Dive Brief:
- The board of governors for Pennsylvania's 14 state-owned universities may ask the state for a 12% funding increase.
- The request, recommended by the board’s finance committee, would help the system avoid a tuition increase for the 2015-16 school year, the Morning Call reported.
- Since taking an 18% state funding cut a few years ago, the university system’s funding has remained flat.
Dive Insight:
If the board approves the proposal, it will be asking for $462.7 million — or $49.9 million more than the state funding for 2014-15. That amount would cover the current budget shortfall for the university system. In the past, budget gaps have been filled by tuition hikes, programs cuts, and layoffs. The newspaper reported that the finance committee rejected a proposal to seek a long-term funding agreement with the state legislature to increase the university system’s budget by $20 million a year through 2020, along with annual 3% tuition increases.