On July 14, 2021–on the heels of COVID, in the dead of summer, with many consequential questions left unanswered–the Board of Governors for Pennsylvania’s State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) unanimously approved consolidation plans for three universities in western Pennsylvania (California, Clarion and Edinboro Universities of Pennsylvania) and three in the north (Bloomsburg, Lock Haven and Mansfield Universities of Pennsylvania).
Education Voters of PA opposed the rushed approval of these consolidation plans.
These consolidations save no money, will not reduce tuition, and will force students in the consolidated universities into an unknown number of online courses because the programs they need and the faculty members who are teaching them will no longer exist on their campuses. A study by Amherst University found that the cuts resulting from this consolidation and system redesign would amount to the loss of 14% of overall PASSHE employment — a magnitude equivalent to the largest private-sector plant closings and mass layoffs of the previous decade in Pennsylvania.
And these consolidations did not need to happen. They are the direct result of the Pennsylvania legislature’s choice to abandon its support for public higher education.
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.
In 1982, state lawmakers believed in the value of supporting the Commonwealth’s children as they studied to become teachers, counselors, nurses, engineeers and other professionals who are critical to our communities and to the economy as a whole. The state funded 75% of the cost of going to college and families paid for the rest. PASSHE schools were engines of upward mobility for first-generation college students becuase they were affordable and their locations made them accessible to students throughout the Commonwealth.
Unfortunately, Pennsylvania’s lawmakers have abandoned their committment to funding higher education.
Pennsylvania lawmakers have slashed funding for higher education by more than 30% since the Great Recession and the Commonwealth ranks close to dead last in the nation in funding for higher education.
Today, students and their families pay nearly 75% of the cost of attending colleges and Pennsylvania’s college graduates are now burdened with the third highest student debt in the nation.
Increasingly unaffordable tuition has put the dream of a college education out of the reach of many Pennsylvania students and driven down enrollment in state universities. Low enrollment was the reason PASSHE Chancellor Greenstein cited as the reason for needing to consolidate the universities.
The consolidation vote is the first step in a long process that continues to have many unanswered questions. The PA legislature, which has been loath to provide funding that would make higher education more affordable and accessible for students, has allocated $75 million in the budget this year to support the PASSHE consolidation plans. We will follow this process closely and advocate for voices of students and university employees who teach them to be heard as PASSHE moves forward.
We will also continue our advocacy for more funding from the state to make higher education more affordable and accessible for Pennsylvania’s youth, starting with reallocating $200 million in funding away from cash prizes for wealthy horse owners to scholarships for students who atttend state system universities.
As we wrote in this op-ed, it is past time for state lawmakers to straighten out their priorities. The Commonwealth provides more funding, on average, to each racetrack than it provides to each PASSHE campus.
Pennsylvania should be consolidating racetracks, not public universities.
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