This article is part of a three-piece cover story examining TSU. Read the rest here.
Sometimes trouble comes slowly, like the proverbial frog meeting its end in boiling water. Other times it happens all at once. Both kinds of problems have pushed Tennessee State University into a corner over the past decades, years and months, leaving its leaders and critics to puzzle over whether the flagship university’s outlook is getting better or still getting worse.
For more than a century, the historically Black university has minted prominent graduates across the arts, academia, athletics, entertainment and politics while building its stature as a destination school. Olympian Wilma Rudolph and billionaire media mogul Oprah Winfrey top an impressive alumni list that is both star-studded and lengthy. The marching band has Grammy awards, and the sprawling campus, which includes wetlands and an agricultural research center on the banks of the Cumberland River, anchors North Nashville. Every fall, thousands of proud alums assemble at the TSU Homecoming.
A student housing shortage in 2022 set off increased scrutiny around how the school was managing its money. Less than three years later, the state legislature had vacated TSU’s entire governing board, and the university was welcoming its third president in six months. Undergraduate enrollment has fluctuated dramatically and shows steadily shrinking senior classes since 2020.
Dueling reports offer broad explanations for why the university struggled to balance its budget.
Move comes as comptroller's office issues audit reports including findings from 2019
After accumulating comments about the state underfunding TSU from Rep. Harold Love — a Nashville Democrat and TSU graduate — state House Speaker Cameron Sexton, the chamber’s ranking Republican, convened a joint committee to look into the issue in late 2020. A year later, Love and colleagues reported that the state legislature, tasked with providing regular matching funds for the school, had shorted TSU by $544 million compared to other public universities. Capital projects and deferred maintenance had suffered the most, researchers found, leaving the university unable to keep up with its vast campus. The revelation prompted a $318 million budget allocation to the university for capital projects and maintenance in Gov. Bill Lee’s 2023 budget.
“Historically Black colleges and universities have been institutions that have done more with less since their first foundings in 1837,” Brittany Mosby, HBCU director at the Tennessee Higher Education Commission, told WPLN’s This Is Nashville in the months following the report. “Support for HBCUs is an all-hands-on-deck issue. It’s going to take significant investment on all levels.”
Within weeks, state comptroller Jason Mumpower released another study squarely blaming TSU’s administration for financial malpractice. Immediately, state legislators pilloried the school and its leaders with the audit’s findings.
“TSU management has repeatedly fallen short of sound fiscal practices, adequate documentation, and responsive communications to concerned parents and students,” reads the audit’s executive summary. “In addition, there have been repeated inconsistencies between testimony given by TSU officials to state officials and actions later carried out.”
A sudden bump in 2022 enrollment and a subsequent $22 million jump in scholarships broke the budget, the audit says — it recommends to the Tennessee General Assembly a series of sweeping moves, including vacating and replacing the TSU Board of Trustees and management. The full report does not mention historic underfunding. In his 16-page summary, Mumpower mentions TSU’s underfunding exactly once — to say that money allocated for capital improvements can’t go to dorms, as dorms generate revenue.
University alumnus Dwayne Tucker replaces Johnson as board search continues for permanent leader
Six months later, in September 2023, the Biden administration weighed in with its own towering estimate of TSU’s underfunding. The state had shorted TSU more than $2.1 billion in the previous 30 years, explained a letter to Lee from Department of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and Department of Agriculture Secretary Thomas Vilsack. Cardona and Vilsack explicitly contrasted the legislature’s neglect of TSU with its support of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
While the studies piled up, then-TSU President Glenda Glover announced in August 2023 that she would leave TSU after a decade leading the university. She formally stepped down as president in June of last year but remains in the spotlight for two reasons. First, the state’s audit called out her administration in its findings. Second, her retirement buyout and a post-presidency advising contract amounted to $1.7 million.
The state vacated the Board of Trustees in March. Ronald Johnson succeeded Glover as interim president before stepping down less than six months later, citing board concerns. Dwayne Tucker, the CEO of LEAD Public Schools, took the interim job in December. Pending legislation in the statehouse formally appoints new trustees Dimeta Smith Knight, Terica Smith, Dakasha Winton, Jeffery Norfleet, Trevia Chatman, Charles Traughber and Marquita Qualls.
Everyone involved has reasons to blame each other and reports to point to. Meanwhile, in a report from Tucker, the school has a projected $46 million deficit, a 50 percent decline in freshman enrollment and operating cash set to run out before this year’s graduation.
Amid the historic local university’s financial turmoil, we examine the school’s past and future
