PA House Appropriations — 2026-03-11

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Thank you. We're about to get started.

Good afternoon and welcome to one of two of our afternoon hearings today. Today we are joined by the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, as well as our friends at the community colleges throughout this Commonwealth.

if we could all get our testifiers to stand so I can all swear you in. So I can swear you all in. Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you're about to give is the truth, the whole truth, very distinguished guests. Listen, I have no problem with the president of Slippery Rock being here. We appreciate your presence. I do want to make mention, though, that the state senate got the president of Millersville University during their budget hearing. And I won't ask questions on how or why that happened I just want to be very clear that Millersville is the Harvard of the state system There are at least as I look there are at least two Millersville grads right here on this committee So I'm just putting that out there that we love Millersville. Anyway, we'll start. Thank you.

See, there it is.

We'll get started with Representative Kincaid.

Certainly. I'll start. Thank you. The Board of Governors is required to submit a budget request in October, and we worked and did submit that, and we took a look at our situation and determined that the 5% increase that we requested would enable us to keep tuition at the same level into the following year. So we're incurring cost increases and other factors, and we felt that a 5% increased less than what we had requested the previous year and requires us to focus on keeping our belts tight. We saw some improvement in retention, and retention, of course, means more students are staying, so therefore there's additional revenue over what we had expected. And so we felt that 5% would put us in a position to be able to hold tuition level. We still have that position. We understand the challenges that are existing in the current budget and understand the governor's decision. We feel that an investment in the state system of higher education is an investment in the future of the Commonwealth and continue to advocate, hoping that we can get some consideration for our increase so we'll be able to hold tuition level. If we were to not get funding, we would have to step back and take a look at the factors that exist at that point in time. I'm not going to commit right now to say that would mean that we would increase tuition by some certain level. We have to look at retention. We have to look at how enrollments are shaping up for next year, factors around cost of operating the universities. And, of course, this process takes place over many months. And by July, we would hope to be in a position where we have the information that we need to be able to determine what we're going to do next. Thank you.

Chancellor, as we're talking about retention, I think one of the things that we need to talk about is student safety and more so about good Samaritans on campus who try to act in the best interest of other students who may be experiencing medical emergencies. At Bloomsburg, there were two students who were charged after acting as Good Samaritans. They had not been drinking. They were not involved with the incident that led to this individual's alcohol poisoning, and yet they were the only people charged. I know that PASHE has a policy protecting Good Samaritans. So my question is twofold. One, are you amending that policy in any way to make sure that you're protecting students who act in good faith to help others? And what consequences are in place for campus police who don't adhere to those policies?

Thank you. And I would appreciate actually having a further conversation with you about ensuring that the policy actually does protect truly good Samaritans and not just students who have imbibed alcohol.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Welcome, everybody. A special shout out to Dr. Stanley. It's great to see you up there at that table after working so many years together in Westmoreland County. I'm going to begin my questions with the community college and then we'll shift over to Pashy's side. So it really was a nice dovetail because you had mentioned this concept of a third, you know, and in an ideal world, community colleges are supposed to be funded in three thirds, right? It's a third from the state, a third from the local or county, and then a third in tuition. However, reality does, you know, rarely achieves that ideal. So can you touch on what you're seeing the actual commitment to that third, third, third is for our community colleges?

Sure, that's great because at least my understanding, rough numbers are community colleges. They're number two biggest population, about 245,000 students, give or take. And I think it works out to about $1,000 a student. We had the state-related zine earlier, and they're getting five, six, nine. So I understand the importance of being able to fund one of the biggest local participation areas. I'd like to shift over to the PASHE side. And we asked a similar line of questions with our state-relateds, and that was in the area of our SIP codes or the classification of instructional programs. You know, we were fortunate. Both chambers unanimously enacted the GrowPA scholarships, and I'm fortunate to serve on that FIA board. But there seems to be this SIPGAP conundrum, particularly with PASHE schools. It looks like about 1,700 students that were initially awarded those $5,000 scholarships were then said, well, you may not qualify, not because of the students' action, but because of PASHE's disconnect with the SIP codes. What are we doing to correct that gap?

But you choose the SIP codes, sir.

