The EDU Ledger is following a developing story out of the Kentucky state legislature, where on March 26, the state senate voted 38-0 to pass a bill that would significantly restructure – and restrict – Kentucky State University. Kentucky State is the state’s only public historically Black institution and has been plagued in recent years by fiscal and governance collapse following the resignation of former President M. Christopher Brown II in 2021 that has left the university with very few allies in the state capitol.
SB 185, formally “AN ACT relating to Kentucky State University and declaring an emergency,” represents an unprecedented legislative mandate to transform Kentucky’s only public HBCU into a "polytechnic" institution.
The bill triggers a five-year state of financial exigency, granting the administration the extraordinary power to terminate any employee — including tenured faculty — with only 30 days' notice.
The bill has an emergency clause that would trigger immediate implementation if passed, severely limiting the ability of faculty, students, alumni, and other stakeholders to weigh in on its potential impacts.
The bigger picture:
The proposed actions present a dangerous precedent for state legislatures looking for a path to close or limit the effectiveness of historically Black colleges and universities across the country. Beyond Kentucky, this legislation is being watched as a potential "blueprint" for how states deal with struggling HBCUs. This shift from support to conservatorship raises significant questions about institutional autonomy and whether this model will soon be exported to other states, like Missouri’s current discussions regarding Harris-Stowe State University.
In 2024, legislators said they found “a significant lack of efficiency and effectiveness in the instructional and operational performance of Kentucky State University and [determined] that immediate appropriate corrective action is warranted.” The latest proposal would give the state total fiscal control, in which any spending over $20,000 would need to be approved by the state, up from a limit of $5,000 in prior proposals.
By using a "transformational partnership" instead of an outright closure, the state gains total fiscal control (requiring approval for any spending over $20,000) and implements aggressive student debt collection (intercepting tax returns for past-due balances). The bill also proposes that students who have a balance of over $1,000 30 days after the semester starts would be unenrolled, a move that is particularly concerning given the institution’s 78 percent Pell Grant enrollment as a clear indicator that it serves predominately low-income students.
By limiting KSU to just 10 in-person academic areas focused on STEM and applied sciences and moving traditional liberal arts online, the state is effectively ending KSU's status as a broad-based university and vocationalizing the Black educational experience. Critics warn of a dangerous precedence that would potentially strip the institution of the cultural and social science foundations that define the HBCU mission.
Furthermore, the bill codifies a “small-scale" future by directing the university to staff for an in-person enrollment of only 1,000 students; according to IPEDS data, KySU’s enrollment in the Fall of 2024 was more than double that, with 2,020 students enrolled across undergraduate and graduate degree programs. In the Fall of 2023, enrollment was 2,115. This downward-scaling proposal not only contradicts a national trend of record-breaking enrollment surges currently seen at HBCUs across the country, it ignores current student interest at Kentucky State.
Former president M. Christopher Brown II and university officials continue to battle in court over whether the resignation was a forced departure, though the university contends that mismanagement by Brown led to an $23 million eventual emergency bailout from the state legislature that eventually teed up the current legislative considerations.
“It is about not just focusing on the finances and not just being reactive to some of the issues we have, but how can we be proactive in really designing an institution that goes even beyond the HBCU [mission],” said Dr. Aaron Thompson, Chair of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, who also served as the Interim President of Kentucky State University from 2016 to 2017, in his remarks before the Kentucky Senate. Thompson, whose office would be responsible for overseeing Kentucky State’s affairs if the bill is passed into law, is often credited with stabilizing the university’s budget and significantly increasing freshman enrollment during his time as interim leader.
This is a developing story and will be updated as more information is available.
