Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
DEGREE OF DEBT
College becoming less affordable, report finds
Getting a college education has never been more expensive.
For more than a decade, states have been providing less and less money to institutions of higher learning, according to a newly released report. And that has led to higher and higher tuition for students.
The result has been decreased access to higher education, ballooning levels of debt for college graduates and shrinking enrollment numbers.
The report released Wednesday by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan research and policy institute, takes a look at the financial aspects of going to college.
It shows that across the nation state funding for higher education has plummeted since the Great Recession of 2008, falling a total of $3.4 billion. At the same time, average tuition rose by 35.2% at four-year schools and by 37.5% at community colleges.
Pennsylvania, the report says, has been one of the states where the problem has been growing the fastest.
Pennsylvania’s numbers
In a media briefing Wednesday afternoon, Marc Stier, director of the PA Budget and Policy Center, laid out what the report says about the situation in Pennsylvania.
From 2008 to 2019, Stier said, state funding for higher education in Pennsylvania dropped by 33.4%, the sixth worst decrease in that span of all 50 states. That equates to $2,538 less funding per student, which ranks ninth worst in the country.
“That is a substantial decline in funding for higher education,” Stier said.
Because they’re getting less from the state, schools have had to look elsewhere for revenue, specifically at tuition increase.
From 2008 to 2019, Stier said, average tuition at fouryear schools in the state has increased by 20.3%. That hike is on top of tuition levels that were in 2008 already relatively high compared to other states, he added.
“What that means is college is less affordable in Pennsylvania than in other states,” Stier said.
The impact of decreased funding and increased tuition has been felt deeply by Pennsylvania families, Stier said, particularly families of color.
In 2018, he said, the cost of college represented about 34% of the median household income in Pennsylvania, a figure that ranks the state tied for second to worst in the country.
For Black families the cost is 56% of median income and for Latino families it’s 48%.
“It’s embarrassing,” Stier said. “We should be jumping up and
down saying this is something that needs to be fixed immediately.”
What the numbers mean
Just about 60% of jobs in Pennsylvania require some level of higher education, state Sen. Vincent Hughes said.
Speaking during Wednesday’s media briefing, the Philadelphia Democrat said workers need a degree or certification or license to fill those jobs. Unfortunately, he said, only 47.5% of workers the state produces have one of those.
“The reason is access and income,” Hughes said.
Particularly when it comes to students of color, he said, the number one reason they don’t pursue higher education is an inability to afford it. And that leads to many of those jobs that need to be filled sitting vacant and an overall degradation of the state economy.
Rep. Jordan Harris, a Philadelphia Democrat, also took part in the briefing.
When he was growing up, he said, his mother and grandmother hammered home the importance of doing well in school and going to college as a path that would lead to the life he wanted to have. So, that’s what he did. “I believed them,” he said. “I did what they said to do.”
Harris graduated from Millersville University in 2008. He said he was lucky, finishing college when
state system schools were still affordable.
For someone to follow his path now, Harris said, the financial toll would be painful because of tuition increases in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education over the last decade.
“They’re increases that make a college degree unattainable for many young people across this commonwealth,” he said.
And it’s not just PASSHE schools, he said. Community colleges as well have become financially nonviable for many.
Harris said education has long been seen as a way for middle- and working-class families to advance, a tool that can be used to break cycles of poverty. That is becoming less and less the case.
“It slips further and further out of their grasp,” he said. “You can’t tell people education is an elevator out of poverty and then have an ‘out of order’ sign on that elevator.”
When higher education becomes unattainable, Harris said, it often leads young people down darker roads. It leads to increasing rates of crime, to growing numbers on the rolls of government assistance.
“We’re going to pay one way or another,” he said. “What we are suggesting is we keep our word, we keep our promise to Pennsylvania.”
Keeping that promise means helping ease the financial burden of higher education. Harris, Hughes and Stier all lent their support to two plans to help do that: the Nellie Bly Scholarship Program and the Pennsylvania Promise Program.
The Nellie Bly Scholarship
Sam Bohen is excited to start the next chapter in his life.
