EDITORIAL – Rendell too tight on

Gov. Ed Rendell’s proposed budget for the next state fiscal year tops $28 billion, but little… Gov. Ed Rendell’s proposed budget for the next state fiscal year tops $28 billion, but little of the funding will go toward state-related universities.

According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Rendell has proposed a 1.5 percent increase in funding for state related universities – a value that fails to match both the rate of inflation and many of the increases in the rest of the budget. Heads of Pennsylvania’s four state-related universities – Pitt, Penn State University, Temple University and Lincoln University – testified before the House Appropriations Tuesday, calling for larger allocations than Rendell’s proposed 1.5 percent increase in funding. And they’re not alone. Some state lawmakers, including Rep. Dan Frankel, D-Squirrel Hill, who is a Pitt trustee, are also calling for an increase in state-related university funding.

“We need to be more responsible, ultimately. Other states are [providing] five, six, seven times what we’re doing in Pennsylvania. We need to change something,” Frankel said in the Post-Gazette.

Chancellor Nordenberg has requested $202.8 million in funding for the next state fiscal year, an 8.5 percent increase from the current year’s state appropriations. If Rendell’s proposal goes unchanged, we will only see about $170.3 million in funding for the next fiscal year.

Rendell’s state-related university slight might be indicative of a nationwide trend. While other states are certainly surpassing Pennsylvania in public university appropriations, across the board, funding for higher education has not been able to keep up with the inflation rates, causing many universities to revert to raising tuition nearly every year. Just this month, the House of Representatives passed legislation that would cut down on states’ eligibility for new federal grants if the states reduced financing for public colleges.

While Rendell’s budget proposal would technically be an increase in public university funding, its failure to match inflation rates will probably force Pitt and other state-related universities to raise tuition.

Those against increasing state funding for public universities might argue that Pitt’s and other universities’ rapidly increasing endowments should help to subsidize the gap in funding. But why should it?

We’re not saying that Pitt’s endowment shouldn’t be funneled back to the students. In fact, we think more of it should be used to provide financial assistance to students struggling to pay for college. But it’s improbable to suggest that Pitt and other large public universities use money from their endowments to help subsidize funds that would be gained by increasing tuition.

For one thing, what contributor would go for that? Alumni donating money want their names attached to buildings, memorials and scholarships – not across the board tuition breaks. Secondly, Pitt and other publicly affiliated universities were designed to rely on state funding in order to keep tuition costs lower than private universities. They shouldn’t be required to draw on their own endowments to keep this promise when the state isn’t holding up on its own end of the bargain.

In the last decade, Pitt has earned a reputation as one of the most elite public universities in the country, a fact that should make Gov. Rendell and other state lawmakers proud.

We just wish they’d put their money where their mouth is.