Nordenberg urges Senate to restore funding next year

A University panel met with Pennsylvania state senators in an effort to increase Pitt’s… A University panel met with Pennsylvania state senators in an effort to increase Pitt’s involvement in the state-funding process after state appropriations decreased by $40 million this year.

Members of Pennsylvania’s Senate Appropriations Committee met on Monday with Chancellor Mark Nordenberg and his panel — which included Student Government Board president Molly Stieber, a professor and the chair of Pitt’s Board of Trustees — to plead Pitt’s case for an increase in funding for next school year.

Nordenberg said that the discussion was “a clear signal that they take the issues seriously” during the four-hour public meeting in Alumni Hall.

The meeting follows months of budget bickering, which began when Gov. Tom Corbett slashed Pitt’s state appropriation by 22 percent in June. The cuts contributed to a $70 million deficit in Pitt’s annual budget, causing it to increase in-state tuition by 8.5 percent, a $28 million boost. But the extra cash only covered 40 percent of the budget cap, and University officials said it would cut from programs and departments to make up the remaining $42 million deficit.

Previously, Pitt has remained tight-lipped about which programs would face cuts, but at the meeting, Nordenberg said that issues such as facility maintenance and library system acquisitions might suffer as consequences of the cuts over time.

Pitt biological sciences professor Graham Hatfull said on the panel that University research has also been negatively affected by the budget cuts because his department has had to make operational cuts.

“The research infrastructure must be strong, and it becomes strong by having a good faculty and the ability to bring in external funds,” Hatfull said. “It would be very difficult to absorb further cuts.”

Hatfull stressed the importance of research to a university.

“The better the research, the better the undergraduate education. The better the undergraduate education, the better the research,” he said.

State Sen. Jake Corman, the Republican chair of the appropriations committee, said the goal of the meeting was “to understand the investment [the state is] making, and the return that we are getting,” referring to both the economic and social returns of the state’s funding for higher education.

Nordenberg said the current levels of state funding are unacceptable for the future of higher education.

“I don’t think that we should accept this year as the new normal,” he said. “The impact of most of the cuts is nothing you would see instantaneously.”

Stieber continued the defense of Pitt students’ economic vulnerability, saying that the in-state tuition was a vital influence in her decision to come to Pitt.

“People have to work really hard to come to college,” Stieber said. “Not everyone can come to college with their parents paying for it.”

She said the reduction in state funding could have something to do with the state’s perception of Pitt.

”For the state to reduce our funding, it makes me think that the state doesn’t think the University is a good investment,” Stieber said.

“We cannot balance the debt on the backs of Pennsylvania’s and the country’s finest students.”

Stephen Tritch, chairman of the Board of Trustees, concluded the testimonies of the University panel by appealing to the state senators to restore state appropriations to the University.

“We did not expect to be targeted for the state’s budget-cutting responsibilities,” Tritch said. “I can only hope that you will make the restoration of appropriations to more reasonable levels of funding a high priority as you begin building the Commonwealth’s budget for the next fiscal year.”

Democratic Appropriations Chairman Vincent Hughes, D-Montgomery, conceded the necessity of higher education to facilitate economic growth and admitted that the amount of funding cuts was extensive.

“By investing in [higher education] institutions, you can create higher-paying jobs,” Hughes said. “[Universities] are not just centers for learning, but they are centers for economic growth that put people to work at a higher level of wages.”

Corman, R-Centre, stressed the need to find a healthy balance between state funding and private revenue.

“We’d like to give money to the universities, but we have to have it to give it,” Corman said. “This is the just the beginning of a conversation that is overdue.”