Do you have any updated information on that? Well, I know I'm tight on some of that time, but in the state-related, it's talked about some glitches that had held up student funding and other things, FAFSA funding in past years. You know, the students have signed this master promissory note. We just want to make sure that these students that are committed to staying in Pennsylvania that, you know, will actually be honoring that while we're in the midst so they don't get hit with this $5,000 bill, you know, on top of it. Because it's a big swing for families. We're working with Thea and trying to sort all this out. And we're absolutely committed to making it work.

Will PASHE be honoring that $5,000 and holding that, or are you planning to charge those students in this gap? Are you going to honor that $5,000?

Okay, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, everybody. I'm going to go ahead and give my little shameless plug to Community College of Philadelphia for the reasons that our chairman had said earlier in reference to his experience. I will say I do have a daughter who attends a school, and as a parent, because I'm a parent person in this space, I always like to remind people of that, and we like to entrust our children with systems and places that will help nurture them in a holistic way. And so I will say my daughter has found her voice at CCP along with a community and independence. So thank you for your leadership in that space. Recently, I attended an opening at CCP, which is the Healthcare Simulation Lab. and as innovative as that lab is and as welcoming and as encouraging as those students were when they were explaining how those real-life experiences helped give them confidence in the workforce, can you tell me when it comes to managing tight budgets, and this is not just for CCP, this is for whomever, but when you are creating such initiatives that is really bringing that classroom-to-career type of pathway to your student body, they're excited and they're open and they're helpful in wondering like what the world can really look like for them but you as a system is sometimes challenged with managing a tight budget so when it comes to managing tight budgets how are you past how are your Apache universities and community college colleges deciding what they can scale back on while still keeping campus safe up-to-date and welcoming.

I think it was directed at... It could be for anybody, but clearly CCP can answer as well.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Channel Lady, Representative Moustello. Thank you, Chairman Harris.

A dual enrollment is an area of growth for many institutions across all sectors of higher education, but particularly I would say for community colleges and certainly for BC3. So in this current academic year, we had a 25% growth in dual enrollment. And we adjusted some cost, some things on the cost side of the house. We also really ramped up the relationships with our existing high schools to get those numbers up. But I think our question about who it's for is a really good one, because I think at times there can be a misconception that it's for maybe just high-achieving students who just want to knock out a few college courses at a lower price point, and that is certainly a very fine use of dual enrollment. But from our perspective, we are trying to expand it. So, for example, this coming fall we will now be in all high schools in Butler County, and we really view it as a point of access to higher education. So getting to those students who maybe thought college isn't for me and I'm not sure if I can do this, and now they have the opportunity in their high school and they take that class and they say, I have that confidence, I can do that. Some students will take those credits and go to warrior institutions and some will come to BC3.

We do, BC3.

Yeah, great question. We just opened a new campus in Lawrence County, BC3 at Lawrence. And for the first time this fall, we will be running a program called Early College Pioneers there,

We do engage in the dual enrollment, I think, pretty typically for a four-year institution. I would say that one of the areas of growth for us has been in our STEM-H programs. So we do have a fast-track program in engineering. We just added a full complement of engineering programs at Slippery Rock, so I think that that's great. I think that we do also, I think, try to target our education programs and have really targeted teachers or future teachers. We do, enrollment increase was about 1,400 students over the past year, so that's been great. We're very excited about that. And four universities within PASHE did receive those grants. So an area for growth for us. And I do think to echo Megan's praise for the program is that it does allow students to see themselves as a university student, as a college student, and to come in with a level of confidence that we don't sometimes see for all of our students.

So let me talk about a program that we're very excited about, which is a partnership with the Carpenters Union. So what we did, and Representative Mostello, thank you for your support of this program. But what we're doing at Slippery Rock University is actually recognizing the training and education that our students get through the Carpenters Union. That is then translated into actual credit, credit-bearing activity within Slippery Rock University. So the people that are in the Carpenters Union are actually allowed to get a degree. Let me just say one more quick thing because it's such an exciting thing. I see the red light. No, no, no.

What's great about this program is that oftentimes we send people back to the community college partner to get their associate's degree. then they can come to Slippery Rock and get either a full bachelor's degree or we've got three stackable credentials that stack to a bachelor's degree in applied science. So we're very excited about the program. I hope that it serves as a model for other universities moving forward.

Okay. President Cova, I didn't even.

