Jul 19, 2023 14 min read

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. July 16, 2023.

Editorial: Funding for state-related universities should not be a political game

Funding for Pennsylvania’s so-called “state-related” universities — the University of Pittsburgh, Penn State, Temple University and the historically Black Lincoln University — has become an annual political battle in Harrisburg. The resulting uncertainty about funding hurts the current and prospective students of these institutions, who don’t know how much they’ll have to pay, as well as faculty and staff, who won’t know how much they’ll be paid. They don’t deserve to be jerked around every summer while politicians play games.

This should be the last year the state uses this process to support these four universities. Gov. Josh Shapiro’s higher education working group should devise a new solution that provides a more permanent funding stream while preserving in-state tuition breaks and ensuring accountability.

Rocking the boat

The state-related system had been relatively stable until the last few years, when the University of Pittsburgh’s fetal tissue research programs drew the attention of Republican legislators. In a much more petty squabble, some GOP politicians turned on Pitt because former chancellor Mark Nordenberg chaired the Legislative Reapportionment Commission they felt favored the Democrats.

The grandstanding, however, raised an important point: If the state-related universities get funding from the legislature, the legislature will ask what they’re funding. In an era of increasing ideological polarization, that means the colleges have to fight publicly and privately for their money (and their reputations) every summer.

This year’s Republican objections to state-related funding are also less transparently ideological: They want a tuition freeze in return for a 7% funding boost, and enhanced transparency in the form of the four universities being fully subject to the state’s Right-to-Know Law and increased financial reporting requirements. The transparency requirements, in particular, are reasonable: We have previously argued that Pitt, for instance, should have to be more forthcoming about its new chancellor’s contract.

But forcing the issue with a $600 million gun to the universities’ heads isn’t appropriate. Unfortunately, the legislature can do that under the current system.

An idiosyncratic system

The four state-related universities together form the Commonwealth System of Higher Education. There is no other arrangement like it in the country.

Every year, the General Assembly passes individual appropriations bills for each university, and must do so with a two-thirds supermajority. In return for this funding, which amounts to less than 10% of the schools’ annual budgets, the colleges offer discounted in-state tuition and seats on their boards: At Pitt, that’s a $16,000 break on tuition, while the legislature appoints 12 of the 36 voting board members.

State law requires each school to appear before the Senate and House Appropriations Committees at least three times per year. But in addition to these official visits, the schools also have to lobby Harrisburg, meaning they have to shell out for government relations in order to get their funding. It’s a necessary but poor use of money.

It also leaves students and staff in an annual limbo. During the 2015-2016 budget standoff, which dragged into the new year, Pitt set tuition rates but not the amount set aside for salaries, making it hard for academic and administrative units to plan ahead. During the 2009 impasse, the university reserved the right to bill a tuition surcharge, which it fortunately did not do.

A long-term solution

Gov. Josh Shapiro, early in his term, convened a working group of higher education leaders from across the commonwealth to study how to improve the system as a whole, including both the state-owned State System of Higher Education — which includes PennWest, Indiana and Slippery Rock in the Pittsburgh region — and the state-related Commonwealth System. This was an important step in the right direction In a state with one of the lowest levels of public support for higher education.

For the state-related universities, the first priority should be an objective, consistent funding scheme, based on data rather than lobbying and the whims of the legislature. Those metrics should emphasize, as they do in many other states, retention of students and the completion of degrees, not just raw numbers of students. They should also privilege the success of in-state students on Pell Grants, to enhance socioeconomic diversity and equality of opportunity. And that funding should be guaranteed year-to-year, not subject to annual negotiations.

A new system should also include full compliance with the state’s Right-to-Know Law. If universities want the benefit of significant state funding, and the standing that comes with being a quasi-public institution, they need to abide by state transparency rules.

This year’s budget process has, at least for now, careened off the rails — and this should be the last year the state-related universities get taken along for the ride. Mr. Shapiro and the legislature can regain some trust — each other’s and the people’s — by creating a new, more permanent system to not just maintain, but improve higher education in Pennsylvania.

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Scranton Times-Tribune. July 18, 2023.

