Pennsylvania ranks 49th in the country in funding its state institutions of higher learning and 48th in affordability.
In an effort to improve these statistics, Governor Shapiro has recently proposed a 15% funding increase for Pennsylvania’s state institutions of higher learning, including all fifteen (15) of the state’s community colleges.
The interesting component of this funding increase, however, is how Governor envisions the additional funding be allocated. It is not a flat, across-the-board 15% funding increase to all community colleges. Instead, it is a performance-based scheme, modeled after that used by many other states, wherein the amount of additional funding a particular institution receives is based on how that institution performs on several criteria. Under Governor Shapiro’s plan, more funding will be provided to universities with strong graduation rates, high numbers of first-generation college students, and high placement of graduates in certain jobs – i.e. those suffering from workforce shortages or those that are critical to the state economy.
If Governor Shapiro’s proposal is enacted into law, state universities will be immediately thrust into a new frontier that will require them to earn, and potentially compete for, state funds. The type of criteria that will determine allocation of funding, and which will therefore become state universities’ overarching goals, figure to follow those outlined by Governor Shapiro in his preliminary discussions of the proposal. While this could incentivize community colleges to pursue common goals, it might also direct their resources and efforts away from their pursuit of locally-specific goals. Therefore, the funding – and thus performance – of community colleges whose locally-specific goals do not align with the state-dictated goals could suffer, leading to inequities in funding and in quality of our Commonwealth’s community college education.
Stay tuned for developments with the Governor’s proposal as they arise.
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