Mississippi Must Fund University Success—Not Create Winners and Losers
By Representative Zakiya Summers
Mississippi is having an important conversation about how we fund our public universities. Supporters of performance-based funding argue that state dollars should be connected to measurable outcomes such as graduation, retention, workforce preparation, and employment. Those are reasonable goals. Taxpayers deserve transparency, students deserve results, and our state needs more residents prepared for meaningful careers.
Accountability without equity can become another vehicle for disinvestment. Any funding formula that fails to account for that would do more harm than good.
As a graduate of Jackson State University, a state legislator, and an advocate for equitable public education, I believe Mississippi can demand better outcomes without creating a funding system that rewards universities already positioned to succeed and penalizes institutions serving students with the greatest needs.
Our eight public universities are not starting from the same place. They do not have equal endowments, facilities, research capacity, alumni-giving networks, private support, or student populations. Jackson State University, Alcorn State University, and Mississippi Valley State University have endured generations of unequal public investment while continuing to expand opportunity for Black, low-income, rural, and first-generation students.
If we ignore that history and impose a supposedly neutral formula, we risk converting past inequity into future policy.
During the 2026 legislative session, Senate Bill 2523 proposed placing at least 75% of university operating appropriations within a new performance funding formula. Up to 10% of total operating funds could have been withheld and later restored based on institutional performance. The bill included measures involving four- and six-year graduation rates, Pell and HELP Grant recipients, transfer students, workforce needs, and underrepresented students. Although the bill died in the House, the broader push for performance-based funding continues.
The most consequential details of the proposed model—the benchmarks, weights, scoring thresholds, and financial effects—would have been largely determined after passage. Those details are not minor. They determine which institutions gain, which institutions lose, and whether equity is a meaningful principle or merely a word included in the legislation. Since then, the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Directors is moving forward with a performance based funding formula.
Supporters have cited estimates suggesting that an earlier, unimplemented formula would have directed approximately $165 million more to Mississippi State University and $119 million more to the University of Mississippi over an 11-year period. Jackson State has been described as having received approximately $13 million more than that formula would have allocated.
However, those figures do not prove that one university was underfunded or another was overfunded. They show what that particular formula valued.
A university can receive more than an unimplemented formula would have provided and still be historically and presently underfunded relative to its infrastructure, academic mission, student population, and operating needs. Before labeling any institution “overfunded,” Mississippi should conduct a comprehensive examination of operating appropriations, capital investments, deferred maintenance, research support, agricultural-extension funding, program approvals, matching funds, and access to private resources across all eight universities.
We should also listen to the research.
A systematic review published in the Journal of Postsecondary Student Success found that conventional performance-based funding has generally failed to produce consistent improvements in student outcomes and can worsen the financial disadvantages HBCUs already face. One examination of performance based funding policies in Tennessee found that predominately white institutions that enrolled a higher number of Black students received less money, but received more money than the only Historically Black University in the state.
The danger is a cycle of disinvestment, where HBCUs are already positioned much further behind the mark. Historical underfunding limits an institution’s ability to provide competitive salaries, academic advising, tutoring, financial assistance, technology, housing, mental-health services, and other student
supports. Those limitations affect retention and completion. A performance formula then responds to the weaker outcomes by taking away more funding, leaving the institution with even fewer resources to improve. Fewer resources will create a downward spiral, particularly for our HBCUs which have been historically disadvantaged.
We would not help a struggling student by taking away that student’s books, tutoring, and technology. We should not treat our universities that way either.
A formula based heavily on raw graduation rates can also reward institutions for enrolling students who were already most likely to graduate. Four-year graduation rates primarily measure first-time, full-time students. They do not fully reflect the experiences of transfer students, working adults, part-time students, parents, or students who temporarily stop attending because of financial or family responsibilities. As they say, the devil is in the designed details.
Similarly, tying funding to graduates’ wages could undervalue universities that educate teachers, social workers, public servants, and community-health professionals. Mississippi’s HBCUs are performing well in this department, and the state desperately needs these workers, even though we do not compensate many of them at levels that reflect their importance.
Mississippi should also make a separate, multiyear investment in correcting documented infrastructure and capital disparities at its public HBCUs. A performance formula cannot repair historic inequity if it assumes that inequity does not exist.
Before any new formula is adopted, the Legislature and the public should receive institution-by-institution financial projections and an independent racial- and economic-equity impact analysis. HBCU presidents, faculty, students, alumni, and advocates must have meaningful seats at the table. The state should also consult organizations with specific expertise in Black higher education, including UNCF, the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, or the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education.
Mississippi does not have to choose between accountability and equity. We can expect measurable outcomes while recognizing institutional mission, student need, and historical disparities. We can reward progress without destabilizing universities. We can prepare students for the workforce without reducing the value of public service, teaching, or the liberal arts.
Our responsibility is not to decide which universities deserve to thrive and which should be left to struggle. Our responsibility is to ensure that every public university has the capacity to fulfill its mission and help its students succeed.