Editorial: Don’t reduce anti-violence grant funding

A long, cold state budget impasse marks the long, hot summer at the state Capitol.

Lawmakers will beat the heat by taking off the rest of the summer — the Senate will return Sept. 18; the House, Sept. 26. The legislators should use the long recess to reconsider a foolhardy decision that they included in the budget regarding gun violence. (Though the budget has passed, it can’t be implemented without related legislation.)

One of the most pressing problems left on the table is gun violence. There is scant hope that the Legislature will take needed action outside the budget to diminish gun violence — measures such as a “red flag” law by which courts temporarily could remove weapons from people known to be dangers to themselves or others, mandatory reporting of lost or stolen guns, limits on monthly gun purchases to thwart weapons distribution to criminals, and allowing local governments to enact stricter laws than the state’s lax standards.

But it is remarkable that lawmakers have agreed, in the budget awaiting implementation, to reduce funding for community violence prevention programs.

For the fiscal year that ended June 30, the state added $75 million of federal pandemic relief money to a grant program for community organizations to fight gun violence, bringing the total to $105 million.

The new budget includes $40 million for the grants — a $10 million state increase but a net reduction of $65 million.

As of Friday, 201 people in Philadelphia have died by gun violence and 776 others have been wounded. That’s a heavy toll but it reflects progress, a 21% decline in homicides and a 28% overall decrease in shootings from the same period of 2022.

The decline cannot be attributed solely to community anti-violence programs. But grants that increased the availability of safe after-school programs, improved the quality of and access to athletic facilities, and otherwise focused on community intervention, undoubtedly contributed to the momentum.

Even if they are unwilling to tackle gun violence directly, lawmakers should ensure that communities have the ability to do so indirectly by restoring the full grant program.

The decline cannot be attributed solely to community anti-violence programs. But grants that increased the availability of safe after-school programs, improved the quality of and access to athletic facilities, and otherwise focused on community intervention, undoubtedly contributed to the momentum.

Even if they are unwilling to tackle gun violence directly, lawmakers should ensure that communities have the ability to do so indirectly by restoring the full grant program.

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Wilkes-Barre Citizens’ Voice. July 17, 2023.

Editorial: One campaign at at time

Political candidates project confidence while campaigning, but it is striking how often officeholders run for two offices at once to hedge.

The practice serves the candidates better than it serves governance.

In many cases, an incumbent who seeks reelection while seeking a higher office effectively shuts out other candidates who would seek the open lower seat.

In some cases, it enhances an officeholder’s power. A school board candidate who seeks election to a four-year seat and to a two-year seat and wins both, for example, is in a position to promote a like-thinking appointee to the two-year seat.

The practice also enables officeholders to enter races for higher office and the existing office just to diminish the prospect of a candidate seeking the higher office.

When a candidate wins two seats, a special election sometimes is required to fill the one that the victor abandons. That can be costly and disruptive of governance.

State Rep. Russ Diamond, a Lebanon County Republican, noted that special elections were necessary to fill the state House seats of Democrats Summer Lee, who won state House reelection and election to the U.S. Congress in November, and Austin Davis, who was reelected to the state House and as lieutenant governor. When they vacated their House seats, they temporarily reversed the one-seat majority that Democrats had won.

Diamond, who ran for two seats in 2004 and 2022, wants to terminate the practice for state House and Senate members. It’s a good idea that should apply to all state and local offices.

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LNP/Lancaster Online. July 12, 2023.

Editorial: College debt didn’t evaporate when SCOTUS ruled against Biden. It’s a problem for Pennsylvanians that must be solved.

We know many readers joined Sen. Aument in cheering the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on college debt.

Some of those who paid off their college debt resented the notion of others being spared the burden.

Some of those who didn’t go to college resented the idea of their tax dollars going to help the college-educated who have, theoretically at least, more earning power.

We understand those viewpoints.

We also understand the counterargument that Republican politicians and their family businesses were among those forgiven their hefty pandemic Paycheck Protection Program loans.