I would just say that a benefit of being in a community college and certainly sharing a county with Apache institution, we're very connected to local business and industry. And so anytime something new is happening with a business or industry, so for example, down the road from BC3 is Cleveland Cliffs, they just got some new machinery and some new heating and cooling equipment in. And so we were able to set up a program for them to train their employees on the usage of that new equipment. Now that might be pretty short term, although getting used to it, but we can keep abreast of what's going on and make those changes quickly.

That was more like a minute, but... All right. Representative Mullins.

Likewise.

Nice to see you sir Well you right We can ignore the market the online market for undergraduate online programs It's huge and getting bigger. There are very aggressive advertisers. Certainly, our longtime traditional bread and butter has been 18 to 22-year-old students who come to the campus. And that has been a declining population, as is well known. and we are working very aggressively. Actually, it was kicked off in a big way during the pandemic, of course, because we had to shift everything. And we learned a lot during that time about online programs and learned that we could deliver it, we could deliver them effectively. We have a longer history of offering graduate programs, but we are seeing interest from our traditional age students in taking some online classes. one of the big potential growth areas for us is the non-traditional student population, people who maybe took some credits and stopped out. They want to come back and complete a degree, and that's much more likely to be an online population. And we have campuses where we're expanding the footprint aggressively as we go. We need to move into this market more vigorously because a lot of the market has moved in that direction. And it's an ongoing effort. We're involved in doing program sharing amongst our universities so that we can aggregate and build to have these kinds of program offerings more efficiently. But it's a major area of focus for us.

colleges that offer first responder training all of them do that at a loss we do it as a community service because our communities need first responders and they need them to be current and relevant in the field. Again, health and safety being that top priority and serving our community needs. However, these are very expensive programs, in particular if you look at fire and you have active burns and burn buildings, the maintenance on the equipment alone is very high. So this funding would help to offset the colleges supplementing those training programs and so that we can continue to expand and be able to meet the community needs for trained first responders.

what the community colleges do, we are a regional training center at BC3 for firefighters, and as you mentioned, serve 35 out of the 67 counties. And I'll share with you, you know, every year we have a loss on our public safety program about $500,000. But it is so critical to our mission. It's not something that we want to stop doing. I mean, we are all looking at all the different areas of our institutions and where we can be more efficient and more resourceful. But this is such a service to our community, and we want to be able to continue to do it, to do it well, and also to do it at a reasonable cost for those that we are serving. So that money would be tremendously helpful to BC3

Thank you. Thank the gentleman. Representative Curry.

I'll jump in and just speak about a few opportunities so your question resonates very well with me as the community college of philadelphia we have about 75 percent of our students who have some type of insecurity food insecurity housing insecurity and that's typical for us additionally 25 percent of our students are student parents so part of what we do what's the percentage i'm sorry about 25 percent of our students are student parents as well and we have instituted a lot of supports for that but particularly as your question relates to how do we support students once they transfer. We are working very closely with several four-year institutions. Our top transfer institution is Temple. Part of that partnership is thinking about how to provide the wraparound support services in addition to basic needs supports that we're able to provide through our Octavius Cattle Scholarship to students once they transfer to the four-year. So we've had very targeted conversations there around that. And a great example of a partnership that we have with the PASHE institution is our new Cheney at CCP program which we just launched That will allow us to provide some of the additional scholarship last dollar scholarship supports as well as holistic wraparound student supports and basic needs for students that would be transferring to Cheney University, but they're taking courses on our campus, so that eliminates the transportation issue. But it was really modeled after how do we continue to support our students who may need those same types of supports once they get to the four-year. So we're excited about that launching of that program. So, yeah, Megan and I are looking at each other because we have a great program. Obviously, being in the same county, we have a great relationship. We just recently went through a training with ASCU, an 18-month training on how to smooth the translation of moving from a community college to a four-year institution. We also were partnered with CCBC in that activity. We have wraparound services. We just received a great $60,000 grant for our food bank. We have a kind closet. But one of the things that we learned from listening to our students was we do a great job of making sure that their credits transfer. 99% of the credits that come from community college at Slippery Rock are directly applied to their transcripts, so there's no delay in that kind of a thing. But what we found is we listened to one of a great student, and he said to us, I love Slippery Rock, I love CCBC, but I haven't found my weekend friends. And so that really hit the both of us, and we said, what are we going to do differently? So our intention is now not just around the mechanics of making sure that there are no barriers to transferring from any community college to Slippery Rock, but in particular Butler Community College. And Butler Community College is taking on some very new initiatives, bringing buses of students to social activities like football games, like basketball games, like our Rock the Weekend events, so that those students start to develop friendships at Slippery Rock so when they get there, they're hitting the ground running, not just inside the classroom but outside the classroom. So we're really excited about that.

