State Senator Jim Brewster has written a letter to State System of Higher Education Chancellor Dan Greenstein and Board of Governors Chair Cynthia Shapira, urging them to put the brakes on the State System Redesign for two years.
Brewster, whose 45th District covers portions of Westmoreland and Allegheny counties, says hastily enacting the consolidation of six universities into two “will have long-lasting deleterious effects,” while also questioning the timing of the Redesign “in the immediate aftermath of a debilitating pandemic.”
State System spokesman Cody Jones said yesterday that the vote to move forward with the Redesign remains on schedule for next month’s Board meeting.
The Board yesterday hosted a second day of public hearings and, again, speakers were overwhelmingly against the plan. While the themes were familiar, including the reliance on remote learning, questions about the structure of the merged schools, doubts that the plan would save money, and a lack of details in the plan as released, one aspect of the Redesign seemed to have more emphasis: the lack of state funding for the state-owned universities.
Pennsylvania ranks in the bottom five in the nation in funding per student at the schools, and a number of speakers blamed the State System for not aggressively pushing the state to increase spending. As one Kutztown professor put it, “Why are you letting them off the hook?” IUP music professor Jason Worzbyt asked the board and chancellor, “Where is your outrage?”
If approved next month, the Redesign would enroll its first students in the combined universities in the fall of next year.