And we appreciated the January letter to the editor from Scott Miller of Warwick Township, who correctly noted that “we’ve bailed out the airlines, banks, credit unions, investment firms, insurance companies, auto manufacturers, meat packaging industry” and others. Miller wrote that he’s a “lifetime Republican in favor of investing my hard-earned tax dollars in our younger generation and giving our young people a chance at the future.”

As Aument pointed out in his Perspective column, “there are still millions of Americans with trillions of dollars in outstanding student loans.”

And, as he wrote, while “it’s true that some of these borrowers have not budgeted well and will struggle to repay their loans because they were irresponsible with their money, the reality is that most of these borrowers are trapped in a system that was designed for them to fail. They’ve been diligently making monthly payments for years without even putting a dent in their overall debt due to excessively high interest rates.”

The student loan debt crisis burdening generations of Americans has consequences for us all.

Those overloaded with college debt are less likely to contribute to the economy by starting small businesses or by buying vehicles and homes.

The increase in student loan debt is tied to a decrease in homeownership among younger adults, According to Brookings Institution research, the average Black college graduate owes $52,726 four years after graduation, compared to $28,006 for the average white college graduate. That is a crushingly unjust disparity.

There are all kinds of reasons individuals end up saddled with student debt.

Some students resort to private loans with higher interest rates because federal loans don’t cover college costs and their parents are unable to fill in the gaps. Some graduates work in careers that are important to society but not lucrative. Some students don’t complete their degrees, dimming their prospects of ever paying off their loans.

Then there are the costs of going to college.

According to the Biden administration, the total cost of both four-year public and four-year private college has nearly tripled, even after accounting for inflation, since 1980. Aument wrote that the average annual cost of college tuition has increased by more than 3,000% since 1969.

They illustrate it in different ways, but the bottom line is the same: The cost of college tuition has skyrocketed.

And simply advising against going to college isn’t the answer.

While we are enthusiastic supporters of technical colleges — chiefly Lancaster’s Thaddeus Stevens College — they are not the place for everyone.

And while Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro eliminated four-year college degree requirements for most state government jobs, many jobs today still require a college degree.

Withholding state aid from the commonwealth’s publicly funded universities isn’t the answer, either.

Appropriations for Lincoln University, Penn State University, Temple University and the University of Pittsburgh are currently caught up in the state budget impasse. As Spotlight PA explained, one proposed bill would have provided “a little over $640 million in aid for the commonwealth’s four state-related universities, a more than 7% increase from last year.This money has historically subsidized tuition for in-state students at the institutions.”(The italics are ours. Withholding this money isn’t going to help Pennsylvania students.)

Aument proposes reconsidering how we fund higher education institutions and establishing “a performance-based funding model to hold these institutions accountable for the tuition they charge and the results they produce.”

In his Sunday column, Aument suggested reconvening the Higher Education Funding Commission (which was created in 2019 via legislation he proposed) for this purpose. We’re not only commission-weary, but skeptical that this would be helpful. We need to tamp down, not further encourage, the circus antics currently playing out over higher education in Harrisburg.

While Aument rightly lambasted the “broken system that’s unfairly taking advantage of millions of borrowers and profiting off it” — a flawed system that is “no longer serving students, but preying on them instead” — he does not specifically mention in his column the role that lenders play in that system.

While Aument rightly lambasted the “broken system that’s unfairly taking advantage of millions of borrowers and profiting off it” — a flawed system that is “no longer serving students, but preying on them instead” — he does not specifically mention in his column the role that lenders play in that system. Scrutinizing the practices of lenders — and pressing colleges and universities to reduce tuition — both seem imperative.

proposed the “Student Loan Retirement Agreement Program,” in which college graduates would agree to pay a fixed percentage or “share” of their income for a fixed period of time, in exchange for having all or a portion of their student loans paid off. It would be administered by the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency and be funded by a revolving line of credit using existing assets.

Adding more bureaucracy to the college debt labyrinth doesn’t seem like the best answer to us.

Still, we appreciate that Aument is seeking solutions. Many other Republican politicians applauded the high court’s ruling and then just moved on, as if the matter were settled.

Sadly, it is not. And young Pennsylvanians know this all too well.

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