Penn State, targeted for a 54 percent cut in the budget proposed by Gov. Tom Corbett in March, will instead see its state funding cut by 19 percent under a agreement between Corbett and top Republican lawmakers.
The House Appropriations Committee on Friday approved cuts of 19 percent, a total of $130 million, for Penn State, Temple, Pitt and Lincoln. Appropriations Chairman Bill Adolph, R-Delaware, said the agreement includes an 18 percent cut, about $90 million, for the 14 universities in the State System of Higher Education.
State Sen. Jake Corman, R-Benner Township, said the 19 percent cut for Penn State and the other state-related universities is not what he had wanted, but is better than Corbett’s original proposal.
“I don’t know if I’d say (I’m) satisfied, but when you reach a compromise no one is thrilled,” said Corman, who is chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “To get down to 19 is strong movement.”
But Democrats, who weren’t involved in budget negotiations, say the state has hundreds of millions of dollars in surplus cash it could use to ward off the potential for tuition increases.
“A ‘yes’ vote to this is sitting back and remembering that we do have that money, we do have that surplus money,” Rep. Scott Conklin, D-Rush Township, said before the committee vote. “A ‘yes’ vote to this is saying, ‘I’m voting to decrease funding to my university by 19 percent.’ A ‘yes’ vote to this is telling those people that go there, ‘You’re going to have a
tuition increase.’ ”
Corman said also being negotiated, but not yet finalized, is a proposal to maintain funding for agricultural research and cooperative extension and separate that money from Penn State’s appropriation. If those items are not in Penn State’s budget line, they won’t automatically be subject to the same level of funding cuts.
“Hopefully in the future they’ll do much better if they’re not tied to higher education,” Corman said.
Penn State President Graham Spanier wouldn’t comment on the details of the budget agreement Friday, saying he hadn’t received confirmation of the numbers from the state yet.
But he said there is “a mix of emotions” when it comes to the state budget proposal on the table.
“I’m very grateful that the legislature has moderated the level of the cut from what was originally proposed. The difference between where it started and where it is now is about one-third of our appropriation, so that’s a very substantial improvement,” he said. “But we can’t forget that it would still represent a cut of somewhere in the order of $62 million, at the numbers I’m hearing today. That’s still a lot of dollars for us to make up.”
He said the university will be ready to adopt a budget and set tuition for the 2011- 12 fiscal year at the trustees’ July 15 meeting.
Spanier said the university is “very committed ... to not putting an excessive burden on the backs of our students.”
“We expect to have a tuition increase that is what you might see in a normal year,” he said, “not a substantial increase of the sort that you’re going to see at universities around the country this year.”
He said tuition hasn’t been set yet and declined to give a range for the increase.
Spanier said the university does worry about the possibility that it could face similar cuts in state support in the coming years.
“We need to find out if the cut that was proposed for us this year was really to help the state on a one-time basis and we will get into some normal, annual increase from this point on,” he said. “Or, whether we might see the possibility of another proposal in a subsequent year for a large cut. That would affect our long-range planning.”
The university received about $264 million for general education in 2010-11, including $12.5 million in federal stimulus funding. State funding totaled $334 million when agricultural research, cooperative extension and the Pennsylvania College of Technology are included. State appropriations make up about 17 percent of Penn State’s general education budget.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
