By SUSAN JONES
The state House passed a funding bill for the state-related universities this week, with the full 7 percent increase requested by Gov. Josh Shapiro, but with the proviso that the schools “develop and implement” a tuition freeze for the 2024-2025 academic school year.
If passed by the Senate, which doesn’t reconvene until Nov. 13, this bill leaves Pitt and the three other schools — Penn State, Temple and Lincoln — in a strange and difficult position.
The funding, which normally is passed by late June or early July, would mean $162.3 million in general support and $3.6 million for rural education outreach at Pitt and a total of $623 million for all four schools.
Hari Sastry, Pitt chief financial officer, said the University “continues to handle the delay in our Commonwealth appropriation on a short-term basis through prudent fiscal management. However, as this situation persists, it will require the University to make difficult trade-offs. Although tuition rates have been established for the current academic year, the absence of our appropriation will inevitably affect next year's budget and tuition structure.”
Who sets tuition?
The first question with the newly amended funding bill from the House is, does the state have the power to require a tuition freeze? Because Pitt (along with the three other schools) is not owned by the state, the management of all instructional, administrative and financial affairs of the University is controlled by the Board of Trustees, according to its bylaws.
Pitt was very diplomatic in its response to this latest move to get funding for the state-related schools passed. “The University of Pittsburgh appreciates our longstanding and robust partnership with the commonwealth, and we look forward to continued conversations with both lawmakers and the administration as this process moves forward in the weeks ahead,” Pitt said in a statement.
In a statement after the bill passed the House 145-57, Penn State was a bit more pointed: “While we appreciate the Pennsylvania House approving increased funding for Penn State for the current fiscal year, we simply cannot support the amendment adopted by the House, which would undermine the board of trustees’ authority to set tuition and force the university to freeze tuition for all students in the next academic year, effectively resulting in a $54 million cut.”
Temple also said in a statement to The Temple News: “At a time when Temple University is facing near-unprecedented rising costs and decreasing enrollment, honoring such a freeze would prove to be incredibly challenging. We have historically worked to keep tuition as low as possible, and it is our promise that we would continue to do that. From a budget-planning perspective, however, agreeing to freeze tuition nearly one year in advance would not be responsible.”
The much-smaller Lincoln University agreed to a tuition freeze for this fiscal year if it got the 7 percent funding increase. Lincoln also keeps tuition at the same rate for individual students throughout four years on campus.
After the House vote, Minority Leader Bryan Cutler (R-Lancaster) said, “The days of blank checks to these universities must come to an end, and passing this legislation with a tuition freeze is good policy for our students and their families.”
House Democrats, who all voted for the bill, also voiced support. The Post-Gazette reported that Rep. Jordan Harris (D-Philadelphia), the Appropriations Committee chairman, said pushing out the money to the schools would lower tuition costs for students and lessen debt they must incur. “We can’t tell our young people that they should go to our institutions of higher education, particularly our institutions here in Pennsylvania, and then make it unobtainable because it is unaffordable.”
A freeze for all students?
The second issue is that the amendment says, “The tuition level for any student may not exceed the 2023-2024 academic tuition level.” This would include out-of-state students, who traditionally have seen larger tuition increases, and graduate students. All four schools have said repeatedly that the money they get from the state goes toward reducing in-state tuition. At Pitt, the state money supports 60 percent of this discount, and the University covers the remaining 40 percent. This means about $16,000 annually per student.
This year, Pitt increased tuition in Oakland by 2 percent for in-state students and 7 percent for out-of-state. All graduate students saw a 3.5 percent increase, while there was no increase for students on the regional campuses.
Pitt has already said in its budget request to the state for 2024-25, which was submitted in September, that it wanted to “partner with our legislators to freeze in-state tuition for 2024-25.” But to do that, the University said it will need a 9.25 percent increase over the $162.3 million proposed by the governor for this year.
To achieve a tuition freeze, Pitt said it actually would need an 11.75 percent increase in FY 2025 over the amount proposed by Shapiro in his FY 2024 budget. “However, we are not requesting the full increase from the state. Instead, Pitt is committed to sharing this expense and is willing to cover 2.5 percent of the increase through cost savings,” a University spokesperson said when the budget request was submitted.
Another year, same problems
The funding for the state-related schools has become a political football in the past few years. Republicans in both chambers voiced disappointment this year that Pitt, Penn State and Temple wouldn’t commit to a tuition freeze if they receive the 7 percent funding increase the governor requested. Lawmakers also have sought more transparency from the schools, and the House recently passed a bill that would slightly expand what is already reported to the state. (See story on transparency efforts.)
Efforts to pass the funding in June in the closely divided House — 102 Democrats and 101 Republicans — failed to reach the two-thirds majority required for non-preferred appropriations.
In October, House Democrats shifted the $643 million requested by the governor for the four schools into a grant program in legislation that, they said, requires only a simple majority vote. They passed the legislation by a 115-88 vote, and sent it to the Republican-controlled Senate, where it sits in the Appropriation Committee.
Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward (R-Westmoreland), whose district includes Pitt–Greensburg, said in mid-October that “a constitutional question exists with the recently approved grants passed by the House.” She would prefer passage of the state-related school funding be done as it has in the past with the required two-thirds vote in the House of Representatives and Senate.
The leaders of the four universities, including Pitt Chancellor Joan Gabel, sent a letter to the Republican and Democrat House and Senate leaders on Oct. 23 urging them to “commit to passing our vital state funding as soon as possible.”
The letter went on to say: “The annual appropriations provided to our institutions represent a significant portion of our overall education budgets, and more importantly, the funding we receive provides in-state tuition discounts to over 100,000 Pennsylvania resident students and their families every year. The delay in the passage of our funding has been felt differently by each of our institutions, but we all are feeling the financial strains from not receiving the annual support we have historically relied upon. Further postponement of this funding will inevitably compound the challenges we face, requiring more difficult decisions.”
The leaders said their schools, despite no funding to date, “have done our very best to control increases to tuition, supported further transparency measures, and have publicly called for more accountability.”
Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.
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