Pa. State System universities to craft their own tuition rates every two years

The board of governors of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education approved a policy Thursday giving the 14 state-owned universities the power to set their own tuition based on factors including area household income and cost of living, and individual program expenses.

Schools could roll out new tuition rates as early as fall 2020, said Kenn Marshall, media coordinator for the system. Tuition rates will apply for two years at a time, and universities’ price tags will be due to the board of governors in April for approval.

Under the existing system, the board sets base tuition. It will continue to set prices for any schools that decline to propose their own figures. Average in-state tuition in Pennsylvania was $7,934 in 2017-18.

“This policy will allow the universities to better plan, budget, and allocate their resources over multiple years, helping to ensure their long-term stability and success,” board chairwoman Cynthia Shapira said in a statement. “By making tuition more predictable, it will allow students to plan for their education expenses.”

The policy is part of System Redesign, a multiyear plan for a “sharing system” among the schools to centralize administrative operations like financial aid management and cut operational costs, said system chancellor Daniel Greenstein.

Moving forward, the system hopes to offer course-sharing, where students can take online classes through other state-owned institutions, Marshall said.

The measures are designed to shore up a struggling system. Enrollment at state-owned schools, currently about 98,000, fell for the eighth year in a row in 2018, and is down from 119,513 in 2010. Mansfield University has experienced a more than 50 percent decline in enrollment since 2010. Cheyney University, the nation’s oldest historically black college, enrolled just 469 students last fall, down from 1,586 in 2010.

“Southeastern Pennsylvania is still growing. In western Pennsylvania, enrollment is declining, the number of high school graduates is declining,” Marshall said. “That’s why across the system we’re seeing declining enrollment, and one of the factors is changing demographics.”

Of the 14 schools in the state system, only West Chester and Slippery Rock Universities saw increased enrollment during the same period.

Prior to the new policy, some schools piloted their own tuition strategies with board approval. Millersville University has charged students on a per-credit basis for years, and students pay different tuition based on their programs. This makes students more deliberate in selecting their programs, said Janet Kacskos, director of communications at Millersville.

“When you’re paying per class, it helps them hone in on what they want to do,” she said. “We’re hoping it will improve graduation rates. Rather than having kids take five-, six-plus years to graduate, when they’re paying per class … they’ll be a little bit more thoughtful in their choices.”

Laurie Carter, president of Shippensburg University, which is concluding a trial per-credit tuition system, plans to combine what the school learned from the initiative with data on the student body to formulate yearly costs.

“Folks who think that there is one piece of data that you can look at to make these decisions are not really thinking in the best interest of students,” she said. “Students are diverse, they have diverse needs, and we have to be able to develop a tuition pricing plan that is … going to allow students who want access to Shippensburg University and its high-quality education that access.”

“The beauty of the policy," Carter added, "is that each institution with its own distinctive nature, its own culture, its own region, can look at its data, its student body, and be able to come up with a plan that is the best fit for them.”

Correction: This story was updated to reflect the average in-state tuition for Pennsylvania State System schools was $7,934 in 2017-18.