TSU seeks nearly $1B in extra funds

College hopes to use budget surplus to fix a lack of funding over decades

Texas Southern University is asking the Legislature for almost $1 billion to correct decades of underfunding to the historically Black university, among a blitz of requests from higher education institutions hoping to receive a share of the state’s $33 billion budget surplus.

President Lesia Crumpton Young on Tuesday told the Senate Finance Committee that she is aware her request is “bold” — and she told the Houston Chronicle on Thursday that she knows the competition is tight. But in their appeal to legislators, she and others with the university are leaning on the effect that a large budget allocation would have on the statewide workforce and on the university’s status as a research institution.

“We’re not, ‘asking for handouts,’” the president said. “We are only requesting the resources that we rightfully have earned.”

The budget request — for amounts beyond the state’s allocation to TSU based on credit hours — includes $414 million for new academic programs, including a Thurgood Marshall Advanced Legal Studies Institute and a Consortium for Biomedical, Pharmaceutical and Health Sciences.

Other requests include $163 million to create a new center for urban research; $153 million for the recently opened College of Transdisciplinary Studies; $77 million to accommodate student growth and hire tenure-track faculty; $26 million for a mental health institute; and $146 million for campus health and safety improvements.

In all, TSU leaders are asking for more than $986 million to fund the new programs and improvements in the 2024-2025 bi

ennium, according to the school’s legislative appropriations request.

“Our students deserve it, and I’m excited for the programs we’re asking their support for,” said TSU Regent James M. Benham, chairman of the board’s Development and Legislative Affairs Committee. “We are not an afterthought. We deserve to be invested in at a substantially higher level than has been done in the past.”

Jaime Puente, director of economic opportunity for the public policy group Every Texan, said $1 billion would go a long way to correct decades of underfunding of Texas’ historically Black colleges and universities.

The state gives significantly less funding per full-time student to Texas Southern University than to Texas A&M or the University of Texas at Austin, according to data. That might push legislators to give TSU at least some of their request, Puente said.

“There has been, in previous sessions, a recognition that TSU has been historically underfunded,” he said. “There’s money to do it, there’s money to … establish the university in a way that will set it on a path for the next 100 years.”

TSU is in a period of growth, with about 8,000 students enrolled and a goal to reach 15,000 by fall 2030, Crumpton-Young said in her legislative ask. The school in 2018 became one of 11 HBCUs to hold the Carnegie “R2” research classification, indicating “high research activity,” or the second-highest possible amount for doctoral universities.

Crumpton-Young last year launched a new division of research and innovation with the goal of boosting the university to the highest-tier research classification, becoming the first HBCU at the level.

The president said TSU has made good use of the money the state has previously funded – for every $1 the state has given TSU for research, the school has brought in $33 from federal and private sources.

Crumpton-Young added that she’s encouraged that state leaders in Tennessee and Maryland have in recent years moved to add hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for their HBCUs — and she said the budget surplus makes the timing right for Texas to do the same.

“All we want is what’s equal and what’s fair,” she said.

TSU appears to have made one of the highest asks for new programs in its legislative appropriations request, with schools such as the University of Houston, UT and Texas A&M asking for amounts closer to $50 million. Prairie View A&M University, another HBCU near Houston, has asked for $17 million, according to state documents.

But many of those schools are still looking elsewhere in the Legislature for money, including the University of Houston and Texas Tech University in their requests for permanent endowments totaling $1 billion each. Those have already garnered support from Gov. Greg Abbott, and Texas’ six public university systems have also asked for $1 billion to stave off tuition increases.

Community colleges are meanwhile seeking a funding overhaul that would increase allocations to the tune of $650 million.

Puente said the state can’t have it all, especially as legislators are eyeing some form of property tax relief.

“There’s a desire to do something in higher education more generally,” he said. “Whether or not there’s appetite in the Legislature to make those investments, I’m still waiting to see.”

“We deserve to be invested in at a substantially higher level than has been done in the past.”

Texas Southern University Regent James M. Benham