Thank the gentlelady, Representative Flood.

We've made a good deal of progress. At some point, I read an article about a company that specializes in this area that had worked in New Jersey and had been very successful at attracting thousands and thousands of nontraditional students back to New Jersey public universities. We engaged with that company, and they have contracts with about half of our universities now, and they specialize in students who are called stopouts. They took some credits with us, with one of our schools, never finished their degree, went and got a job, started their lives, and perhaps they get to a point at which they think, oh, I really could benefit from some more education. So we know who these people are. They've taken courses with us, so we're sharing that information with the company. They're engaging people, identifying them, determining if they're interested in coming back, and then facilitating the process for them to come back. We started it this year. They told us that there's a ramp-up on efforts like this. It's about an 18-month process to really start to build some numbers. But we are working very aggressively, and all of the institutions, whether they have engaged with the company or not, are responsible for increasing their nontraditional enrollments and trying to increase the overall enrollments because it is a sizable extra market in the Commonwealth. And there are challenges around it because we can't just treat them as if they're 18-year-olds coming to live in a residence hall. They're in a very different place in their lives, and we need to recognize that. We need to be prepared to accept them where they are, give them the support that they need, make sure that the classes are available when they need them, online classes, evening classes, weekend classes. All these kinds of factors are being taken into account. So that is a work in progress. Well, I think about those people who are into their career and decide this is not for me.

I think that we've created what we're calling the third arm of our academic enterprise. So we have undergraduate programs, we have graduate programs, and then we have certificates, micro-credentials, professional development, and stackables. And the goal here is threefold. New programs, new partnerships, and new approaches. We have to be partnering with industries so that people actually know what is available to them and how they can access it. It has to be delivered in a way that makes sense to them at times that makes sense to them. You know, you made a really, really good point about the demographic cliff. But what we haven't heard is that people will stop learning. And we're quite the contrary. People's jobs will not be more static. In fact, they will be much more fluid in the future. And so we have to be nimble. We have to be reactive to the market. And being in the community with our industry partners is one way that we're really working to make sure that those things are both available to them and that they're aware of them.

Certainly. So we have formed a technology and trades consortium that we will replicate across the state as the workforce needs arise. and so specifically around the 15 million it is called pa works and we are looking to have micro credentials so i'll just say they're already in place so this is funding to expand programs we have over 63 years with the formation of hack as our first community college celebrating their their 63rd year. These two institutions are celebrating their 60th anniversary. And so within those 63 years, we've been in this business. We've been in workforce development that entire time. So it would be a pre-apprenticeship academy, micro-credential academy, and a career in technology academy. And I can certainly provide more details on that. But this is just to amplify those efforts across the state for all 15 community colleges. Well, I really do appreciate

Thank the gentle lady, Representative Malagari.

thank you for that question and for your appreciation of that industry so yes those are examples of very successful recent endeavors by the state to attract the expansion of pharmaceutical companies. And so primarily Lehigh and Montgomery County Community College are involved in those efforts just because those two companies, J&J and Eli Lilly, are in their service areas. So they were called upon at the very beginning when the state started having conversations with them about what community colleges could provide in workforce training. And so the community colleges were part of the team that helped those companies decide Pennsylvania was the right fit for them. And so they are currently developing curriculum and programs that specifically meet the needs of those two companies. And the great thing about the community colleges is that if those institutions would need some assistance, the other colleges stand ready and able to also develop programs to meet those workforce needs and to help recruit and retain students So we would ask that the legislature look at our request for workforce funding because that ties directly into our ability to be able to react to those needs and help Pennsylvanians get these high life jobs

So in particular, Lehigh Carbon is developing programs specifically for Eli Lilly in biochem, biomedical fields. So there's also space for our universities in that as well. So that will develop a career pathway. And Montgomery also already has some of those programs, so they will be tailoring them specifically for J&J's needs. But that's the case no matter what. We also have AWS coming in on both the East and the Middle and the West. And so we've been working with them for about a year to develop programs to specifically meet the workforce needs that they have.

