Can Kentucky State University become a polytechnic without losing its soul? | Opinion

The Kentucky legislature has literally dismantled Kentucky State University.

At a moment when historically Black colleges are more needed than ever, Frankfort has decreed that KSU’s future lies not in the liberal arts tradition that shaped generations of Black Kentuckians, but in polytechnic training — welding, HVAC, robotics, and supply chain logistics.

For KSU alumni – and people like me who were taught by KSU graduates from elementary through high school — this is not repositioning. It is disembowelment.

The argument that KSU is “not economically viable” conveniently ignores the legislature’s own role in making it so. Over the past 30 years alone, KSU has suffered a funding gap of approximately $172 million compared with the University of Kentucky. Frankfort starved the institution for decades, and then cited its weakness as justification for dismantling it. In a state with a Republican supermajority hostile to diversity, equity, and inclusion, a publicly supported HBCU was always going to be a target.

The “New KSU” will emphasize applied, career-focused programs: mechanical and electrical engineering technology, cybersecurity, software development, mechatronics, and data analytics, alongside healthcare credentials and agriculture. Supporters argue this is practical. They are not wrong that these are valuable fields. What they are not saying — and what deserves to be said plainly — is who will actually get in.

Polytechnic admissions require demonstrated readiness in mathematics through algebra, geometry, and often pre-calculus or calculus. Engineering and IT programs expect solid grounding in biology, chemistry, or physics. These requirements are not unreasonable. They are, however, a profound mismatch with the educational pipeline serving Black students in Kentucky.

Data from the Kentucky Legislative Research Commission paints a stark picture. Only about 6 percent of Black 12th graders in Kentucky are both math-proficient and interested in STEM. Black students across the Commonwealth remain significantly underrepresented in advanced coursework — AP mathematics, calculus pathways, dual-credit STEM courses — and are less likely than white peers to have access to the rigorous preparation that polytechnic admissions demand.

No polytechnic degree is required to understand the demographic implication. The “New KSU,” built on a foundation of STEM prerequisites that most Black Kentucky students have been denied the opportunity to meet, will serve a fundamentally different student population than the institution it replaces. The legislature may call this modernization. Alumni will recognize it as something else. Change is not always progress!

What is being lost matters as much as what is being gained. KSU was not simply an option for Black students who could not get in elsewhere. It was designed — structurally and intentionally — to educate Black Kentuckians as whole people within an environment that affirmed rather than challenged their identity.

HBCUs operate on what scholars call a “high-touch, high-expectation” model: close faculty-student relationships, active academic intervention, and an explicit institutional belief in student potential. Large predominantly white institutions often function as self-navigation systems in which students must find their own footing. At KSU, Black students were the cultural center — not a demographic subset expected to code-switch, prove themselves, or carry the burden of representation. Black excellence was the norm, not the exception.

The results were disproportionately strong. Despite chronically limited resources, KSU consistently produced Black professionals — particularly in education, STEM, and public service — who went on to serve the commonwealth at every level.

That pipeline was not accidental. It was the product of an institution built around the premise that its students deserved to be met where they were and lifted to where they were capable of going.

The polytechnic model makes no such promise. It is built around the premise that students come ready, or they do not come at all.

Kentucky’s legislature has answered a question about institutional viability while refusing to answer a harder one: What obligation does a state bear to the students its own educational system has left under-prepared? Transforming KSU into a polytechnic does not resolve that inequity. It simply ensures that KSU’s storied “Hilltop in Frankfort” will no longer be the place where Black Kentuckians go to find out what they are capable of becoming.

That loss will not appear on any balance sheet. It will be felt for generations.

William H. Turner, PhD, served as Interim President of Kentucky State University from 2001 to 2004. The Harlan County native is the author of “The Harlan Renaissance: Stories of Black Life in Appalachian Coal Towns,” where the unintended consequences of school integration – his alma mater, the Lynch Colored Public School — is discussed.

This story was originally published April 1, 2026 at 10:51 AM.