UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State’s commitment to keeping costs low for students and the ways in which the University utilizes state funding to benefit Pennsylvanians were among the topics of conversation during a hearing of the Pennsylvania House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday, March 8.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf has proposed a 5% increase in Penn State’s funding for the next fiscal year, and Penn State President Eric J. Barron, who testified at Tuesday’s hearing along with the leaders of the commonwealth’s other state-related institutions, said additional state support is critical to Penn State’s efforts to control the cost of a degree, particularly for low- and middle-income students and their families.  

“There is absolutely no doubt that there is a correlation between state support and tuition,” Barron told the committee.

The hearing, which was Barron’s last as Penn State president ahead of his May retirement, follows his March 3 testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee.  

How state funding impacts Pennsylvania students and the state’s future

As the commonwealth’s sole land-grant institution, Penn State carries out its three-part mission of teaching, research and service on behalf of Pennsylvanians in partnership with the state. Barron said that state dollars make it possible for Penn State to offer an in-state tuition rate that saves the average Pennsylvania resident undergraduate $13,000 per year off the cost of nonresident tuition. He also noted that Penn State’s appropriation of approximately $5,400 per Pennsylvania student is the lowest of any public higher education institution in the commonwealth; yet the University more than doubles the state’s appropriation on a per-student basis as part of its commitment to providing a world-class education that is accessible and affordable for Pennsylvania’s working families.  

State support also is vital to the University’s ability to innovate, to recruit and retain leading faculty and staff, and to invest in the quality of its academic programs. Barron said these factors, along with the in-state tuition discount, are critical to helping Penn State remain competitive for the state’s top students, especially in the face of increased competition from out-of-state institutions that recruit heavily in Pennsylvania.

“We have neighboring states that are willing to undercut our tuition in order to get our bright students to cross the boundary because they have the support that they need,” Barron said. “On the other hand, we also have to make sure that our students have quality. If you do not invest and we do not have quality institutions, then you don’t just lose lots of students, you lose the best and brightest students that Pennsylvania has.”

Barron said that because the state maintained higher education funding during the pandemic and through Penn State’s institutional focus on cost savings and efficiency, students graduating this May only experienced one tuition increase in the last four years — a 2.5% rise for the current academic year. However, he emphasized that increased state support is needed to keep costs low for students moving forward and allow institutions like Penn State to make the necessary investments to continue to serve the commonwealth’s interests.  

“As we work to cut costs and cut costs with what are sub-inflation state increases, and in our case sub-inflation tuition, our students in real dollars are paying less today than they were four years ago or 10 years ago,” Barron said. “One of the things that worries me is there is less money for innovation.”  

Barron talked about factors outside of tuition that impact the overall cost of a college education and contribute to student success. He detailed advances Penn State has made with student scholarship support through the University’s “A Greater Penn State” campaign, as well as programs under the Achieve Penn State initiative that are focused on removing barriers to help students graduate within four years and with less debt. He also discussed how Penn State is working to support student food and housing security, including convening a University task force focused on this critical issue and establishing a food security endowment, which was seeded with a $525,000 gift by President Barron and his wife, Molly.

“This isn’t just about keeping tuition level,” Barron said. “We really have to focus on scholarships, roadblocks, housing security, food security. It’s really hard to take an exam on an empty stomach.”

How state funding benefits Pennsylvania’s economy

Barron also discussed Penn State’s role in educating the state’s future workforce and pointed to the University’s programs in high-demand fields such as engineering, the sciences, and petroleum and natural gas engineering as being integral to Pennsylvania’s economic future.

“We’re keenly interested in where our students go,” Barron said. “We have a career fair that already signals to us, because it’s one of the largest in the country, that our graduates are in very high demand.”

As a testament to Penn State’s focus on career success, a 2019 survey of corporate recruiters ranked universities based on which best trained, educated and prepared graduates for success once hired, and Penn State tied with MIT for fifth in the nation. With more than 380,000 Penn State alumni living in Pennsylvania, and with 90,000 students and 24 campuses, no other entity has a greater hand in training the state’s workforce than Penn State.

