JACKSON, Miss.— Mississippi’s three historically Black universities will begin receiving less money from the settlement of the decades-old desegregation lawsuit in 2012.
Officials tell The Clarion-Ledger that the state is unlikely to have the funds to make up the difference.
Settlement of the lawsuit, named after the late Jake Ayers Sr. who filed it in 1975, provided $503.2 million for the benefit of Jackson State, Alcorn State and Mississippi Valley, including new programs and infrastructure.
It also provided that the funding would be trailing off on July 1, 2012.
Higher Education Commissioner Hank Bounds has asked the three colleges for business plans that would examine the viability of the programs and look for ways to substitute the settlement funds.
Universities are expecting state funding to drop from 10 percent to 15 percent in the fiscal year that begins July 1, 2011. Funding from the Ayers settlement is scheduled to drop from the current $20 million annually to $13.4 million on July 1, 2012.
The Ayers agreement mandated more than 30 new programs, which the settlement has supplemented since 2005.