Absolutely. Thank you. Well, we're very focused on making sure that we're preparing graduates who are meeting the needs that we're seeing in the Commonwealth. And if you look at the students we're graduating, this past year over 13,000 students graduated in business, the health sciences, nursing, other health programs, education, social work, psychology, engineering, all the major areas that the Commonwealth needs new employees in. We're very focused on doing that. And if I could flip over to my colleague to talk about some of the new programs at Slippery Rock that have been added that are showing significant enrollment growth.

I appreciate that. Thank you for your commitment to the Commonwealth and making sure that we're training our future workforce. And he's about to throw a flag on me. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This is the fourth budget year since the formal integration of six universities into Penn West and the Commonwealth universities. Is the integration of the universities still an ongoing process, or should we consider it complete?

So I'm from one of those rural areas. I represent the 51st House District. It's southern Fayette County. And unfortunately, it looks like our Fayette Penn State branch campus will be completely closed, or at least it's trending that way. So maybe you'll see an influx in your students as a result of that. But specifically to the integration plan laid out, there were specific milestones and key financial projections. Have the universities met those milestones, and are the financial projections still accurate?

There were concerns with a structural deficit at Penn West. What's been done to tackle this problem, and is it improving? Do you have a time frame on when it will be eliminated?

Have there been any unexpected issues or challenges that you guys have seen through the integrations?

Looks like I'm out of time. Thank you so much for being here.

Good afternoon, everyone. I want to thank you all for what you do. As the chairman alluded to earlier, I'm a proud Millersville graduate, but I did attend Harrisburg Area Community College for one year before going on to Millersville. So I was a transfer student, and it worked out well and very fortunate for the path that was provided to me by virtue of being able to afford community college and then afford my education at Millersville University. We talked to the state-related about this a little bit earlier today, and I want to get your thoughts both on the community college side and on the PASHE side about deferred maintenance and how, you know, deferred maintenance for, you know, building upgrades and things like that, how that factors in. Do you, I guess I'll start with the PASHE side first, is that sort of up to each individual university and their boards of trustees to kind of figure out what's on the priority list in terms of, you know, when buildings get built, when upgrades are made, etc.?

We have huge amounts of deferred maintenance. Let me defer to my colleague. She can speak specifically about the circumstances at her university because it typical of the situation across the system So Slippery Rock right now has about million of deferred maintenance that has not been met We have about 35% of our ENG buildings are over 50 years old. So, yes, last year we had to invest several million dollars worth of heat pumps and those kinds of things because we had situations where several of them are breaking all at once. It's not the same as having your own furnace break when I've got hundreds, thousands of students without heat. That has to be addressed right then, and that becomes a priority. I do want to put a couple of other things on people's radars. Number one, it's not just a roof or something like that. We are actually, by kicking the can down the road for deferred maintenance, also limiting the educational experience of our students. Some of the facilities that we have no longer are up to date, much less cutting edge. And that's not part of our mission. We are supposed to be a low-cost option, but we are supposed to be providing an excellent education. The other thing I would say is that cyber is the number one risk for any higher education institution, whether that be a PASI institution, a state-related, or a community college. So when we talk about deferred maintenance for infrastructure, we're also putting ourselves at great risk for cyber attacks.

Situations very similar at community colleges, outdated infrastructure, trying to keep pace with that as it comes up each year. So there are individual deferred maintenance plans at each of the 15 community colleges that address their greatest needs. And for the community colleges, they're responsible for finding the other 50%. The state does not fully fund any capital requests that come in to us. That's in code. And so that's also been a limiting factor as well. So even if you can apply and be fortunate enough to get any type of funds from the state, we have to find a local match. That's also been limiting, but perhaps the president's good context.

Yeah I love to see some sort of fund for K education for maintenance and maybe we could consider higher ed as well So thank you Thank you Mr Chairman Thank you gentlemen Representative Olsamer Thank you Mr Chairman Thank you all for being here today A proud graduate of East Stroudsburg University, so get right to my question. Obviously, the better prepared students are when they enter your colleges and universities, the more effective you can be when educating them. and the quicker they move through your systems to completion. But I'm sure all of you must provide some form of remedial education.

