Kentucky State University To Become A Polytechnic School After Amended Legislation Passes General Assembly

By Alvin H. Green IV 

Courtesy of Kentucky State University

Kentucky’s Senate has now unanimously passed the controversial Bill 185, which plans to transfer Kentucky’s only public HBCU into a polytechnic school over the course of five years. The bill was sponsored by Republican Senator Chris McDaniel, who agreed to fundamentally change the school after a conversation with KSU President Koffi Akakpo. 

“Black erasure,” said Korrine Hay, a first year Journalism major from Virginia. “That is the first word that comes to my mind when I hear about this story. Kentucky’s overwhelmingly white House, Senate, and G.A. have passed a bill to fundamentally alter one of the two HBCUs in Kentucky. What would you call it?”

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KSU was originally in talks to be closed due to recent financial struggles and controversies, with the bill itself directly stating the university is “in a state of financial exigency that needs to be remedied.” The university was one of many HBCUs to face severe funding cuts under the first Trump Administration; a report from the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy says the school lost over $1.2 million dollars over the 2018-2019 academic year.

Although an amended version of the bill has been adopted that will allow the school to retain much of its cultural heritage and the liberal arts department, a Forbes Article says KSU will still face severe and lasting changes. The school will not be allowed to offer more than ten academic areas of study, forcing the school to eliminate multiple programs.

President Akakpo will be allowed to eliminate any excess employees, including tenured professors, with no more than a 30 day notice. The student enrollment cap will be set on only 1,000 in-person students during an academic year, and any students with an outstanding balance of more than $1,000 will not be allowed readmission.

“I have a friend at KSU who’s worried she won’t be able to stay at the school she’s been at for two years now because they might cut her program,” says second year Economics major Madison Kilanji. “A lot of people are scared they might get kicked out over something they can’t control, that isn’t their fault, even if they are good students who already paid their tuition.”

KSU is only another example of a growing trend in particularly southern, conservative-led states to control the financial and cultural aspects of  higher education. Tennessee State University’s Board of Trustees was taken over by conservative state lawmakers after the school signed a $94 million agreement with them in 2024,  and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has planned to transform the progressive liberal art college, New College in Florida,  into the “Hillsdale of the South,” according to Yahoo News. Hillsdale College is a conservative Christian university, and DeSantis appointed its Vice President, Matthew Spalding, to New College’s Board of Trustees.

KSU President Akakpo has claimed that the school will receive $50 million for a new health sciences building and up to $50 million for campus infrastructure upgrades, according to his press release. The bill does not outright say any such money will be given to the university, but Senator McDaniel has suggested a one-time spending bill could be proposed to fulfill these promises, according to the Kentucky Lantern.