Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett’s cuts to higher education amount to the theft of $2,200 from every student in the state college system. Isn’t that awesome?
In a news conference on Wednesday, Penn State’s president, Graham B. Spanier, agreed, saying students can’t bear the brunt of the cuts. Already, average public-college tuition in the state, after grants are subtracted, is $8,577, almost double the national average, according to the State Higher Education Executive Officers.
With the state providing such a small proportion of Penn State’s budget, it has been suggested that the institution become private. But even with the governor’s cut, Penn State would still receive $165-million from the state next year, an amount that is not “insignificant,” said Donald E. Heller, director of the Center for the Study of Higher Education at Penn State.
“You would need to raise a $3.2-billion endowment to make up for that loss,” noted Mr. Heller, who serves on a university-wide committee with a goal of finding $10-million in permanent savings. “That looks like a rounding error after the governor’s announcement,” he quipped.
Pennsylvania is shedding population and just lost one of its delegates to the Electoral College along with a congressional seat in the U.S. Congress. It has one of the oldest populations in the country. Our lousy, expensive public education is one big reason why young people are fleeing the state and we’re not attracting replacements. So, the governor must have figured he’d make things much worse for some idiotic reason. Probably because universities teach people to think.