So I'll speak to Community College of Philadelphia. Additionally, our numbers are increasing. However, we have implemented what we call math pathways and accelerated learning pathways, which is an opportunity to pair courses, developmental courses, with credit courses and do a just-in-time remediation type of pedagogy, which really minimizes the time. So I think at the end of the day, we're talking about getting students through more quickly. We're talking about how do we do that, and it may or may not be that we have a significant number of students that are placing in developmental, particularly, as you know, the Community College of Philadelphia is a minority-serving institution. Disproportionately, students of color tend to place in developmental education, so we are an open-access institution. We have tons of students that need that, but we're working through how do we make sure that they're not wasting time and they're still moving through quickly even if they come with a few skills that they're lacking in math and English, for example. The additional piece of that is working with our school district to make sure that we're aligning our curriculum so that when they get to us, they have what they need. So we're looking at trying to hit it at multiple ways.

I don't know if you have any anecdotes, but we could look that up and get that to you. My general sense is that it's quite successful. They come in, they stay in a residence hall for a period of weeks, and they get a feel for what life is like on the college campus, which is one of, of course, the big challenging transitions for students who are coming into higher education. They're moving into an environment where they have a much greater self-responsibility compared to what they're coming from. So generally, we see it to be successful, but we can get some numbers. Yeah, our Jump Start program is exceedingly successful. So we look for students who might, for any reason, feel that they need a little bit of an extra boost at the very beginning. This would not fall into the remedial category, but it does give our students a leg up in that space. I would like to say that we have seen an increase in students that have 504 plans and those kinds of things. we have a great faculty and staff that are able to meet those students' needs. So again, as Chancellor Fiorentino said, our job is not for those students to be ready for us, but for us to be ready for them. And so we have added programs, added training, added great staff in order to support our students that come in with perhaps a different learning style or a different learning profile.

Thank you, gentlemen. Representative Brennan.

Sure, I'd be happy to start. So they're very expensive programs to run, as you might know, because of the equipment and even uniforms and things like that that have to be always up to date, and safety is a priority for us. So we have a burn building at BC3, for example. Anytime we need to do maintenance on that building it is upwards of 80 to 100 thousand dollars and that's just one example We also have a rail car and other fire simulations a flashover on campus and those require consistent maintenance to be safe In terms of the training we do our best to provide heavily subsidized and in some case free training to the firefighters particularly within our county and We want to continue to be able to do that and that is something that increasingly is a risk that we are facing when we're facing such a loss every year, about a half a million dollar loss, is that we are no longer going to be able to make that training either affordable or affordable free in some cases. And especially, as you mentioned, for the smaller municipalities, I mean, they just simply don't have that kind of money. Many of them volunteered. So for BC3, equipment, but also making sure that we can train people in an affordable manner would

Is another example, so some of the community colleges are working with their communities to try to bring in junior firefighters and try to encourage young people to be volunteer firefighters to fill that gap in the rural communities, that all will still need to be at low cost or no cost in order to entice them, as well as to supply equipment and get them trained. So some of that would fall on the local firehouses, and some of that falls on the community colleges, and that has been very limited because of the inability to further subsidize. So those would be expanded.

We have 10 institutions, 14 campuses, all very different. And yes, the need is not evenly distributed across the campuses. We have an allocation formula that reflects a lot of those factors. We recognize, for example, that there are certain benefits associated with scale. If we have a larger campus, the average costs tend to be lower. we have some schools that have greater these sorts of remedial issues that we talked about that come into play. Some very small campuses they have diseconomies of scale. They have certain overhead that they have to cover regardless of how many students they have and so we take into account in the funding the fact that everybody has to have an administration. Now the consolidations that we talked about earlier was an attempt to aggregate some schools and eliminate some of that overhead so we could reduce some of those types of costs. But we do whatever we end up receiving, we run it through this formula that's very carefully crafted to take into account the different needs and the different academic programs. Some programs are more expensive than others and to some extent we can take that into account. I don't think we do it perfectly, and I think President Reilly would agree with me when I say that. We should get all the money. But we do our best to understand what the differences are and distribute the money appropriately.

Thank you, gentlemen, Representative Reichert.

Well, every campus is a little different. I visited the program that you're talking about at Shippensburg, and I was in a lab with students who were doing incredible work, and there were three or four employers in the room with them, and they were learning in that lab, and then they were going and working with the businesses. The businesses were relying on those students to be skilled workers. Just an incredible program. We have examples of that at many other institutions, Slippery Rock included, and once again I'll defer to my colleague who can give you some more specific detail there, but it's a common thing across the system at this point.