As part of Penn State’s land-grant mission, additional state dollars support Penn State Agricultural Research and Extension, which delivers agricultural education, serves rural communities, and provides research-based knowledge to help address the challenges facing the state’s agriculture industry. Because agricultural research and extension programs are not supplemented with tuition dollars, Barron said increases in state funding are necessary to keep pace with inflation and to leverage matching federal and county funding.

Barron talked about the importance of increased state investment to the ability of the College of Agricultural Sciences and Penn State Agricultural Extension to grow and be staffed at a level where it can continue to meet the needs of the state’s agriculture industry. He noted Penn State’s current work around avian influenza as one example of how the University supports and impacts Pennsylvania agriculture.   

“You see we jump right into the battles,” Barron said. “We have an avian flu that is quite serious — the threat to the economy of Pennsylvania is on the order of $13 billion. We have moved into what we call our emergency mode where we're using the Animal Diagnostic Lab in order to do testing. We're creating an educated citizen corps to make sure that we're aware and can sense what's happening, when it's happening. So, we’re still doing exactly that service, but we are increasingly stressed to be able to provide the types of services to a major part of the Pennsylvania economy than we have before because funding has been flat, there's inflation and salaries, and everything else that you have to think of.”

State funding also is critical to the academic mission of Pennsylvania College of Technology in Williamsport, a Penn State affiliate with a focus on applied technology education, as well as to Penn State Health and the College of Medicine, which provide Pennsylvanians with access to high-quality medical care.

Full details about the governor’s proposed 2022-23 funding for Penn State — and how the University would use additional support to impact Pennsylvanians — can be found here.

Penn State’s commitment to economic development

Additionally, the governor’s budget proposal includes Penn State’s request for $2.35 million in new funding for economic development extension efforts under Invent Penn State. Modeled after Penn State Agricultural Extension, Invent Penn State, through its statewide network of LaunchBoxes and Innovation Hubs, is supporting new businesses and entrepreneurs, creating jobs, and driving economic growth and revitalization in communities across Pennsylvania.

“Invent Penn State and our economic development program has really been set up as an end-to-end approach to entrepreneurship,” Barron said. “Students can take classes in entrepreneurship in almost every major, there are competitions across the University, and one part of this is to have what we call a LaunchBox or innovation hub at every campus. I originally thought there would be six or seven, but there are now 21 of them. We have a LaunchBox within 30 miles of 96% of the population of the state of Pennsylvania. It is a remarkable outcome, and they are all supported by the local communities and open to community members.”

During the pandemic, these physical locations became a connected, cohesive virtual network, giving entrepreneurs from anywhere in the state, regardless of experience level or Penn State affiliation, no-cost access to accelerator programs, business startup training and incubation, funding for commercialization, co-working space, makerspaces for prototyping and fabrication, legal and intellectual property advice, and collaboration and mentorship.

Available for free to anyone in the commonwealth, the LaunchBox and Innovation Hub Network is the embodiment of the University’s 21st-century land-grant mission, Barron said.

“The way I like to look at it is that Penn State and its mission as a land grant has agricultural extension in every county,” Barron said. “Why as part of this mission to serve the commonwealth shouldn’t we also promote economic development? The product of this is hundreds of new jobs, and we are on our way to 300 new companies in the state of Pennsylvania.”

Since 2015, Invent Penn State has assisted nearly 5,000 Pennsylvania entrepreneurs; engaged with more than 13,000 Penn State students, faculty and staff; helped to launch 218 new Pennsylvania companies; completed 201 product development projects; and created more than 300 new jobs and nearly 500 internships. 

State funds for Invent Penn State would be used to strengthen and grow the LaunchBox and Innovation Hub Network, expand established entrepreneurship training programs and startup pitch competitions with additional staffing and support services, and increase access to the Pennsylvania Technical Assistance Program to support more businesses.

The University’s appropriation is expected to be finalized this summer, as the General Assembly must agree upon and present a 2022-23 state budget for the governor’s signature by the end of the fiscal year on June 30. Penn State students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends are urged to voice their support for Penn State and the University’s state funding at Advocate Penn State Capital Day on March 30. To learn more, and to help support the University’s legislative priorities, visit advocate.psu.edu.