Why are they expensive because of budget cuts? Explain.
Average PASSHE cost is $22k/year. What makes up that cost? I bet new dorms, new facilities, $125k/year field hockey coaches, and $168k/year assistant deans make up the bulk of expenses.
Again, what is the primary purpose of PASSHE schools? A basic, good, inexpensive college education or the entire “college experience”? We have private schools and flagships for the college experience.
Have these schools trimmed these high paying admin jobs in-step with enrollment declines? Doubtful.
What makes anyone think that enrollments will increase if we put more money into PASSHE schools? College enrollment has been declining in the US for years. You can’t invent new students. They don’t exist. Demographics.
As far as towns drying up if a school closed…so be it. It happens. I live in Pittsburgh. All the mills left. Life goes on. All the jobs at these colleges are funded from taxpayers. Wealth redistribution, not growth. The patient is dead. Time to pull the plug and move on.
@chmcnm .I grew up in Pittsburgh. My dad was a steelworker. Pittsburgh has rebounded from job loss and has reinvented itself. Some of the smaller towns with colleges may not be as resilient if their colleges close or become less attractive to students. If you are okay with towns “drying up”, great, but it is not pretty.
@sevmom I grew up outside Pittsburgh. Every man in my family was a coal miner including my dad. I understand towns drying up. Very sad but it doesn’t change reality. Too many schools, not enough students.
Should we keep paying big salaries to administrators using tax money or right size our education system and use the money more wisely like giving it to students so they don’t have debt?
Unlikely much money would go to students , no matter what happens. Many kids in many states, have to take on some level of debt. Many states have funding issues and disgruntled taxpayers. It plays out differently, depending on what state you’re in.
If some of the savings from closing places were redirected into better need based scholarships it seems it would more than cover the difference in costs and probably be better for most students.
I’m also in favor of many satellite campuses from Pitt and Penn St closing.
We really don’t need to subsidize so many schools to keep jobs in various places IMO.
Pittsburgh was a big city. Many smaller towns never recovered because they just don’t have the numbers.
PA is a Commonwealth and solidarity between it’s residents is (was?) a core value derived from the steel mills - were in this together and no one left behind.
Also, it’s not just the university administrators - we’re talking about all the businesses in the area + loss of revenue from students not going to college who in turn take less lucrative jobs that pay less in taxes and attract fewer business (especially if the area is now economically depressed and students are unemployed.)
Tennessee promise was explicitly developed because no state can grow if it’s students cant’ or don’t go to college and in turn businesses don’t choose the state because their labor force won’t ave the skills or the knowledge they need.
Why are costs high? Because cost burdens were shifted to students. The state used to cover 70% cost for its state residents, it’s under 20% now. The difference is being paid by students and their families. Often they take only 12 credits/semester and graduate in 5-6 years, delaying profitable employment.
I agree the PSU branches that are glorified community colleges at 4-year costs should be closed, the PASSHE schools clearly repurposed as the state’s directionals ( and, following the SUNY model, identify 1-2 areas of specific academic strengths for which they’ll be the state’s flagship and clearly identified as such ie. Music education, Bilingual education, environmental engineering, MIS, accounting, art/conservation, whatever), and the CCs better articulated with psu/Pitt/temple (right now they articulate with PASSHE).
I also agree they should have agreements with borderline counties.
PASSHE Mission statement(Legislature and former Governor lost sight of this):
As established by the founding legislation, Act 188 of 1982, the primary mission of the State System of Higher Education “is the provision of instruction for undergraduate and graduate students to and beyond the Master’s degree in the liberal arts and sciences, and in the applied fields, including the teaching profession.” Additionally, the purpose of the State System is "to provide high quality education at the lowest possible cost to students
If PASSHE were to return to the original mission and funding to what it was 20 years ago…the PASSHE schools would be much more attractive to in state and out of state students.
Did they lose sight? I don’t see anything in that statement that says we need to build sports stadiums and fund sports that don’t generate revenue. I don’t see anything about building new dorms that are better than private colleges or flagships. Don’t see anything about paying field hockey coaches $125k/year.
