The Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) is made up of fourteen public universities located in communities throughout the commonwealth.When PASSHE was established in 1982, its purpose was to provide a  high quality education at the lowest possible cost to students. Historically, PASSHE schools have been engines of upward mobility for first-generation college students.  But the  Pennsylvania legislature’s failure to fund these schools over the past two decades has put the dream of a college education out of the reach of many Pennsylvania students.

Pennsylvania ranks close to dead last in the nation in funding for higher education.  This has made tuition increasingly unaffordable for students from working families, as they have picked up an increasing share of college costs through increased tuition and fees. And it has left Pennsylvania’s college graduates with the third highest student debt in the nation.

And now, just as schools and students are beginning to recover from the impacts of COVID, the PASSHE Board of Governors, with the support of many lawmakers, has decided to consider a “consolidation” plan at three universities in western Pennsylvania (California, Clarion, and Edinboro Universities of Pennsylvania) and three in the north (Bloomsburg, LockHaven, and Mansfield Universities of Pennsylvania). These consolidations would kill thousands of good-paying jobs, upend the economies of six rural communities, and force students to take an unknown number of online courses,  as departments and programs will be eliminated from campuses. 

After the summer 2020 announcement about consolidation possibilities, the State System needed first to determine whether what it calls “integrations” were financially feasible. The Board of Governors heard these results at its October 2020 board meeting, which you can watch in its entirety via the State System’s YouTube channel, and voted to move forward with the planning portion of the process. The State System presented its plans to the Board of Governors on April 28th.

The plan leaves many important questions unanswered, and fundamentally, it does not address the long-term sustainability of the State System. But it does create new problems and challenges for students, faculty, and university communities and local economies across the state while leaving many questions unanswered, including: 

• Forced hybrid model-– many programs will require students to take online courses, but the plan doesn’t outline how many credits in a program will have to be done online.
• Equity issues–asking students to come on campus to do hybrid (online and in-person)learning but without any guaranteed access to computers, wi-fi, locations to connect to online courses, etc. We’re rushing to get K-12 back in person, but now we’re saying we need MORE online, not less, for college students who attend our state system schools. It doesn’t make sense.
• No cost savings–the consolidation plan puts in writing what many feared was true: consolidation was initially billed as a way for the State System to cut costs in order to be a more sustainable system for the future, but the plan shows that consolidation does not save any money. And tuition will not decrease. It will cost MORE than stabilizing the current system.
• Unanswered questions–what does it mean for four State System schools to become “branch campuses” in consolidated triumvirates? What’s the impact on students? Is there a guarantee that schools will be able to keep their athletic programs?

At the April 28th meeting, the board voted to move the draft plan to a 60-day public comment period. This is  where you come in.

It’s clear that the PASSHE chancellor and many state lawmakers are eager to jam this proposal through before it is scrutinized and before anyone has time to carefully consider what it will mean for students and their families.

Please take a few minutes to share your thoughts both with your state lawmakers and the PASSHE Board of Governors, who will vote during their July 15th meeting to proceed with this plan or to put on the brakes and and take the necessary time to answer important questions.

Click HERE to find a draft letter with various questions and concerns about the draft consolidation plan to your state lawmakers and to the Board of Governors. Submit that letter as a public comment as is or edit it as you see fit. 

It will take less than 5 minutes to submit a comment. And every comment will help decision makers think more carefully about steamrolling through a “consolidation” plan that will have a long lasting impact on public university students, on communities, and on the future of the commonwealth as a whole.