You have /5 articles left.
Sign up for a free account or log in.
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro signed the state’s budget for fiscal year 2024–25 into law on Thursday, creating a coordinating board of higher education, providing community colleges and the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) system with a 6 percent funding increase, and launching the development of a performance-based funding formula.
Although it does not meet every goal of Shapiro’s sweeping plan to overhaul higher education in the Keystone State, the bipartisan budget represents a major step in bolstering colleges and universities stretched thin by years of budget cuts and an oversaturated market.
“I’m proud to sign this budget into law that makes historic investments in education,” Shapiro said in a press release. “Pennsylvania is the only state in the nation with a divided legislature—and I’m proud that we came together with leaders in both Chambers and both parties to show that we can do big things together to make Pennsylvanians’ lives better.”
The new State Board of Higher Education will not combine and govern the 10 state-owned PASSHE universities with its 15 community colleges, as Shapiro had originally hoped. However, it will coordinate and support actions from all state institutions, including the University of Pittsburgh, Penn State, and Temple and Lincoln Universities—which are not state-owned but receive state funding.
The board will also include a council charged with recommending a better way to distribute funds for higher education in years to come.
Currently, the state has no formal funding model and two-thirds of the legislature must approve the suggested budget. It will be the council’s job to design and propose a new performance-based metric to divvy up funding in a less politically influenced way. Lawmakers have suggested the board consider factors such as graduation and student retention rates.
For now, the legislature has reached an agreement to provide community colleges with a collective $15.7 million year-over-year increase and the PASSHE system with a $35.1 million increase. The state-related institutions generally received flat-funding.
It also separately delivered over $120 million in increased funding for scholarships and grants to make college more affordable, $25 million of which will sponsor a new scholarship—proposed by Republicans—called “Grow PA” that gives students in an “approved course of study,” such as nursing or education, up to $5,000 per academic year. The students must then stay and work in Pennsylvania after graduation for 12 months per grant received or pay back the grant as a loan.
