Raising tuition isn’t answer for declining enrollment
The Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, faced with declining enrollment, unanimously approved a 3.5 percent tuition hike for the 2017-18 academic year across the state system, which includes West Chester, Millersville and Cheyney universities a
With the increase, Millersville’s in-state tuition would reach a projected $9,240 a year — $11,812 including fees — for a full-time student taking the usual 15 credits each semester. Add room and board, and the cost rises to $25,482.
At West Chester, it’s much the same story. Tuition will rise by $127 per semester, with the base tuition rate for most full-time Pennsylvania residents – who comprise about 90 percent of all State System university students – increasing to $3,746 per term, or $7,492 for the full year.
The state system is saddled with a projected $71.7 million budget deficit. The tuition increase will offset about half of that, leaving universities with the responsibility of cutting a total of nearly $38 million in expenditures to balance their budgets.
If this works — if raising tuition turns out to be a remedy to declining enrollment — every axiom of business needs to be shredded, along with every existing copy of Forbes Magazine. Actuaries will have to resign in droves. Marketing experts will leave their positions to work in the fields or on Merchant Marine ships.
Raising prices to attract customers. Who would have thought?
Such is the condition of Pennsylvania’s state-owned universities. None more so than Cheyney University, one of the nation’s oldest historically black schools. Enrollment at Cheyney continues to dwindle. A recent report gave something of a reprieve, ruling out any potential merger or closing in the state system - for now. With a new leader on board, Cheyney continues to try to chart a course for growth again. A tuition hike will not make that task any easier.
We understand why the board of governors voted for the increase. The system is broke, and raising tuition is the quickest, most direct way to generate revenue.
“Given what was necessary to cover the total deficit and what was fair to students, I thought 3.5 (percent) was a good split down the middle,” Roger Bruszewski, Millersville’s vice president for finance and administration, said.
But raising tuition cannot continue to serve as the default solution every time the board of governors looks at its balance sheet and recoils in horror. And Bruszewski knows it.
“You can’t keep charging students more and more,” he said.
If the system’s goal is to, as Bruszewski said, provide an affordable, high-quality education to working-class Pennsylvanians, then achieving that goal is becoming more and more challenging.
Soon, there won’t be much if any daylight between the cost of attending a state-owned university and a private college or an outof-state school, given what some schools are able to provide in scholarships and other forms of financial aid.
After the tuition increase was announced last week, Lancaster Newspapers staff writer Alex Geli spoke to Millersville senior Erin Hodgen, who said she feels she pays enough in tuition already, and fears another system-wide increase could lead students to pursue education outside Pennsylvania.
She’s right. Schools in the state system are not the low-cost alternative they once were.
Fall 2016-17 enrollment systemwide is down 12 percent since 2010. Enrollment at Millersville has dropped by about 9 percent since 2010. Retention rates also have dropped.
As reported recently, since the 2011-12 academic year, baseline tuition at Millersville and its 13 sister schools has risen nearly 20 percent, from $6,240 to $7,492.
Is it any wonder enrollment is declining?
The board says increasing pension and health care costs are driving the budget deficit. If charging students more to attend the state’s colleges and universities isn’t the answer to stopping the bleeding — and it isn’t — then what is?
According to The National Center on Higher Education Management Systems — a consulting firm hired by the state system to help figure out a way forward — the answer is not closing or consolidating schools.
The firm’s recommendations, which are scheduled to be made public Friday, focus more on streamlining and reconfiguring programs and priorities.
But it’s difficult to imagine some of these universities surviving in the long term if enrollment trends don’t reverse quickly.
It is clear that the system is failing because the business model is broken.
We can’t pretend to know the answer. All possible solutions need to be on the table, and some serious questions must be answered.
Are these schools using resources efficiently? Are their academic programs preparing students for the workplace? Are they offering enough online options to be competitive with other schools? And, perhaps most important, why are students dropping out?
We want our state universities to survive and thrive. That’s good for Pennsylvania. A quality education for working-class Pennsylvanians should indeed be an achievable goal.
But raising tuition while trying to attract students, or keep them from leaving, isn’t good for business.