Courtney Balcombe

News Editor

clb6264@psu.edu

The redesigning of Pennsylvania state universities could lower tuition costs by 25 percent in the next five years.

However, Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) Chancellor Dan Greenstein said that the “stretch” goal of reducing student cost cannot be achieved without some dramatic changes in the system’s structure.

Greenstein appeared before separate panels of Senate and House education and appropriations committees on February 9th to offer a progress report on the system’s plans for reshaping itself to stabilize its financial situation and expand student opportunities.

“The system is troubled,” Greenstein said. “Over the past decade, it has lost 21 percent of its enrollment and because it has not adjusted its cost structures and because the state is 47th in the nation in terms of public expenditures on higher ed, it is severely challenged. As schools contract, they struggle to offer the full range of programs required by their students and their regions.”

According to PennLive, this plan would combine six universities into two separate universities. These universities include Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, Lock Haven University, and Mansfield University of Pennsylvania to create one university in the northeast, and California University of Pennsylvania, Clarion University of Pennsylvania, and Edinboro University into one in the western part of the state.

Greenstein said the two integrations would leave all six impacted institutions, as well as the whole system, better off financially. He continued to say it would also enable those universities to better serve the low- to middle-income students the system was born to serve by lowering the cost of attendance while seeking to grow its enrollment beyond traditional students to underserved markets.

Both sets of universities intend to maintain their traditional residential college offerings but will expand the academic programming so students attending one university can take courses offered at other universities in the triad, Greenstein said.

The system envisions the western universities – Clarion, California, and Edinboro – setting up fully online undergraduate degree and degree completion programs to serve those seeking a fully remote education.

The other group of universities – Bloomsburg, Lock Haven, and Mansfield – plan to offer non-degree and short course certificates to serve those looking to reskill or upskill, fulfilling a need in that region of the state.

“We can’t meet that goal, we can’t achieve that growth without our universities and colleges doing better with people who have been underserved historically: low-income students, rural students, students of color, and adults who are looking to reskill and upskill,” Greenstein said.

The proposed plan calls for universities to maintain their names, and use that name on the diplomas they issue. Each school will maintain its own athletic teams and discussions are underway with the National Collegiate Athletic Association, NCAA, to ensure that.

PASSHE is working on a plan that will allow more online degree programs at the western universities, and incorporate more certification programs at the northeastern ones.

Greenstein hopes to have a plan to submit to the PA legislature by April. He said 1,000 workers at those six state universities are working on plans to reimagine what higher education can be.

If the plan is approved, the new state university integration plan could be in effect by the fall of 2022.