Report: State System should end single rate
Tuition could be set by individual schools
The board governing Pennsylvania’s 14 state-owned universities should end a decades-long practice of setting a single yearly tuition rate and instead approve a range, within which campuses could set prices based on individual needs and varied missions.
The National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, in another suggestion to give schools more leeway to address their individual financial issues, also said campuses should be allowed in some cases to assume responsibility for aspects of labor relations and collective bargaining.
Currently, negotiating with the unions representing faculty or other employees is done by either the State System of Higher Education or by the state.
“Institutions granted this authority would be permitted to deviate from statewide compensation schedules in order to attract faculty for specific programs, for which the statewide compensation schedule can be shown to be non-competitive,” the consultant said Friday.
Deviation from pay levels, NCHEMS added, could also be used “as an alternative to layoffs, furloughs or the like.”
The suggestions are contained in a 63-page final report released late Friday afternoon. Its aim is providing more detail about ways to help the system with 105,000 students survive amid declining enrollment, strained campus budgets and lackluster state funding that have left one university insolvent and several others reeling.
For decades, the State System’s board has set a single tuition rate across the 14 campuses. The rate approved last week for 2017-18 is $7,492 for instate undergraduates.
But during the past few years, the board also has let several universities bolster finances by experimenting with tuition differentials that reflect student demand or higher costs to deliver some programs.
Four campuses also have been allowed to eliminate the flat fulltime tuition rate for 12 to 18 credits a semester in favor of per credit pricing.
The consultant’s tuition recommendation appears to go further, eliminating the single
system rate altogether. Sally Johnstone, president of NCHEMS, said the hope is that schools would be just as likely to use the flexibility to lower their rates in poorer parts of the state.
“The notion would be that campuses would have greater leeway in setting the prices that reflect the realities of their communities,” she said. “You can’t keep raising price and expect everybody to be able to afford the campus.’’
Critics of the current price experiments say schools through higher rates are pricing lower income students out of the universities. Asked what would keep that from happening under the NCHEMS recommendation, Ms. Johnstone replied, “Good leadership, I hope.”
She said other recommendations in the report would give schools greater flexibility to lower operating costs and thus pass on savings.
As it did in an initial presentation last week, the consultant cited a range of woes including unhealthy competition among schools for a dwindling supply of students, a chancellor’s office with weak authority, and decision making by a Board of Governors that is marred by politics and special interests.
The consultant laid much of the blame on an antiquated governance structure set forth under Act 188, the 1982 state law that created the system and spelled out areas of system authority versus campus control.
Some recommendations could require changes to that law. Others like the pay level recommendation might require delicate conversations with labor unions, but details of the report were only beginning to be absorbed Friday evening by the parties involved.
“It’s unfortunate they put this out so late in the day on a Friday,” said Kenneth Mash, president of the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties. “When we have an opportunity to process this, we’ll put out a statement.”
Ms. Johnstone said that NCHEMS was required to deliver the report by Friday but that the State System specified the 4 p.m. release.
The State System announced its strategic review in January and in March hired NCHEMS to analyze the 14 universities and the office of the chancellor to give suggestions on financial, enrollment and other possible reforms.
On July 12, the Boulder, Colo.-based nonprofit organization summarized its findings and recommendations in a presentation to the system’s board of governors.
Hours before, state system chancellor Frank Brogan told the board he planned to retire.
Officials with NCHEMS recommended no university closures or mergers. But they said weaker campuses should be “reconfigured” so they can survive, keeping their identities but sharing resources including academic programs — something that has raised the specter of possible staff and faculty cuts at those locations.
The consultant said 14 percent of lower-division courses across the system enroll fewer than 10 students. It said the same is true of nearly 42 percent of upper division courses.
“Just as the overall number of faculty positions deserves scrutiny, so does the size of the administration,’’ the report stated.
The consultant also said State System decision making and policy leadership were inadequate and recommended the system’s board of governors be replaced by a less political board of regents made up of lay people.
The current 20-member board includes representatives from the Legislature and the governor’s office, as well as five who represent individual system schools.
The consultant also called for a statewide coordinating body for all institutions of higher education and an early or phased retirement program to help campuses adjust employee levels it said are not sustainable, given enrollment losses and finances.
The power point summary that was delivered last week drew mixed reviews. Some called it a road map with reasonable detail for this stage, while others complained that the system had spent nearly half a million dollars to be told what already was apparent.
The report said if current trends continue, “it is just a matter of time before all of the universities become financially unsustainable.”
Ms. Johnstone said the report was not a criticism of individual board members, the chancellor or others, but instead was an assessment that the system’s structure and long-built-up practices are outdated.
“We will review the report thoroughly in the coming weeks and use it to help shape an action plan,” board chairwoman Cynthia Shapira said in a statement late Friday.
The state Senate intends to take its own look at the system later this year.
The State System has been buffeted by enrollment losses since enrollment peaked in 2010, down 12 percent systemwide and by as much as 53 percent at Cheyney, one of the nation’s oldest historically black colleges. Mansfield University has lost 35 percent of its enrollment, and Clarion and Edinboro have seen drops of 29 percent.
In addition to Cheyney, Clarion, Edinboro and Mansfield, the 14 State System schools include Bloomsburg, California, East Stroudsburg, Indiana, Kutztown, Lock Haven, Millersville, Shippensburg, Slippery Rock and West Chester universities of Pennsylvania