Shapiro’s higher education plan being fleshed out; Republicans still not sold
Details of Gov. Josh Shapiro’s plan for reshaping the higher education system in Pennsylvania shared during budget hearings are beginning to put flesh on the bones of the blueprint he unveiled in January.
The Shapiro administration expects its proposal, viewed by some as ambitious and others wrongheaded, would take two years to implement.
During budget hearing last week, Kate Shaw, deputy education secretary and commissioner for postsecondary and higher education, said the goal is to see legislation with a framework of the reorganized system enacted by June 30.
“What we hope to do is to take the next year to continue to engage stakeholders to flesh out many of the details of that system,” she said.
Pennsylvania has 15 community colleges authorized to receive public funding. Unlike the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) — the state’s 10 public universities — the community colleges operate independent of each other and do not have a central state-run governing board.
Shaw, who is engineering the reorganization of these institutions for Shapiro, said work groups have been formed to fill in more details of the proposed framework.
One involves community college and state university officials tasked with crafting a governance structure of the new higher education system. The other is being assisted by Shaw’s former employer Austin, Texas-based HCM Strategists to craft a performance funding model that would distribute funds to the institutions in a new system, as well as the four state-related universities, Penn State, Pitt, Temple and Lincoln.
She said the soonest the new funding model could be implemented would be 2025-26 since a comprehensive data system for all 25 institutions would need to be created to drive out the money.
The administration anticipates driving all state appropriations for this new system through the performance funding model, said education department spokesman Taj Magruder. However, lawmakers say they have been told only the new funds that the governor proposes for the statefunded institutions would be distributed through the performance formula.
Lawmakers’ efforts to pry out details of the plan during a budget hearing with State System Chancellor Dan Greenstein proved futile because he said he knew as little as they did about it.
Shapiro’s 2024-25 budget proposal combines funding for community colleges with the state universities for a total appropriation of $974 million — a 15% increase over this year’s combined appropriation of $847 million.
The performance funding work group is expected to report by April 10 its recommendations for the outcomes the formula measures such as increasing graduation rates, reducing time to degree and producing graduates to meet critical state workforce. The other work group is working on a similar timeline, Shaw said.
Shapiro visited two community colleges last week to tout his plan. He assured community colleges it would preserve their local control and their students would have a seamless transfer of credits to a state university.
“I know that what I put forth in my plan for higher education. It is bold and it is aggressive,” Shapiro said at a news conference at Reading Area Community College on Thursday. “I understand that sometimes being bold scares some folks who like the status quo and some will say we can’t afford to do this right now. I would say we can’t afford not to do this right now. It’s not OK with me that we are 49th in the nation in higher education [funding]. We need to do better.”
Shapiro’s plan would lower the tuition in the new higher education system to $1,000 a semester for full-time students or families making less than the median household income (about $70,000). Part-time students also would be eligible for a prorated share. It also provides for increasing state grant awards for private college and state-related university students by $1,000 a year.
Between the two affordability initiatives, Shaw estimates 68,000 students would benefit.
In the budget hearings, it became apparent that Republicans, while expressing appreciation the governor put higher education on the front burner, aren’t sold on the direction he wants to go.
Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman, R-Indiana County, questioned how, with dwindling enrollments and fewer high school graduates, bringing the state universities and community colleges together would make them successful.
“Tuition can be zero for students to enroll but if the students don’t literally exist they are not going to enroll,” Pittman said. “It seems to me we should simplify this concept and focus on ways we can incentivize students particularly from out of state to want to be part of our educational construct here in the commonwealth.”
Education Secretary Khalid Mumin replied, “We know that the cost of higher ed is out of control and our ranking says so. If we make college more affordability with flexibility for on ramps and off ramps into workforce development, we will be able to increases enrollments.”
“We don’t have affordable higher education aligned to the workforce needs of the regions of our commonwealth and because things are too expensive,” Shaw said, “you’re not meeting students where they are.”
Sen. Tracy Pennycuick, R-Montgomery County, favored giving money to students directly rather than investing more in institutions, which she said are not offering instruction in career and technical fields where workers are needed and would help to grow the state’s economy.
Besides, the retired military aviation officer said there already exists an affordable college option. She said three of her four children went into the military that offers college education benefits.
“There are ways that poor inner-city Black, brown whatever, they can go to school for free. Join the military. Join the National Guard,” she said. “We have 22 scholarships in the state of Pennsylvania where you join the National Guard, we’ll send you to college for free. Everything’s paid for. That’s a helluva deal. “
Rep. Jesse Topper, R-Bedford County, said the state could incentivize students to pursue certain workforce-aligned majors or attend a Pennsylvania college by offering financial assistance directly to them and attaching a requirement they commit to working in the state for a certain number of years.
Further hesitancy about the governor’s plan emerged during House budget hearings with community college leaders.
Such a restructuring “has the potential to do a great disservice to our community colleges if it’s not done right,” said Rep. Emily Kinkead, D-Allegheny County. Many House Republicans were even harsher in their criticism, with Rep. Kristin Marcell, R-Bucks County, saying the blueprint Shapiro had given to legislators “seems more like a marketing document than a plan.”
Some community college leaders also were skeptical.
“The governor assured us that what we do and the impact we have on communities, and the degree to which we’re able to do that, would not change,” said Donald Guy Generals, president of the Community College of Philadelphia, adding that colleges are “anxious to see how this plays out in the context of a plan.”
As for the proposed move to performance funding, the four state-related university leaders expressed openness to it and praised preliminary conversations about putting students and the commonwealth first.
Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi said she would like the formula to have measurable outcomes that are simple, flexible and reflective of each institution’s mission but added she wouldn’t want it to redistribute current funding available to institutions. “It’s about creating incentives,” she said. “We don’t want to penalize our fellow institutions.”
Temple President Richard Englert said he’d like to see a metric to help draw financially needy students to college. “It’s a shame any student is denied entrance into our institutions because of finances,” he said.
Lincoln’s President Brenda Allen said she is hoping the funding model judges institutions against their own performance rather than against each other’s. She said 65% of students at her historically black university come from financially challenged families and she knows Lincoln’s retention rate is not going to be the same as Pitt or Temple.
Shapiro said his administration has engaged college and university officials, unions, students and more than 30 Republican and Democratic lawmakers to help shape the plan.
“We want folks to give their thoughts,” Shapiro said. “We want to hear from them on how best to do this.”
But House Republican Appropriations Committee Chairman Seth Grove of York County questioned the administration’s openness to ideas, saying lawmakers haven’t been looped in about the blueprint.
“We’re not included in any of this stuff. The people who actually have to vote for it, approve it,” Grove said. “Probably not the best way moving forward.”