Harrisburg -- Longer-range budget planning was the main issue before the presidents of Pennsylvania's four state-related universities at the state House budget hearing in Harrisburg Tuesday (March 3). As in the past several years, Penn State President Spanier joined Ivory Nelson, president of Lincoln University; Mark Nordenberg, chancellor of the University of Pittsburgh; and Ann Weaver Hart, president of Temple University, to answer questions from the state House Appropriations Committee.
Shortly before the 1 p.m. hearing, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell issued a press release announcing that the state would receive $1.9 billion in federal stimulus funds. According to the release, Rendell's plan is to use $42 million in 2009-10 to restore planned budget cuts to the four state-related universities, including Penn State. The federal stimulus law includes specific parameters for how the funds can be used, including the restoration of cuts in funding for higher education. Penn State also is facing a 6 percent recission this year ($21.2 million) in state appropriation for 2008-09.
"Certainly the stimulus bill does good things for next year and the following year," said Dwight Evans (D-Philadelphia), chair of the state House Appropriations Committee. Evans noted, however, that the stimulus money is a temporary solution to the long-term issue of funding for higher education in Pennsylvania. He and others on the committee focused not on the stimulus money, but on the larger issue of how to address higher education funding in the future.
Penn State President Graham B. Spanier echoed Evans' points. "That $42 million collectively helps us with our operating budgets. But that doesn't represent an increase in our budgets. That just gets us back to zero. It helps us avoid some of the more Draconian cuts on a short-term basis," Spanier said. "With the governor's announcement this morning that for 2009-10 there would be no cut in our budget -- but also no increase -- it's important for us to talk about what we're going to do going ahead. We're still expecting great challenges within the state-related universities, and even though some of the stimulus money may help us on a short-term basis, we're worried about the structural problem within the budgets that may exist one or two years hence."
Nordenberg also agreed that some long-range planning involving the legislature and higher education institutions would be warranted. "To have some kind of effort to rationalize the responsibilities and contributions to be made within the Pennsylvania higher education community would make a great deal of sense," he said. "Really what happens in the next two years is in fact going to tell a good bit of the tale in terms of what we're able to do three years, four years, five years and 10 years down the road. There is this cliff we're facing, and we need to find a way to climb out of the economic crisis."
Both university leaders said the stimulus money, while good news, would not be a replacement for a tuition increase. Spanier said the money would help Penn State hold the line on its tuition increase, but an increase still is necessary to keep up with inflationary pressures on the University.
Also during the hearing, Spanier was questioned about funding for agricultural research and Cooperative Extension.
"That continues to be a very significant part of what we do. I don't understand the rationale for why the separate identification for those two line-items was zeroed out in the budget and simply folded into larger University budget. We were not consulted on that, and I'm not actually supportive of that move," Spanier said.
Spanier said that the University continues its enthusiastic support for agricultural research and Cooperative Extension. "Agriculture is so important to Penn State and to the Commonwealth. Our plan of course would be to give those line-items their full fair share of whatever our appropriation turns out to be."
In terms of increasing efficiency within the University, Spanier assured the legislators that Penn State is among the most efficiently operating institutions in the country, as indicated by extensive benchmarking. "We are not a university system in the usual sense. We have one governing board, one president, one dean of the libraries, one fundraising operation. We don't duplicate people in positions throughout the University so we are able to have efficiencies you would not find in other comparable states," he said.
The Legislature will work in the coming months to finalize the state budget by the June 30 deadline.