State System renews price experiment
yearly tuition revenue by $5 million and encourages students to spread their course-taking across the calendar year.
Still, he had reservations even as he prepared to vote for the two-year extension.
“It's my personal opinion that, although there is some real opportunity here, there are more than a few warning signs that I think we have to be paying close attention to,” he said. “In particular, there seems to be a negative impact on both Pell-eligible and minority students in the way that they are applying for the program. There has been a decrease in those numbers.”
Federal Pell grants are awarded based on financial need. Millersville data indicate that since per-credit pricing debuted in 2014-15, students eligible for the grants have declined from 34 percent of the campus population to 30 percent.
Wil Del Pilar, state Education Secretary Pedro Rivera’s board designee, also expressed concern. He cited the rise in SAT scores at Millersville during the experiment and noted that higher scores typically correlate with higher socioeconomic status. In addition to fewer Pell students, he said the number who filled out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid declined by 500.
“Are we actually taking wealthier students who don't need financial aid?” he said.
Mr. Del Pilar said underrepresented students were taking fewer credits. Given achievement gaps already evident across the State System, he asked: “Are we creating policies that are going to further increase the gaps in graduation rate between lower income, under-represented students and majority and non-lowincome students?”
He voted against the extension, as did Gov. Tom Wolf's representative to the board, Sarah Galbally.
She cited overall student retention rates across campus. “We obviously had numbers showing that there is a decrease with no explanation, and there seems to have been no investigation as to why that trend is happening,” she said.
The State System’s base yearly tuition for in-state undergraduates, as set by the board, is $7,238. The percredit rate is $302.
With enrollment down and budgets stressed, the board in 2014 began allowing campuses to experiment with adjusting tuition and fees up or down to reflect the student market and higher-than-usual instructional cost for some programs.
Among per-credit experiments, Millersville was the earliest, debuting in 201415. Since then, Indiana University of Pennsylvania and Mansfield and Shippenburg universities have instituted their own percredit experiments.