Gov. Tom Wolf’s proposal to increase support for the State System of Higher Education by 15%, up to $550 million, is a smart investment in Pennsylvania’s future. During the tough budget negotiations to come, the Republican-led legislature should preserve it.
The boost will help stabilize a system that is struggling to survive after a tumultuous decade of declining enrollments. The universities have delivered on at least some necessary reforms; now, it’s up to the state to allocate sufficient funding to sustain high-quality education while the system continues to make necessary changes.
As a first step, six local universities merged into two regional ones — one in the west and another in the northeast — to improve efficiency. The system was overbuilt; if it had been unwilling to make structural changes, no amount of funding (outside of a purchase by Jeff Bezos) would have saved it.
The state system also seems willing to examine and refine its mission; those efforts must continue. Its universities can’t compete with the University of Pittsburgh in philosophy, Carnegie Mellon in technology and any number of dedicated liberal arts schools in the humanities.
But the system can embrace its tradition of training passionate, competent professionals for Pennsylvania and beyond. The state system began as a network of teacher training academies and can thrive again as a network of institutions, each with its own unique strengths, dedicated to producing high-quality professionals for key areas of the regional economy.
Even with reforms, the system needs a funding boost that will pull Pennsylvania out of the basement for state support of higher education. The commonwealth currently ranks 47th out of 50 states. More state support also should reduce the cost barrier for middle-class and lower-income families and help ensure the state’s public system of higher education is serving a genuinely public purpose.
Mr. Wolf is giving the system a substantial nudge in that direction with his proposed Nellie Bly Tuition Program, which would dedicate $200 million to helping students access the system, as well as community colleges, to pursue programs in high-demand fields in Pennsylvania, such as health care, education, and public service.
The coming fiscal year is an extraordinary one. The combination of a faster-than-expected economic recovery and multiple federal stimulus packages has given the state a rare windfall. It will be tempting for the state to blow it all at once and for recipients of extra funding to make long-term plans based on this year’s appropriations.
But for public higher education in particular, that would be dangerous. It’s not time to try to restore the past; it’s time to use this windfall to stabilize the system’s decline and to reach a new, forward-looking, sustainable status quo.
First Published: February 10, 2022, 5:00 a.m.
