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The board overseeing Pennsylvania’s 10 state-owned universities said Thursday it aims to freeze tuition for a sixth consecutive year in 2024-2025, provided the state boosts the system’s funding by 6.5%.
The Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education’s board of governors voted to send Gov. Josh Shapiro an appropriation request of $623.7 million for the coming fiscal year. Pennsylvania allocated $585.6 million this year to the state system, which enrolls nearly 83,000 students.
“We want to freeze tuition. It takes about a 6% increase in the appropriation to do that,” state system Chancellor Daniel Greenstein said before Thursday’s vote.
In recent years, the state system has frozen tuition in an attempt to boost enrollment. But the system, and higher education in general, has faced a slumping market driven by a drop in the number of high school graduates, student angst over higher ed costs and debt, and a job market increasingly attractive to high school graduates.
This fall, half of the state system campuses experienced enrollment gains, but systemwide enrollment dropped by 2%. Since fall 2010, system enrollment has plummeted by nearly 37,000 students or 31%.
Greenstein said seven of the system’s 10 universities saw increases in first-year students, the second year in a row that the number of new students went up.
The last increase in the system’s base tuition was in 2018-2019. Tuition has remained $7,716 for in-state residents since.
Had the system’s tuition kept pace with inflation since 2018, it would be $9,336 this year.
By comparison, the University of Pittsburgh has a base in-state tuition of $20,155, while the base in state-tuition on Penn State’s main campus is $19,672. Both are considered state-related universities.
Last month, Pitt and Penn State submitted their appropriation requests for the upcoming year last month. Pitt said it is willing to freeze its in-state tuition if the state delivers a 9.25% increase in its $177 million appropriation. Meanwhile, Penn State asked for $483.4 million next year, an increase of $120.1 million — or 33% — over this year.
Also Thursday, board members discussed whether new signage should have been rolled out more quickly at two new universities created by campus mergers, PennWest and Commonwealth universities.
State Rep. Brad Roae, a Republican who represents parts of Crawford and Erie counties, said old Edinboro University signs remain on that PennWest campus and it’s creating brand confusion.
“I just think the name of a place should be on the sign, not what the name used to be,” he said.
Darrek Harshberger, a student board member from PennWest California, said the gradual change reflected cost considerations. He added that some students and others carry emotional ties to the individual university names.
“We would lose that identity,” he said.
Roae acknowledged that concern.
“If it was up to me, the sign would say PennWest and Edinboro would be in great big letters, California in big letters, Clarion in big letters,” he said.
During public comments, Kenneth Mash, president of the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties, expressed concern over what he said was inadequate discussion before system leaders sought a state waiver to institute three-year degrees.
He said there are potential adverse academic impacts if the move is made without adequate thought.
“Nobody denies that college is expensive, much too expensive. This board deserves all the credit in the world for trying to keep costs low,” Mash said. “(But) those of us involved in academia know that you can’t simply lop off a full year of credit without cost to students.”
Bill Schackner is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Bill by email at bschackner@triblive.com or via Twitter .
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