PASSHE plan: With new funding, grow enrollments by 20%

By Anthony Hennen | The Center Square

HARRISBURG, PA – In the latest board of governors meeting for PASSHE, leaders celebrated the system’s major increase in state funding and laid out its plan to grow enrollment by 20%.

While the Pennsylvania State System for Higher Education faces major challenges with a shrinking high-school aged population in the state, leaders talked about improving retention rates, eliminating attainment gaps, and expanding into new markets like nondegree credentials.

The new funding from the latest state budget, it was argued, will make the improvements possible.

“Words almost fail me,” PASSHE Board Chairwoman Cynthia Shapira said. “I’m so overwhelmed with gratitude and appreciation to the governor and to the General Assembly for making this investment in the state system universities. It is such an example … of the deep faith and belief in the system and in our students.”

The system will receive a $75 million increase in base funding (a 16% increase) along with a one-time $125 million investment for the system’s redesign. PASSHE also received a one-time $25 million boost last year from the American Rescue Plan.

“We are pledged, of course, now that we’ve received this historic level of funding, to ensure the dollars are invested as wisely as possible – not in routine operations, but to prepare ourselves for the future and be very strategic about it,” Shapira said.

The future, Chancellor Daniel Greenstein explained, will have PASSHE focusing on filling a workforce gap in Pennsylvania by graduating more students with degrees and credentials.

The goals Greenstein set for the third phase of PASSHE’s redesign plan are to increase the number of bachelor degrees awarded by 2,000 annually (a 10% increase), 1,200 more master’s degrees (50%), and 2,500 more nondegree credentials such as certificates (100%).

To do so, the PASSHE system must grow by 18,000 students, a 20% increase, driven by 11,500 more undergraduates.

The goal is a lofty one: PASSHE’s enrollments have fallen by 22% since 2010, as The Center Square previously reported. Greenstein emphasized that a significant part will come from improving outcomes for current students.

“If we were to achieve the highest six-year graduation rate prevailing currently at one of our universities in the system, we would get about one-third of the way to the growth we need to achieve – that’s raising our six-year graduation rate from about 63% to 73%,” Greenstein said. “That shouldn’t be beyond us.”

PASSHE will also focus on attainment gaps that are “real and persistent and nagging,” he said. Racial gaps in the system exist, as do less attainment by rural students and low-income students. Pulling in students who are college ready but not college-bound, adults with some college credits but no degree, and people looking to reskill will also be part of the plan to grow enrollments.

“We can rebuild. We can reinvigorate. We can reinvest,” Greenstein said. “It’s exciting, exhilarating, a little terrifying – but we have great colleagues, we have great faculty, we have tremendous staff. I can’t tell you how excited I am to turn this page, quite frankly, and move forward in this direction.”