Gov. Josh Shapiro’s recently unveiled plan to revamp public higher education in Pennsylvania proposes such bold measures as $1,000 grants for all students and performance-based funding for colleges. But perhaps no provision is more remarkable than the prong of the plan that calls for combining the state’s 15 community colleges with the 10 four-year universities of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education.
The state’s two-year institutions all operate independently under local control. They belong to the Pennsylvania Commission for Community Colleges, a nonprofit advocacy group that coordinates lobbying efforts, but there is no state entity coordinating policy or programs among the community colleges, or among other public colleges in the state. That means the two-year institutions must compete for students and state resources with the PASSHE campuses and four highly independent state-related university systems, including the mighty Penn State University, which has 19 branch campuses across the state. This has led to underfunding, a lack of cooperation between institutions, and higher costs for students.
If approved, Shapiro’s proposal could begin to change the equation for Pennsylvania’s community colleges and their students. The days when public colleges could all compete with one another for abundant fresh high-school graduates are over for now, in the Northeast and elsewhere. The move toward a system for the state’s two-year institutions may be a necessary step for their long-term success in a new century — if such a move can be managed.
Many states are looking for ways to deal with overbuilt systems and waning numbers of traditional-age students and arriving at consolidation. Over several years, Connecticut merged its community colleges into a single institution that joined its regional four-year campuses in a system. Wisconsin merged its community colleges with regional public universities and closed one two-year campus. In Pennsylvania, the PASSHE system merged six of its struggling campuses into two new institutions.
While many states face difficulties with their public colleges, “Pennsylvania is probably in the worst shape of any,” says Davis Jenkins, a senior research scholar at the Community College Research Center at Columbia University’s Teachers College. Up until now, he says, there’s been little statewide vision for revamping a public higher-education sector built up in the 1960s, when the state was more populous, leaving community colleges, especially, locked in zero-sum competition with other public colleges, all left to plead their cases to the legislature separately.
Shapiro’s proposal, announced this month, contains no detail on how a new system would work, if approved by the legislature, but Quintin B. Bullock, president of the Community College of Allegheny County, which has four campuses in the Pittsburgh area, believes joining a community-college system could bring advantages. It could benefit his students by lowering costs, easing transfer to PASSHE institutions, and opening up a wider range of credentials. “Creating a more unified system or voice has the potential to yield stronger outcomes and results,” he adds, “because we’ll have everyone working together and aligned with clear priorities and outcomes.”
Disinvestment and Depopulation
Most two-year institutions could use some help, but perhaps especially in Pennsylvania. The state tied with Arizona for doling out the nation’s second-lowest level of state support to public colleges — $6,100 per full-time equivalent student — according to an analysis of data from the 2022 fiscal year by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association. Pennsylvania’s citizens are spending only $158 annually per capita in support of public higher education in this fiscal year, according to SHEEO’s estimates in its annual Grapevine report. Only New Hampshire residents spend less, at $125 per capita.
Among public colleges, community colleges typically receive less support than their four-year peers, and in Pennsylvania that support has been falling. The state’s 15 two-year institutions received a total of $364 million from the state in the 2017 academic year, a recent peak, according to data compiled by the research center. By 2022, that had fallen to about $318 million, a decrease of 13 percent. (Thanks to the federal Higher Education Emergency Relief Act, federal funding for Pennsylvania’s community colleges nearly doubled during the Covid pandemic, from $221 million in 2020 to $414 million in 2022.)
The Pennsylvania Commission for Community Colleges, the nongovernmental advocacy group, is involved in presenting its member institutions’ budget proposals to the state legislature. Representatives there did not respond to several messages regarding this story.
Shapiro, a Democrat who is in his first term, “knows that something has to be shaken up,” says Eboni M. Zamani-Gallaher, interim dean of education at the University of Pittsburgh, one of the state-related institutions. The proposal’s increased state grants for students tacitly acknowledges Pennsylvania’s disinvestment and the importance of improving access and affordability.
And even though many of the PASSHE institutions are still struggling with enrollment, bringing the community colleges into a system with them will focus much-needed attention on the two-year colleges.
“The community-college sector has been treated as kind of the stepchild within the postsecondary landscape,” Zamani-Gallaher says. While two-year institutions got a lot of attention during the Obama administration, that spotlight didn’t linger, despite the growing necessity of the education they provide. “We think about high-skill, high-demand, high-wage areas where we have to be competitive globally,” she adds. “You don’t get there in terms of attainment without centering the community colleges, quite frankly, and I think they get discounted more often than not.”