Do you want me to address this?

Oh, I thought you were going to ask another question. Great. First of all, I do have to apologize to my great colleagues because I know I can't take all of the money, so I just want to be on the record on that. In all seriousness, when we look at experiential learning opportunities, I think that across the system. People are doing amazing things. One of the things that we would like to highlight, and I think that this happens at Slippery Rock as well as across all of the PESHE schools, is we have a lot of students, as we've talked about, who are Pell eligible, first generation, who are, this is an access institution. We don't want our students to have to make a choice between an experiential learning activity and a job. So we don't want practicas, internships, those kinds of things to be only activities of privilege. We want to make sure that we can break down a barrier that disallows people who don't have funds or have to work to not be able to access those kinds of activities. So we're very excited about what we're doing, and we're continually looking for ways to fund those kinds of activities, if that makes sense.

Well, you know, I think thinking about how do we help incent different corporations and industries to provide those kinds of internships, So something maybe similar to like an EITC, you know, kind of a credit where certainly we don't want to take anything away from our K-12 partners because what they're doing is amazing. But kind of a companion program that would incent corporations to provide funding for internships and practica would be amazing.

And I certainly appreciate that, and I look forward to partnering with all of you on ways that we can continue to do that. So thank you all for your time today.

Thanks, gentlemen. Representative Brown. Thank you, Chairman. And I am thrilled to see two of my schools here. So President Koval and Dr. Riley, thank you for all that you do for Lawrence County. These two women, as you've probably been able to tell, have done amazing things at these schools. So, at a previous hearing, we've discussed university and affiliate housing debt. I sorry We actually well we did discuss that but we also discussed underutilization of system facilities and that many campuses have housing or classrooms that are underutilized and the need to find creative ways to repurpose these so that they benefit all those involved. And typically this involves partnerships that take time in the community. But a recent article for you, Dr. Riley, quoted Slippery Rock as being one of the most extensive or having one of the most extensive academic overall halls in modern history. So can you talk to how the partnerships that you've developed have helped you do this in your community?

May I just jump in a second to address the other issue you raised about empty buildings? We are actively pursuing opportunities to try to repurpose some of these buildings. There are conversations going on that are at various stages because we recognize that these are buildings that are sitting there costing us money. And if we can repurpose them to the benefit of the community, we really want to do that. Also, in many cases, we've heard how old the community colleges are. Our schools are even older, and so we have some buildings that are even more than 60 years old and really are past their useful lives. And as we have had downsizing exercises on some of the campuses, we've moved out of these buildings, and we're looking for opportunities to be able to demolish them because they're sitting there costing us money. So in some cases, if a building is past its useful life, the best strategy is not to repurpose it. It's to just knock it down and eliminate all the costs associated with it. And we do allocate some of our capital funds to demolition, and we've had conversations about trying to identify additional funds that we could be able to utilize for demolition because that would benefit us because it removes those carrying costs that are in our budgets that aren really doing anything productive And we so appreciate that I can tell you that after sitting in these hearings for a couple weeks now and listening to all the inefficiencies and ineffectiveness of some of our departments

Yeah, absolutely. So BC3 has been in Lawrence County for 26, 27 years, and we recently moved locations. We had a space that was just too big for us. and so we decided to right size and move into a new location that's located in Shenango Township and that's kind of in the middle of a former strip mall but has really been repurposed and even in making that move and we've had the opportunity to integrate further into that community we are right next door to Shenango High School so one of the things that we did I mentioned earlier how collaboration is so important to us we did not build a chemistry lab because Shenango high school has a chemistry lab so now our students will go over there and take their labs whenever it's time for them to do so we also collaborated with the lawrence county learning center and they are now sharing space with us so very similar missions they were in need of some space we had some extra space and that is only to the benefit of our students again we appreciate

lady chairman cutler thank you mr chairman thank you very much for being here this afternoon I appreciate it appreciate taking time out of your very busy schedules I also want to thank all of you conceptually as both a father and a tuition payer our son very similar to representative Fleming he started a hack dual enrolled in high school and now he's going to graduate from Millersville this May. So I personally appreciate the integration that I've seen between the community colleges and the PASI system. But the question I have is specifically about the Grow PA program. I know it's new. We heard some growing pains this morning, particularly related to some of the coding, because some programs qualify at some schools because they're coded a certain way, and then they may not qualify at other schools. So as we're looking to use this tool for building the workforce here in Pennsylvania for those high in-demand occupations, that program also provides in-state tuition discounts to out-of-state students who are willing to commit to live and work in PA in that occupation for a period of time. From your view, are there any other changes we should be contemplating as a general assembly in order to make the program more efficient or remove some of the bureaucracies such as the coding issue that came up earlier today?

