Pennsylvania's state-run colleges need a shake-up, chancellor says
HARRISBURG – Pennsylvania's state university system needs a major shake-up to remain solvent, the commonwealth's top higher education official said Thursday.
"Everything has to be on the table," Frank Brogan, chancellor of the State System of Higher Education, told the Senate Appropriations Committee during a hearing on the system's budget. "If sacred cows are created along the way, they will stack up … and nothing will happen."
The need for change, Brogan said, is urgent. Facing a years-long decline in enrollment and tuition income, as well as squeezed budgets, the system is struggling with a roughly $60 million deficit, he told senators.
As part of his $32.3 billion budget proposal, Gov. Wolf has asked for an $8.9 million boost for the system's 14 universities, to $453 million. But that's just a fraction of what the system has said it needs after years of largely stagnant funding under the previous administration.
Since 2010, the system has seen its student population drop from 120,000 to the 105,000 it stands at this year, a 12.5 percent decrease.
Brogan said Thursday his agency was on the verge of hiring a consultant to look at everything from enrollment trends to college facilities, to make recommendations on streamlining operations. The study, expected to cost up to $500,000, will be completed by the summer. At that point, said Brogan, the system will announce its proposed changes.
Financial woes were one reason behind last fall's short-lived faculty strike, the first in the system's 34-year history.
System officials have not ruled out merging or closing some of the 14 colleges or universities. Closing campuses was not discussed during Thursday's budget hearing, but the idea seemed to be the elephant in the room.
On Wednesday, the system's board of governors had approved an $8 million line of credit for one school in the network, Cheyney University. The Chester County school has been plagued by financial struggles as well as failures in managing financial aid to students.
But Brogan warned that using funding from other colleges in the system to prop up one institution "is mathematically no longer possible."
Sen. Andrew Dinniman, a Democrat whose Chester County district includes West Chester University, another State System school, applauded that sentiment. Among the 14 state-run colleges and universities, West Chester is the only one that has seen rapid growth.
"I am happy to hear that the solution is not to harm the institutions that are successful," he said.
Nearly a quarter of those attending the State System schools are from Philadelphia and Montgomery, Bucks, Chester, and Delaware Counties.
Sen. Vincent Hughes (D., Phila.), the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, cautioned against pitting one university's fortunes against another's.
"Let's be clear: This issue of supporting one another is what the system was designed to do," he said. "A system was created because somebody felt it was the responsible thing to do."