Article below is from 2018 about Lock Haven. Notice that revenue declines and enrollment drops yet salaries increase. Not how it works in the private sector. Drop in revenue and less customers equals layoffs and wage freezes. I guess academia is special.
If you really want an eye opener look at the PASSHE schools audited financial statements. For 2018 only 37% of expenses went to teaching. Almost as much went to admin and support.
But what’s scarier is the pension benefits…astronomical.
Noncurrent Liabilities
Unearned revenue 2,030 3,175
Workers’ compensation liability, net of current portion 17,818 16,062
Compensated absences liability, net of current portion 114,800 108,906
Net pension liability 937,757 1,022,458
OPEB liability, net of current portion 2,265,515 1,145,088
Capitalized lease obligations, net of current portion 39,173 42,528
Bonds payable, net of current portion 961,300 1,002,310
Other noncurrent liabilities 94,998 99,826
Total Noncurrent Liabilities 4,433,391 3,440,353
Just for giggles I looked at Pa’s budgets from 2006 and compared to 2018. Budget went from $25.4 Billion to $32.9 Billion in 12 years for a 30% increase yet Higher Ed went from 8% of budget to 5% of budget. Why? Where did it go? It went to PreK-12 and Corrections.
Expensive and Unaffordable are not the same. Something can be expensive but affordable. Something can be inexpensive and unaffordable.
Are PASSHE schools expensive? Don’t know. Average cost is about $21k/year. Less if you commute. In today’s market that doesn’t sound unreasonable for what you get. Not sure I can see the cause/correlation between cost and budget cuts. You have to pay some salaries and upkeep facilities.
Are PASSHE schools unaffordable? Different question. Probably depends on who you ask and their income. When I see PASSHE budgets that spend as much on admin and support as teaching I strongly question whether budget cuts are the sole reason for these schools being unaffordable. Is it possible that the expenses are too high on things that were never meant to be part of the cost structure of these type of schools? Maybe the budget is fine. It just needs to be spent more wisely. Maybe more FA and less overhead.
@MYOS1634 Nobody is arguing the importance of an affordable education option as being important for economic vitality. It’s definitely necessary.
However, solidarity of the citizens doesn’t mean that I swallow the tax and spend philosophy without at least questioning why we need it and is it REALLY necessary. Too many years working on government projects.
I argue that the costs of PASSHE schools aren’t awful. The problem is the bloat. The mission of these schools is to provide a good education at a fair cost. No more, no less. When I see admin and support expenses the same as instruction expenses I question whether the dollars are being spent wisely. The future pension benefits are another issue entirely. Cut some of the overhead and bloat and put it back into FA making the schools more affordable. Problem solved.
Here are some net price calculator runs for an EFC = $0 Pennsylvania resident student (family of 3, 1 in college, $25,000 income):
Campus EFC = $0 PA resident NPC
Commuter On campus
PASSHE:
Bloomsburg 5412* 14842
Indiana 6447* 16846
Shippensburg 8271* 17672
Slippery Rock 10395 14215
West Chester 6030* 17132
CSHE:
PSU Abington 9784+ 19868
PSU Altoona 10458+ 20542
PSU Erie 10458+ 20542
PSU Harrisburg 10458+ 20542
PSU UP 13702+ 23786
PSU WC 9240+
Pitt Pittsburgh 15604 18400
Temple 11369* 21894
<ul>
<li>= Assumes cost of living with parents = $0</li>
<li>= Assumes cost of living with parents = $1800
Note that Slippery Rock is the only one of the PASSHE schools that I tried that used a nonzero cost of living at home with parents, so its commuter net price is higher (even though its resident net price is lower) than the others (Temple also assumed $0 cost to live at home with parents). The PSU campuses used a very low $1800 cost of living at home with parents.
