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As I prepare to enter my junior year at Clarion University, my passion for funding higher education in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has never been higher. I believe we should invest in public higher education to reach a solution that works for students, faculty, and coaches. This begins with the Pennsylvania Promise.

John Danvers, APSCUF intern

In this piece, which originated as a research paper I wrote for my English class last year, I’ll also outline how Pennsylvania can make that promise happen.

Quite simply, the Pennsylvania Promise is “a plan to make higher education affordable in the Commonwealth.” For students coming from a family income of less than or equal to $110,000 per year, that student would have four years of tuition and fees covered at any one of the 14 State System schools. The Pennsylvania Promise would also cover tuition and fees at any community college in the Commonwealth, as well as four years of tuition and fees “not to exceed the State System tuition rate” at any state-related university.

PA Promise legislation is in the State House as HB 2444 and in the State Senate as Bill 1111. It provides a pathway for students who may not otherwise be considering college to attend school and achieve the American Dream. Whether that Pennsylvanian is from Pittsburgh or Philadelphia, it would allow those who need help the most to lift themselves out of poverty.

The economic benefits the Commonwealth receives from facilitating affordable higher education are tremendous. From a microeconomic perspective, Pew Research Center says, “the gap in median annual earnings between a worker with a high school diploma and one with a college degree is $19,550. According to a Pew Research analysis of census data, over the course of a forty-year working life, the typical college graduate earns an estimated $550,000 more than the typical high school graduate, even after factoring in the costs and foregone earnings associated with going to college.”

Also, I think it’s important to note the macroeconomic benefits reciprocated from funding higher education. Research published by Philip A. Trostel, an economics professor at the University of Maine, shows that “college education creates substantial state and local tax revenues. Each bachelor’s degree leads to roughly $55,600 in additional state income taxes over a lifetime. In present value using a 3% discount rate, bachelor’s degree holders pay, on average, 2.5 times as much state income tax as high school graduates without college.”

In translating this outlook for long-term government revenue flows, the government spends about $74,500 in aiding students as they pursue a bachelor’s degree. After graduation, college graduates put back $471,000 into the government budget once they become employed and begin paying taxes. As Trostel writes, this is “more than six times the gross government cost per college degree.”

The possibility of upward mobility, along with the aforementioned benefits of students attending college, would be an immense benefit to the Commonwealth and something I believe our legislators should seriously consider facilitating. How? It’s time to implement a severance tax to fund public higher education in Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania is “the only major gas-producing state in the country without a severance tax,” according to NPR. Gov. Tom Wolf has asked the Commonwealth to tax the Marcellus Shale industry 6.5 percent for the value of its revenue, a policy projected to generate $217.8 million dollars for the state. So far, however, the policy has not been implemented.

A severance tax on the Marcellus Shale industry is the most rational way to make public higher education affordable for all Pennsylvanians.

—John Danvers,
APSCUF intern

West Chester University Professor Victoria Tischio, right, discusses membership with Chabria Thomas, State APSCUF’s director of organizing, during Tischio’s APSCUF faculty internship in Harrisburg. Photo/Kathryn Morton

We are delighted to have West Chester University Professor Victoria Tischio as our faculty intern this week. She will be in the Harrisburg office interacting with staff members and observing the spectrum of union administration.

APSCUF President Dr. Kenneth M. Mash’s comments as prepared:

Chairwoman Shapira, governors, university presidents, and guests,

Good morning. My name is Ken Mash, and I am the president of the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties (APSCUF), which represents the faculty and coaches at our 14 great universities.

On behalf of our membership, I would like to welcome the members of the Board and thank you and all of the governors for your commitment of time and energy for the cause of providing high-quality, affordable, public higher education for Pennsylvanians.

The story of our universities is the story of success. Every semester, students are doing amazing things, and they graduate and go off to contribute the success of this Commonwealth. That is the narrative that should undergird every discussion involving the State System of Higher Education and its universities. Despite enormous challenges, we — all of us — get the job done.

Of course, it is always fair to ask what the System and our universities could do better and to point out the continued challenges that our universities and, more important, our students face when our universities are underfunded. The increase to the budget helps, and we are appreciative of the efforts by the governor and our legislative leaders to secure additional funding. Still, there are questions of affordability and sustainability that will remain.

We have had two studies that have been pretty critical of the System, and it is disturbing to think that those studies have created among some a false narrative of “failure.” Again, the story of our System is one of success, and no study can or should take that away.

But we can do things better. Over the past few weeks, I have been soliciting suggestions from my colleagues about what the System can and ought to do so that we might improve on that record of success. When our recommendations are complete, we will share those with the Board, the new chancellor, and other parties who share an interest in making positive changes to the System.

For the moment and in the interest of time, I would like to highlight three of these, which should not be news to anyone. We have been asking for these for years and years:

1. Create a joint application process that allows potential students to apply to more than one university at a time. This application should allow all universities to see who is applying, their application status and the major they are seeking. This will allow all of our universities to have an opportunity to contact students who may not even be aware of the offerings at other universities. Those universities that may have enrollment issues can approach students about their ability to transfer credits from one of our universities to another.

2. Create the infrastructure necessary, i.e., tuition collection and allocation, fee collection, transcript services, and necessary agreements with us to allow two or more faculty to create collaborative programs. Some of these agreements do exist, but having individual faculty and deans be concerned about back-end mechanics creates an unnecessary obstacle. Expanding collaborative programs is a student-centered approach that secures opportunities for students at all of our universities.

3. Create a gateway page that lists all distance-education programs and courses available at our universities and that allows students to register for a course, regardless of the university they attend or their matriculation status. This is the 21st century, and this is a 20th century request.

These requests are all student-centered and are meant to provide opportunities for our students. Frankly, we do not know how we could have gotten this far without action on these items.

As I noted, we will have several more proposals that we will share as we hope to expand upon the success of our System and our universities. We continue to assert that this System functions best when there are true opportunities to collaborate among all of our constituencies.

Thank you very much for your time and attention.

“The judiciary … has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.” – Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 78

With a stroke of the keyboard today, the U.S. Supreme Court injected itself squarely into the political realm, eroded federalism, adopted a novel theory of the First Amendment, and squandered its legitimacy by prioritizing the dreams of well-funded billionaires over millions of working people.

In recent years, working people have too often learned that the political branches of the state and the federal government are not dependable sources of goodwill and fairness. Today provides us with evidence that we cannot even rely on the Supreme Court’s ability to serve as a safeguard against those well-funded interests that seek to exploit workers in order to further fill their coffers.

We can only depend upon each other, our unions, and the strength of our solidarity.

APSCUF existed before fair share, and APSCUF will thrive in the future. Our members make us who we are, and together we know we will continue to be a force with which to be reckoned. We will not rely on others to protect us; we will stand up for ourselves more now than ever before.

I am APSCUF proud.

—APSCUF President Dr. Kenneth M. Mash