State System board may seek millions more from Legislature

Some State System of Higher Education board members meeting Wednesday on the Kutztown University campus openly questioned whether the proposal before them had any chance of passage in the Legislature.

“It’s a big ask,” said one. But other members said persuading the state to provide up to $300 million for system redesign cumulatively over five years is a vital investment. It would support infrastructure needed to share services across the 14 campuses, remove debt from some institutions now choking on it, and build a more robust online instruction platform that would reach every campus and tap new student markets beyond them.

Board members, meeting in committee, couldn’t decide and ultimately tabled the idea to let system staff discuss it further overnight. They meet as a full board Thursday and may act on the request, or some variation of it.

The investment would be separate from the system’s yearly appropriation request. That proposal for 2020-21 is for $487 million, a 2% increase, and also is up for a board vote Thursday.

During Wednesday’s meeting, State System Chancellor Daniel Greenstein stressed the system’s importance to

Pennsylvanians, calling it “perhaps the most reliable path to the middle class and beyond.” But the system, he suggested, cannot by itself make the changes needed for it to thrive.

The idea behind one of the changes, an online initiative dubbed “Portable PASSHE,” is to give every student on a system campus access to the full menu of instruction offered at the 13 other universities.

Beyond that, the online platform could help generate new tuition revenue by tapping into student markets outside the system, including working adults across Pennsylvania and beyond.

Since 2017, system leaders have been planning — and in some cases implementing — new approaches and policy changes intended to make operations more efficient and less expensive, and to allow schools to set tuition and boost financial aid in ways that fit their regional markets.

After one board member Wednesday rattled off funding requests that already inundate lawmakers — from hospitals to parks and other public and private initiatives — board Chairwoman Cynthia Shapira said work that the system already has done could help it make the case for the money.

“This is an investment in something that’s owned by the state,“she said. ”We’re asking the state to invest in itself.”

Board members initially considered $100 million, then $300 million, but could not agree on a figure, and acknowledged that the Legislature can only commit to funding requests one year at a time, anyway.