heard about that a senior Board member who remembered the earlier cash grab would go ballistic and create a new stink.  So I basically fudged things for a couple of years until Neighboring Librarian finally retired.  New Neighboring Librarian was somebody we could work worth.  I informed her of the situation, and she soon started passing on the full amount that was supposed to be coming to us.  We've had a good neighborly working relationship ever since.

In our case I didn't ask for any of the back money that they technically owed us.  It would have been a big sacrifice for them, we'd be okay without it, and it seemed best just to straighten things out going forward and let bygones be bygones.  In the UT/TSU case I don't think that's going to happen.  In this case we have a needy HCBU that has been deprived for a long period of something it was rightfully supposed to have.  You hear a lot of talk about racial justice "reparations."  That talk is disturbing in that it smacks of punishing people today for the sins of earlier generations.  But in this case, where an HCBU has plainly been deprived of its due?  They're going to have to start making this up to TSU, even if it can't be done all at once.