Columnist: Corbett's budget cuts threaten large increases in public college tuition

[JPZenger]

http://www.pennlive.com/editorials/index.ssf/2012/05/gov_corbetts_cuts_make_univers.html

column in Harrisburg paper by a Temple U. professor

Excerpts:

"Corbett avers that the net effect of the cuts on our institutions is small, for instance, just 1.8 percent of the total budget of Temple. In a sleight of hand, he includes the entire Temple Health System budget in his calculation, though the state funding he refers to can be used only for the academic part of Temple, not the medical part.

Public university tuition has been rising because Pennsylvania funds higher education poorly. From 2001 to the current year, Pennsylvania’s annual higher education funding fell 9 percent. At Temple, as the student body has increased by 28 percent during the last decade, undergraduate funding on a per-student basis dropped 47 percent.

With the consumer price index surging 29 percent in the decade, tuition in Pennsylvania climbed more than it would have with adequate state funding. And circumstances are worse during the Great Recession. Since 2007, Pennsylvania has slashed higher education funding by 15 percent, four times the rate for all states in the nation.

Gov. Corbett says tuition is out of control. It is certainly high, but does he think that cutting funding will reduce it? Look at the facts: Few private universities come even close to Pennsylvania’s public universities in low tuition.

Take my institution, Temple, whose in-state rate is $13,000. Meanwhile, Holy Family, the least expensive private university in the Philadelphia area, charges $24,000. St. Joe’s, La Salle, Drexel and Villanova are at or above $34,000. Even for non-Pennsylvanians, the tuition at Temple is under $23,000. By the way, Gov. Corbett’s alma mater, Lebanon Valley College, in Annville, charges $33,670 in tuition. Temple enrolled 27,572 Pennsylvania residents this year, so state funding subsidizes $5,000 per in-state student."

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http://publicsource.org/investigations/will-pa-use-vouchers-and-grants-for-higher-education

The above piece is about a proposal to shift towards more of a voucher system for PA. college funding. The intent would be to cut funding to public colleges and instead direct more funding towards need-based grants. It would help private colleges at the expense of public colleges, and would particularly hurt public branch campuses.