UNIVERSITY PARK — Saying Pennsylvania is at crossroads when it comes to funding higher education, state Sen. Jake Corman held an appropriations hearing Wednesday that gave Penn State leaders a chance to talk about the university’s work and why state support for it is so important.
President Graham Spanier, board of trustees Chairman Steve Garban, academic and administrative leaders and a student took turns telling members of the Senate’s Appropriations Committee what the university’s teaching and research means to residents, businesses, students and jobs in Pennsylvania. The hearing in Penn State’s Forest Resources Building is the first of four the committee will hold, with others scheduled to take place at the remaining three state-related universities.
Penn State gets about 14 percent of its general education budget from the state, with most of the rest — 78 percent — coming from tuition and fees. Spanier said that when adjusted for inflation, the state appropriation has half the purchasing power that it did in the mid-1990s.
“The state appropriation is crucial to the ongoing success of Penn State as the commonwealth’s only land-grant university,” Spanier said, adding that it “moderates the cost of attendance for in-state students, as well as the agricultural research and cooperative extension programs that contribute so much to Pennsylvania’s economy.”
Spanier and the others who testified detailed what the university means for scientific discovery, agricultural extension, medical care, military research and jobs in Pennsylvania and took questions from Corman and other senators on the panel. Student government President T.J. Bard, the first in his family to attend college, said that growing up in Greencastle his parents instilled in him the value of an education.
“They were adamant that I would attend a university, gain an education and not struggle as so many in my family had before,” Bard said.
He applied and was accepted to two schools — Penn State and George Washington University.
“There was, though, one extremely large difference — the cost of tuition,” he said. “My family did not have the means for a college fund and no real ability to help me out financially.”
Penn State, he said, gave him access.
Gov. Tom Corbett had originally proposed cutting funding for Penn State and the other state-related universities — Pitt, Temple and Lincoln — in half in the state’s 2011-12 budget. Bard said the University Park Undergraduate Association heard from countless students concerned about what that would mean. In the end, the state budget cut support almost 20 percent.
“We’re gaining an education that would not be possible for so many if the circumstances were to be different,” Bard said.
Spanier said that cutting the state funding — $279 million this year -— would in effect turn all students into out-of-state ones who pay the entire cost of their tuition.
Members of the committee also heard from Vice President for Research Hank Foley about the $804 million in research funding the university is bringing in this year, and from Executive Vice President Rod Erickson about the Commonwealth campuses where 90 percent of students are Pennsylvania residents.
College of Agricultural Sciences Dean Bruce McPheron and Vice President for Outreach Craig Weidemann also testified.
The state cut follows a decade of flat funding. In his introduction at the hearing, Corman said that the four state-related universities received $685 million combined in 2001. Adjusted for inflation that would be $860 million now. Instead, the state support dropped to $559 million.
“I believe higher education funding is coming to a crossroads,” he said.
He said the hearings are a chance for the universities to tell the public what taxpayers’ dollars are spent on and make their case about why cuts harm their mission and the Commonwealth. He said there has been discussion recently about why the four universities get state support, and the state could either begin to rebuild its support or phase it out, an issue that will be discussed over the next couple years.
“I think you can make a very good case that these are well-invested taxpayer dollars,” Corman said.
In response to a question from a reporter, he said he hasn’t met with Corbett about what the governor’s budget proposal next year may look like, but that so far the state is preparing for flat funding or even less.
Anne Danahy can be reached at 231-4648.
