By SUSAN JONES and SHANNON WELLS
After a more than four months delay, the Pennsylvania legislature finally passed the 2025-26 state budget on Nov. 12, and the separate funding bill for the state-related universities — Pitt, Penn State, Temple and Lincoln — was signed by the governor this week.
Once again, the state has allotted $151.5 million in general funding to Pitt — the same amount the University has received since 2019.
“We have a budget, I’m pleased to report. Yay,” Chancellor Joan Gabel said at the Nov. 13 Senate Council meeting. “As per what is becoming a tradition, our funding is flat from the state. There’s an additional increase to the state grants, the PHEAA grants, but the maximum grant remains the same, except more students will have access to it.”
The budget also includes an allocation to the Grow Pennsylvania scholarships for the second year, and Pitt’s Rural Education Outreach program will see an increase from $3.79 million to $3.98 million. Those funds support activities at the Pitt-Bradford campus, which Gabel called a “critical resource” in northeastern Pennsylvania.
“We’re delighted to see the state recognizing and investing in those activities,” she said. “We’re grateful for our elected officials’ support, and especially because this allocation of state resources goes directly to supporting in-state tuition discounts for our Pennsylvania students, who we are very honored to serve.”
The $3.2 billion 2025-26 University budget approved in July by the Board of Trustees assumed a flat appropriation from the state, Dwayne Pinkney, executive senior vice chancellor for administration and finance and chief financial officer, said at that time.
Even still, a University spokesman said the state appropriation delay resulted in a more than $50 million hit to Pitt’s cash flow.
“We expect to begin the reimbursement process soon and hope to receive our delayed payment before the end of the calendar year,” the spokesman said. “Through prudent fiscal management, we continued to meet the needs of our students, faculty and staff during the four-month period.”
The state funding amounts to about 7% of Pitt’s operating budget. All of the state money goes toward giving tuition discounts to in-state students. State funding provides approximately 60% of that discount while Pitt covers the remainder.
Pitt had requested at 6% funding increase from the state, but Gov. Josh Shapiro’s budget proposal for 2025-26 kept funding for the state-related universities at the same level as last year, with the addition of $60 million for Pitt, Penn State and Temple to be distributed based on the recommendations of the Performance-Based Funding Council.
The General Assembly adopted the recommendations of the Performance-Based Funding Council, for which Kevin Washo, senior vice chancellor for external relations, and Dwayne Pinkney, chief financial officer, advocated during the past year or so. The result was a formula for performance-based metric-driven funding based on a set of mutually agreed-upon incentives, Gabel noted. The amount of funding to be distributed via the formula will be determined by the legislature as part of next year’s budget.
“The formula was approved. However, to be clear, no funding was approved,” she said. “… It would be nice to have step one and two concurrently, but we’ll take step one. It’s a foundation to build on for the future of step two, which would be the funding.
“The University is very supportive of the Performance Based Funding Council’s recommendations,” the Pitt spokesman said. “We believe performance benchmarks will increase accountability and transparency while creating pathways for increased state support for our students and the University. We look forward to working with the legislature as part of next year’s budget negotiations when allocating performance-based funding will be taken up.”
The council’s recommendations include determining each university’s performance-based allocation based on four- and six-year graduation rates, six-year Pell-eligible graduation rates, high-priority occupation degree production and improved college affordability.
Pitt had to submit its budget request for 2026-27 in October, before it knew what this year’s funding would be. The University is seeking a 3.7% increase for next year, based on the Higher Education Price Index projections for 2025.
Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042. Shannon O. Wells is a writer for the University Times. Reach him at shannonw@pitt.edu.
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