More money and attention aren’t all that’s needed to set up Pennsylvania’s community colleges for 21st-century success, says Jenkins, the Community College Research Center scholar and a Pennsylvania native. Like Ohio and other Northeast and Midwestern states, Pennsylvania’s public colleges were built up during the post-World War II baby boom when steel mills and factories dotted its cities and towns. “This is a different world,” he says. While the PASSHE system consolidated six of its campuses into two new institutions in 2022, in part to deal with shrinking enrollments due to a waning number of traditional-age students, states like Pennsylvania can’t afford “to just consolidate and downsize,” Jenkins adds. “They have to consolidate and redesign to provide the quality education both the cities and the rural areas need to thrive.” Pennsylvania’s two-year campuses “really have not had the resources and the support to innovate in the way they’re going to need to.” He believes that Shapiro’s plan could be a step in the right direction.
A Mixed Blessing
The best-laid plans, of course, have to make it through the legislature. Right now, Shapiro’s higher-education overhaul seems to be getting a positive reception across the state, says Ronald Cowell, a senior fellow at the Education and Policy Leadership Center, a nonpartisan policy group in Pennsylvania, and a former Democratic member of the state General Assembly. But there isn’t much to object to yet. “This blueprint is pretty vague,” Cowell says. “Conceptually, there seems to be the promise of some good things. But as they always say, the devil’s in the details. We don’t have any of the detail yet.”
David Argall, a Republican state senator and chair of the Senate Education Committee, told The Center Square to “list me as ‘sympathetic but cautious,’” regarding the proposal. “It’s still in its very early stages.”
Shapiro’s budget request for the 2025 fiscal year includes $975 million for PASSHE and the community colleges, a 15-percent increase from 2024. It also calls for increasing financial aid for students in the proposed new system so that those with lower incomes would pay no more than $1,000 out of pocket a semester; the maximum state grant to college students would be increased by $1,000; and the state would invest an additional $279 million annually starting in the 2026 fiscal year.
Conceptually, there seems to be the promise of some good things. But as they always say, the devil’s in the details. We don’t have any of the detail yet.
Pennsylvania’s public colleges need more investment, and nearly two-thirds of the state’s college graduates carry student-loan debt, the third-highest level in the country, but that kind of spending may be a tall order for any governor to deliver, says Dennis Jones, president emeritus of the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems. “There’s got to be a lot of state money replacing tuition dollars if what he is going to do is truly possible,” Jones says. Just increasing state grants means coming up with an additional $1,000 per semester per student every year. PASSHE enrolled nearly 83,000 students this academic year while the community colleges enrolled 245,000 students. “That’s a lot of dollars,” he adds.
One aspect of Shapiro’s proposal might present a mixed blessing for Pennsylvania’s community colleges, disproportionately — a call for performance-based funding. Making part of an institution’s state support contingent on how it performs on metrics like graduation rate or credentials awarded to first-generation students might mollify legislators skeptical of giving colleges more money, but many of the metrics that might apply to four-year institutions don’t make as much sense at community colleges.
Community-college students often don’t fit the profile of the traditional-age student who starts at 18, attends full-time, and finishes in four to six years with a degree. They may attend classes, stop, and pick up again later. They might be dual-enrollment students still in high school or students who are attending college elsewhere but taking classes in the summer. They might take enough classes to get a promotion or a better job, which is a good outcome for them, but doesn’t show up on any metric. They might transfer to another community college, or to a four-year institution, the latter course being part of a community college’s mission, but “that shows up as attrition on the score sheet,” says Zamani-Gallaher. While the proposal details are still to come, she notes, “outcomes measures oftentimes don’t adjust for the contextuality of what’s happening and who the students are.”
Despite all the questions and uncertainties, Zamani-Gallaher is excited by the prospect of Pennsylvania’s community colleges’ becoming part of a system. More structured and coordinated governance could allow institutions and policymakers better and more effective ways to interact for the good of the state and its students.
Questions and uncertainties are unavoidable at this point. “We are in the early phases of the discussions. It’s open to everyone to talk and contribute to the dialogue and plan,” says Bullock, president of Allegheny County’s college. “It’s a good time to be engaged in this challenging, but needed, discussion.”