Proposed state budget cuts would cause Pitt tuition to rise

Pitt students’ tuition will rise next year as a result of potential cuts in state funding for… Pitt students’ tuition will rise next year as a result of potential cuts in state funding for higher education, the chancellor said.

Chancellor Mark Nordenberg said during a news conference this afternoon that Pitt will definitely have to increase tuition, but that it will try to keep those increases in “manageable ranges.”

The news came hours after Gov. Tom Corbett introduced his proposed budget, which would reduce education funding by almost $900 million — and Pitt’s $167 million appropriation by about half.

The appropriations, ironically, are designed to help state-related schools, such as Pitt, provide in-state students with lower tuition rates.

This year, state appropriations accounted for about 9 percent of the University’s operating budget. Nordenberg said that it was too early to know what programs might be affected by the cut, though the University would look to every program for cuts. It will attempt to avoid layoffs, he said.

“We have a history that suggests there are certain alternatives that are not good for us, that are not good for our students, would not be good for consumers of our research and would not be good for the region,” Nordenberg said.

Pitt, along with Penn State, Temple and Lincoln universities, receives a yearly appropriation from the state legislature as an incentive to keep tuition lower for in-state students. These state-related universities differ from the 14 universities in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, which receives most of its funding from the legislature.

In Corbett’s first budget address as governor Tuesday morning, the Republican said that perennial tuition increases were a sign that the current system for funding higher education was not working.

“This fiscal crisis is a time to rethink state spending on higher education,” he said. “Despite state subsidies on higher education, tuition has continued to increase. If the intent was to keep tuition rates down, we failed.”

The proposed budget needs to gain approval by the state legislature before becoming law, and hearings on budget items will begin in the next few weeks.

The governor’s spokesman, Kevin Harley, said that this would be the first step in changing the formula on funding for higher education in the future. He said that Corbett wanted to fund the students rather than the institutions, which he said have not been held accountable for yearly tuition increases.

“We had $4.1 billion deficit to close, we have to find money to close that,” he said. “Pitt, Temple Penn State and Lincoln are going to have to tighten their belts.”

Harley said that Corbett wanted to have money follow the students to various state institutions using the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency. The budget proposal called for a $30 million cut in that agency’s $440 million budget.

Corbett called the $27.3 billion, 1,100-page proposal a “reality-based budget,” which included no tax increases — in line with his campaign promises — and cut state spending to 2008 levels.

The budget proposal included a number of other initiatives, like cutting the state’s capital and supply taxes and creating a task force that would examine privatizing the state’s liquor stores. It also included a continuation of the film tax credit, which Corbett said would help to bring jobs and money into local economies.

State Sen. Jay Costa, the Democratic floor leader and a member of Pitt’s Board of Trustees, said that Democrats had a number of concerns about the budget. He said in comments to PCN, a non-profit cable television network, that the budget cuts to higher education were “draconian.”

“This budget is balanced on the backs of working people,” he said.

In the news conference this afternoon, Nordenberg said his time leading the Governor’s transition committee on education gave him no indication of the impending cuts. The transition team was assigned to work on short-term issues and did not play a role in long-term budget strategies.

“I had no idea cuts of this magnitude would be envisioned by the governor,” he said.

The chancellor said that the voices of the 150,000 students in state-related universities, including Penn State, Temple, and Lincoln, along with their families could play an important role in the proposed budget’s future.

“It is a potentially powerful force in terms of the discussions to come,” he said.

Nordenberg said he and his staff will visit in Harrisburg “quite often” in the coming weeks leading up to the appropriation hearings in the state capital March 28.