Pitt loses 19 percent of state funding

It’s official; Pitt’s appropriation from the state drops 19 percent this year.

Governor… It’s official; Pitt’s appropriation from the state drops 19 percent this year.

Governor Tom Corbett signed the bill into law late Thursday night which allocated $136 million to Pitt as a state-related university, down from the $168 million it received this year. The state Senate and House both passed identical bills earlier in the week that set out the 19 percent funding cuts.

The university funding bill required a two-thirds majority in both chambers, and was voted on separately from the general spending bill — also signed Thursday.

Now that the state passed its budget, Pitt’s in-state tuition, along with the rest of the University budget, will most likely be decided on at the Budget Committee meeting on July 8. Tuition will likely go up by more than 4 percent for in-state students.

Chancellor Mark Nordenberg said in a statement that he felt grateful the state cut less than Gov. Corbett’s originally proposed halving of Pitt’s funding, but still said that the remaining cuts are “deep and disproportionate.”

“Among our most fundamental challenges will be to maintain high levels of access for students of modest means through tuition rates that are as competitive as possible and through further investments in our programs of financial aid; to provide appropriate levels of support to high-performing members of our faculty and staff; and to continue investing in the programmatic excellence that has come to distinguish Pitt,” Nordenberg said in the statement.

Along with the 19 percent reduction to general appropriation, Pitt also faces a 50 percent reduction to its academic medical center funding, which includes the School of Medicine, the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, the School of Dental Medicine Clinic and the Center for Public Health Practice in our Graduate School of Public Health.

“Reductions at that level, particularly following a decade of declining state support, obviously will subject the University to significant financial stresses,” Nordenberg said.