Editorial: Pitt, Penn State boards should approve flat tuition

Leaders of Pitt and Penn State, heed our call: Boldness is more easily accomplished when… Leaders of Pitt and Penn State, heed our call: Boldness is more easily accomplished when you’re not alone. When you meet on Friday, July 13, take cue from your sister universities and join the fight to convince Harrisburg of your collective fiscal responsibility. Don’t raise tuition this year.

Since we urged Pitt on June 27 to consider a tuition freeze (“Pitt should follow flat funding with flat tuition rates”), one of our counterparts did just that. Now that Pennsylvania legislators have definitively rolled back Gov. Tom Corbett’s proposed cuts to higher education, Temple University moved swiftly to demonstrate concern over the rising price of college — it kept tuition at last year’s levels. Temple’s move follows state-related school Lincoln University, which in April voted on a tuition rate that merely rises with inflation (3 percent). According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pitt Chancellor Mark Nordenberg and Penn State President Rodney Erickson together agreed on June 29 to recommend lower-than-inflation tuition increases to their respective boards of trustees.

Both boards will meet to vote on tuition levels this Friday, July 13. We just hope they’re receptive not only to their executives’ pleas, but also to the power of precedent and the overwhelming need for Pennsylvania universities to make such decisions, at least this year.

No one’s new to this subject — large and regular tuition increases have made it more difficult to afford college student status in the state of Pennsylvania, as well as virtually anywhere in the U.S. As financial aid experts such as Mark Kantrowitz explain, much of the current tuition problem stems from a precipitous drop in state support of higher education, thanks to the recession’s effects on tax revenues and funding priorities. As our own white-haired paragon of higher ed austerity, Corbett seized the governor’s mansion in 2011 promising to slash appropriations to the state-related schools by half. Though he only initially succeeded with a 22 percent cut and a 5 percent mid-year spending freeze (for Pitt, similar for others), the result of his efforts clearly illustrated how college accessibility depends on state support — Temple increased 2011-2012 tuition by 10 percent, Pitt by 8.5.

Therefore, if the hope is to preserve the public schools’ mission — i.e. to educate Pennsylvania’s masses and spawn brighter futures — from entering the realm of facade, Pitt and its counterparts need to do whatever they can to keep the public money flowing. However painful it might be to subject themselves to the often-mercurial mercy of each passing Harrisburg administration, public universities must nevertheless consent to proving their worth year after year.

The obvious way to do so in 2012 is by flattening tuition. Looking for ways to reduce state spending, Corbett has contended that public institutions have no right to taxpayer money because of fiscal irresponsibility — that tuition rates increase above inflation without changes in state support. What better way to demonstrate commitment to sustainable budgeting than for the public institutions to, as a group, keep tuition stable in a year of stable funding? And the best part is, Penn State and Pitt would not be alone.