This May he will graduate from Edinboro University with a degree in English. He said during a press conference Wednesday hosted by Gov. Tom Wolf that when he leaves school he will take with him cherished memories of the time he spent with friends and all the lessons he learned in the classroom.
He’ll also take with him more than $40,000 in debt. He isn’t alone. According to Wolf, the average college graduate in Pennsylvania leaves school with $39,000 in debt.
“That’s more than a new car,” the governor said. “That’s more than a down payment on a home.”
Bohen said the burden of college loans can often dictate students’ futures. It forces them to pursue educations in money-making fields instead of the arts. It causes them to take whatever job they can get wherever they can get it so they can start paying it off.
“The harsh reality for many of us is that our student debt will dictate who we become,” Bohen said.
One way that Wolf is trying to help with that is with his proposal to create the Nellie Bly Scholarship Program. He held the briefing to discuss his proposal, which would have to be approved by the Legislature.
The program would provide scholarships to about 44,000 full-time undergraduate students attending PASSHE schools. They would be available to students with family household incomes of less than $104,800, and cover the gap between financial aid
like Pell Grants and the actual cost of college.
Recipients will be required to stay in Pennsylvania after graduating for the same amount of time they received the scholarship. If they leave, it will convert to a loan.
Wolf said the program is an investment in the future, providing access to college for students who otherwise might not be able to afford it and helping to build a well-educated workforce that will help the state’s economy thrive.
“I want to provide more opportunities for more Pennsylvanians to get a college education without the crippling debt that often goes along with it,” Wolf said.
The program, which Wolf tried unsuccessfully to create last year, would be funded by redirecting $199 million from the Pennsylvania Racehorse Development Trust Fund.
“I’d rather bet on the future of our students than subsidize out-of-state race horse owners,” he said.
Pushback from horse racing community
Just as it did when the governor tried and failed to implement it last year, the plan for the Nellie Bly Scholarship program is being fiercely fought by the horse racing community.
“Education is great, we are very much in favor of promoting post-secondary education in Pennsylvania,” said Russell Williams, a member of the Pennsylvania Equine Coalition. “But the governor doesn’t have the legal power to take private money.”
Williams believes the trust fund is not public money. It was set up when
casinos were made legal in the state back in 2004, and is funded by revenues from wagers.
Those revenues could, instead, go to the state in the form of a tax, he said. But that would require the Legislature to rewrite casino laws.
Williams of Hanover said the state should find another way to fund the program, suggesting a sales tax on clothing could be implemented.
“They’re worthy goals, but they should be addressed by the Legislature with tax dollars,” he said.
A statement released by the coalition after the governor announced in his budget address this month his intention the pursue the scholarship program again this year paints a bleak picture of what would happen if it’s approved.
The statement said it “would result in the end of horse racing in Pennsylvania, an integral part of the state’s agriculture industry that supports hundreds of small businesses and 20,000 family-sustaining jobs.”
Pete Peterson, spokesman for the coalition, said that while the rising cost of college is a problem, it’s not one that should be solved by crippling the horse racing industry.
“Everyone recognizes that college debt and rising tuition rates are major problems, but you don’t fix one debt problem by putting an entire sector of the agriculture industry out of business and thousands of people out of work,” he said.
Pennsylvania Promise Program
Along with the Nellie Bly Scholarship program, another effort aimed at addressing the rising cost of a college education is the Pennsylvania Promise Program.
The proposed program, which is being pushed by Hughes and Harris, would be available to students with family incomes of $110,000 or less.
It would provide grants of at least $1,000 per year to students attending community colleges and at least $2,500 per year for students attending PASSHE schools.
Grants of $2,000 to $11,000 would be available for students attending state-related schools, and $50 million would be available to assist adults without college degrees seeking to further their education.
It is unclear how the program would be funded. When asked about funding, Harris responded by saying the cost of not implementing it is far greater than the cost to provide the scholarships.
“Where does the funding come for not doing this?” he asked.
Stier said he is confident the state will be able to find revenue streams to fund the program, but did not specify any in particular.