State System chancellor: Reforms in place but next year is crucial
A law nearly four decades old that turned 14 former teachers colleges into Pennsylvania’s state-owned university system envisioned “high quality education at the lowest possible price.”
Though squeezed mightily in the years since by population loss and financial woes that continue to undermine many of those schools, State System of Higher Education leaders now say they finally have begun making good on reforms, from new tuition policy and campus financial reporting to academic offerings, putting the campuses on the cusp of securing longterm health.
“The State System has
prepared for this moment,” Daniel Greenstein, its chancellor, said Wednesday. “We are ready.”
But in his State of the System address, Mr. Greenstein told an audience, including several General Assembly members, in Harrisburg that it all could come down to the next 12 months.
That’s when the State System’s board of governors aims to secure not only a 2% increase in the System’s 2020-21 state appropriation, to $487 million, but also an initial $20 million installment on $100 million it says is needed over five years for system redesign. It includes money for infrastructure to allow campuses to deliver academic programs jointly, to share services and to reach new student markets.
“This year, we will decide whether all Pennsylvanians, regardless of race, ZIP code or wealth, will have an affordable pathway into and beyond the middle class in the 21st-century economy,” Mr. Greenstein said in remarks prepared for noon delivery in the Dixon University Center.
“This year, we will decide whether all of Pennsylvania’s communities will have the health care workers, business leaders, educators, engineers and professionals they need to drive their local economies in the 21st century,” he said.
“This year, we will decide whether millions of adults will have the affordable public re-skilling and upskilling options they need to maintain their relevance and viability in an evolving labor market.”
Pennsylvania’s Act 188 of 1982 created the state’s least expensive path to a four-year degree and put tuition-setting authority with the system’s central administration and its board. Its campuses charge less than half the tuition at the state-related universities, including the University of Pittsburgh and Penn State University, with the in-state yearly system rate at $7,716.
But since 2010, a 20% enrollment loss has dropped headcount to 95,802 across the system. Some schools, most notably historically black Cheyney University and Mansfield, felt the weight of empty seats even as others including West Chester University near Philadelphia prospered with help from factors including population growth in southeastern Pennsylvania.
It exacerbated financial and student achievement gaps across the 14 campuses.
The system redesign, begun in 2017 under Mr. Greenstein’s predecessor, Frank Brogan, initially raised alarm that one or more universities might close, but settled instead into a prolonged and sometimes wonkish debate over policies, price and campus-versus-system control.
Over time, though, changes have begun to take shape.
This year, for the first time, the 14 campuses will have flexibility to set their own tuitions based on their regional markets, and will do so two years out to give families a clearer picture of price.
Changes in system rules for spending tuition income have enabled a near-doubling in six years of the money earmarked for financial aid, from $38.2 million in 2014-15 to $69.7 million last year.
Officials are laying groundwork, including enhanced infrastructure for distance learning, that could enable the system to meet a goal enunciated after Mr. Greenstein took office in 2018: that any campus academic offering across the system be available to any system student.
Schools are now required to use standardized reporting methods to provide a three-year picture of their financial health. He said the universities this year will execute budget plans intended to secure sustainability within five years — a date intended to avoid interfering with current students’ academic pursuits.
“I promised real accountability to those who pay our bills — the Commonwealth and our students,” Mr.
Greenstein said Wednesday. “We achieved that.
“Last year, the Board of Governors required our 14 universities to balance their budgets while continuing to improve student affordability, progression, and success.
“This year, the Board will use evidence of progress toward those goals to guide decisions about student tuition, the allocation and use of state funds, and to anchor evaluations of executive performance.”
He noted last year’s decision to freeze tuition for the current academic year and made this prediction:
“Going forward, we expect [most universities] to maintain average net price increases at or below the prevailing rate of inflation,” he said.
With an early retirement proposal for faculty on the table, Mr. Greenstein’s remarks suggested how the State System by sharing delivery of programs across campuses can maintain 14 universities in an era of fewer students.
“Working together, this year, we will show how students at one university can access courses and programs elsewhere in the system, allowing all students at all universities, irrespective of their size, to access courses in important traditional subjects like physics and modern languages, as well as in new high demand areas for example, in geoand environmental sciences, informatics, health care and education,” he said.
He said the system relies on its supporters, most notably those in the Legislature. He said the state’s ranking of 48th nationally in support of higher education represented a choice, and that time to alter that trajectory is nearing an end.
“This can has been kicked down the road for many years,” he said. “Let me confirm. There is no more road.”
In addition to Cheyney, Mansfield and West Chester, the State System schools are: Bloomsburg, California, Clarion, East Stroudsburg, Edinboro, Indiana, Kutztown, Lock Haven, Millersville, Shippensburg and Slippery Rock universities of Pennsylvania.