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Senate Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
Senate of Pennsylvania
Session of 2017 - 2018
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | May 29, 2018 03:55 PM |
|---|---|
| From: | Senator Andrew E. Dinniman and Sen. Robert M. Tomlinson |
| To: | All Senate members |
| Subject: | PASSHE Individual Institution Financial Flexibility |
| Please join us as we introduce legislation to provide the individual institutions in the State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) with additional financial flexibility. As you know, our state system and our schools are facing a critical time. In order to sustain our commitment to providing a quality, low cost education, we must help the system adapt to address the needs of our schools and students. Plans have recently been put in place to modernize the system. While these are a start, we believe more can be done to bolster these schools moving forward without solely relying on additional state revenue. We would like to provide a hybrid funding approach. Under this proposal, the Commonwealth will continue to provide its appropriation to PASSHE and the schools. These dollars will be considered solely, public state dollars and will be subject to the same limitations as currently provided in law. All additional funds, such as tuition and other fee dollars received by each university will stay under the control of the university. This distinction will provide the university with more flexibility in how it can use these dollars. This hybrid approach to funding will improve the overall operations of the institutions and result in savings for the schools. Each university will now the ability to enter into cooperative agreements without going through the current bureaucratic processes and be relieved from certain mandates under the Commonwealth Attorney’s Act and Administrative Code, while still being subject to auditing by the Auditor General. Please support us in our proposal to allow the universities to more independently manage and utilize the funding they receive through tuition and related dollars. Granting them this limited independence from regulations when non-state dollars are used will increase the capital available to the institutions without burdening limited state funding streams. |
Introduced as SB1206