out-of-state attractiveness too going forward. Thank you. Additionally, with that program, are there any concerns with maintaining that workload, if you will, of students as they progress through the four years, given some of the funding issues that some of my colleagues brought up earlier. In other words, what efforts can be made to ensure that once someone is enrolled in a program that they continue to be so and, you know, also stay in the correct career path to still qualify versus changing majors, which I know happens from time to time with students.

Okay. Yeah. I mean, I think first of all, I will echo Chancellor Fiorentino's comments about the program itself. So at Slippery Rock, we have 381 students who are currently in the Grow PA program at at the tune of about $1.8 million. So it's a great program and we continue to try to get more students. We got about 5 students we looked at right now that would be eligible for that Our dedication to those high need workforce development programs is why we have so many of those students that would be available to us. For us, you know, I think there are, we try to stack financial aid. And so we have a great staff that looks at each individual student and works with their family to say, oh, are you eligible for this? Are you eligible for this? Are you eligible for this? Are you eligible for this? We fill in a lot of that aid with our own institutional aid. We spend about $7 million on just out of our ENG budget in order to bridge some of those gaps. And then we're actively working to get philanthropy more involved. Although we are public institutions, some of what we're learning is that we need to act a little bit more like the privates and up our philanthropy gain. Slippery Rock in particular is working very very hard on that. In the past we brought in about two million dollars a year. We've got a big commitment to scholarships and so we've brought in about twenty seven million dollars over the past two and a half years. So our commitment to funding our students to making sure that they have again the highest quality education at the lowest possible cost. It's not only accessing the funds that you provide, federal dollars,

Chairman Struzzi.

We've had a sustained period of decline, and in the past two years, we've seen them level off and then tick up a little bit.

It will be very interesting for us to see what happens in the coming year.

We are now facing another anticipated decline in the high school graduating population. That's expected to start this year and then continue in through the next decade. As I commented earlier, we do focus a lot of effort now on attracting the nontraditional type population. We're very focused on retaining students. We haven't really talked about retention here today, but retaining a student is very important because a student who doesn't retain is not going to graduate. And if they retain, they continue to be paying customers, and that continues to generate revenue and enrollments for us. So all these kinds of things remain very important. What I'm hearing from the presidents is that indications at this point are that we're seeing a modest uptick in applications and commitments from prospective students going forward. But at this point in the year, it's too soon to tell where we're going to land.

So this year we were up across the 15, 4%. That does vary by institution, but overall, just like PASHE, we leveled off, and now we're seeing a slight increase, and it is too early for the community colleges to predict what next year will look like.

Thank you.

Everybody looking at me. Do I have a question? No, I'm joking. The only question I will have is for the president of CCP. Can you talk to us about where we are in the process with the new partnership with Cheney University?

Listen, I'm so very happy to hear about this partnership and have been involved in it. Quite honestly, I think it's a partnership that all of us should be looking at with regards to our state system schools and the community colleges that are nested in our footprint. I think it's an awesome opportunity when we talk about how we create a stronger relationship between community colleges and our state systems. Look, the bottom line is this General Assembly, this government is providing resources to both. And anything that we can do to cut costs for our students in turn makes the dollars and cents that we're providing go even further. So I welcome any more ingenuity and creativity that marries community colleges in our state system to the benefit of the end user, which are all of our students. And I thank you for what you do every single day, all of your individual campuses, to continue to educate and push forward for the Commonwealth. At the end of the day, when we have shortages in different professions and things of that nature, it's both of these organizations, our community college institutions and our state system institutions that fill the gap. So thank you for what you do every single day. And with that, that will end this hearing. We're going to take a 15-minute break, and we'll be back at 345. With the Pennsylvania State Police. Thank you. Thank you.