Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) officials met with Gov. Tom Wolf and the state legislature in support of an increased 2017–18 budget for PASSHE schools.

Chancellor Frank Brogan met with the House and Senate’s appropriations committees in light of Wolf’s Feb. 7 budget proposal. The proposal is for increased funding to the 14 state-owned universities.

PASSHE’s Board of Governors has requested a 2017-18 budget of $505.2 million for next year’s budget to help support each university’s operations, according to a PASSHE press release. If approved, the budget will provide PASSHE with a $61 million increase in comparison to the 2016–17 fiscal year budget. The increase was proposed partially due to the $80 million cost increase PASSHE will face in the upcoming year.

“All of our universities continue to face enormous cost pressures,” Brogan said. “Increased investment by the commonwealth is essential as they strive to provide the high-quality, high-value educational opportunities our students, their families — and you — have come to expect.”

Brogan said an increase in funding would be considered welcome during a time of financial struggle for PASSHE.

Although PASSHE has received increased support from the state government in the last two years, the state’s universities receive less funding than they did prior to the recession that began a decade ago. Since then, PASSHE has worked to trim its budget by cutting its workforce and base budgets. Today, there are 1,000 fewer full-time employees on PASSHE campuses than there were seven years ago, according to the press release.

“After last year’s House and Senate hearings, we hope to see an increased understanding of the importance of our public universities in Pennsylvania,” said Kenneth Mash, Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties (APSCUF) president. “We firmly believe each of our 14 universities serves a vital purpose within its community and, most important, to our students.”

Brogan said an increase in PASSHE’s budget will lead the state’s universities in the right direction financially, and enhance its students’ opportunities.

“Those opportunities not only are essential to the students who attend the universities, but also to every one of us living here in Pennsylvania,” Brogan said. “We’re really talking about an investment in the commonwealth’s future.”

A final version of the budget for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s 2017–18 fiscal year is due on the governor’s desk by June 30. The House and Senate appropriations committees will hold a series of public hearings on Wolf’s proposed budget in the upcoming weeks.

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