So it does look like some of the campuses will be more expensive in real life than listed (since students living at home consume food and utilities, and transportation for commuters costs money). Those from low income families who are outside of commuter range, or whose commutable campus does not offer their desired major, would find affordability difficult.
Good students with a low EFC often do better at other schools. Average students without money for college are those who have few, if any, options. Close a couple of schools and expand scholarships.
Someone on here was complaining about a coaches salary at a PASSHE school. Franklin is guaranteed $34.7 million. He graduated from a PASSHE School…East Stroudsburg University. Football is big business.
The complainer was me. Do I think we have a skewed sense of value when it comes to education and sports? Yes. However, D1 football is big business whether I agree or not. Paying a football coach big $ is the cost of doing business. They generate enough revenue to cover costs plus a $4 billion endowment doesn’t hurt. I’m sure some boosters chipped in to pay the coach. I do enjoy college football.
Paying a field hockey coach $125k/year for a DII school with 2,800 kids in the middle of nowhere where the median income is $48k/year causes me to pause. PASSHE schools directive should be best education possible at the lowest cost. All of these schools are public and compete in the PSAC. Try to find their sports budget. I can’t. Should be readily available and transparent to the taxpayer.
The state system has done some many things wrong over the past 20 years, it’s hard to find enough space to tell the story. The demographic trends were known 20 years ago, yet the schools went on a spending spree for “suite” style dorms, fancier buildings, additional layers of administration - everything thing except focusing on their mission of being an affordable alternative, or focusing on providing a better product at a lower cost (what people in the private sector need to do to survive).
I hear all the time about the advantages of private schools or PSU having endowments. But that really points to a different issue - PSU and private schools produce better graduates, who earn more, and are then more able to donate to create these endowments. State Schools, just like private or state-related schools, have alumni development offices to solicit donations - but the results are not even close. Even without the endowment earnings, state owned schools receive enough govt funding to relatively match the annual endowment earnings, so again, the point is somewhat moot.
I am an LHU grad, so I have not come to this conclusion hastily or easily. I always thought my kids would attend a state school, until I looked into the changes of late, and compared state-owned to private schools. Private schools now, without the state aid, offer about the same tuition cost as LHU, to students with decent academic records. Combine that with LHU (and most other state-owned schools) having an almost 200 point lower average SAT score, and you see what we have. State Schools have largely become the choice for students with poor academic records - many who are simply not college material. This did not happen overnight, but it hasn’t been a surprise, as state-owned schools continually weakened enrollment standards over the years to maintain incoming students, all to preserve revenue. It has gotten downright ridiculous, in fact. LHU freshmen currently have a 37% rate of graduation within 4 years. At Cheyney, it’s 10%.
We should be closing schools, and the remaining Universities, if they are truly places of higher learning, should be teaching the lessons learned from this mess to students, instead of their typical partisan bellyaching about blaming government. We hear the same sound bytes every spring at budget time, that state funding is causing the issues. But numbers don’t lie…private schools, with less money at their disposal, are eating the lunches of the state=owned schools. The rats are fleeing the state-owned ships and it will take drastic measures (which I doubt we’ll see until the end) to save them. This situation was created over many years by supposedly educated professionals, and I’ll be darned if I’d trust them with my children’s intellectual advancement.
So what does that say about the Penn State Branch campuses? Well…enrollment is down significantly…19 branch campuses…look there for a contribution to the issue.
Penn State sees enrollment decline at commonwealth campuses, boost at University Park https://www.centredaily.com/news/local/article237316449.html
The reality is that the population of traditional college aged students has decreased. Passhe generally serves many 1st generation college students that have less average household income and an opportunity for many to attend college.
Some 1st generation passhe college students may not think that law school would even be a possibility…check out this announcement…
Perhaps finding a way to work together rather than opening 20 branch campuses in the past 20 years would have made sense…maybe in makes sense moving into the future??
Again…there are flaws, nothing is perfect. The history of PASSHE is quite impressive and has a history of providing an opportunity…maybe an opportunity that someone couldn’t get somewhere else…