HARRISBURG — Tuition at Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education universities was formally frozen Wednesday for 2024-25, marking the seventh straight year the price has remained flat.
Members of the Board of Governors held tuition at $7,716, or $322 per credit, for full-time in-state students. The technology fee will remain at $478.
Looking ahead to 2025-26, the board’s vote tentatively set the freeze to remain in place.
During Wednesday’s special board meeting, Chancellor Dan Greenstein said tuition this school year is roughly 25% less expensive when factoring in inflation compared to 2018 when the freeze began.
That’s largely due to what Board Chair Cynthia Shapira described as a nearly 33% rise in state funding over the past five years.
PASSHE’s 14-campus system is owned by the state. The General Assembly and Gov. Josh Shapiro directed $620.7 million in the new state budget to the system, a 6% increase, or $35.1 million above last year’s allocation. More modest increases of 2% are anticipated in the years ahead.
Another $85 million is allocated for debt support due to prior consolidation of campuses.
“I am feeling so appreciative, so grateful and so thankful to the governor, to our legislative leaders and to the General Assembly for yet another year of increased funding for our PASSHE universities,” Shapira told board members.
Shapiro and state lawmakers prioritized higher education this legislative session, with all sides desiring reforms and investment toward boosting the economy and stymieing population loss, particularly among young adults.
Those efforts include creating scholarships to support students entering fields with high workforce demands such as education and nursing, as well as a similar program specific to PASSHE to boost enrollment of out-of-state students.
About 90% of the system’s 82,000 students are from Pennsylvania. PASSHE projects enrollment to decline 0.5% this year before growing by an estimated 1.1% next year.
The legislature also created a State Board of Higher Education to better align efforts across the entirety of higher education in Pennsylvania including meeting workforce demands and making education more affordable.
Sam Smith, vice chair of the PASSHE board, spoke of the unease system administrators and university leaders experienced when a tuition freeze was initially adopted. That’s since been quelled as greater trust was built with the state legislature and results were delivered.
“We didn’t have any kind of agreement in place and there were presidents that were kind of reticent about it, who were concerned about a tuition freeze,” Smith said. “I don’t want people to lose sight of that rather recent history and appreciate that through all that, I think we’ve done the right thing for our students.”
“We did go out on a limb,” Shapira said. “We took a big risk that first year when we did this.”
Allocations to individual PASSHE universities are as follows (with last year’s allocations in parentheses): Cheyney, $21,764,561 ($20,772,066); Commonwealth, $90,935,307 ($88,426,567); East Stroudsburg, $45,534,944 ($41,362,083); Indiana, $63,536,272 ($59,388,623); Kutztown, $53,604,314 ($50,002,413); Millersville, $46,655,866 ($44,437,263); PennWest, $93,791,705 ($89,443,889); Shippensburg, $42,349,276 ($41,146,102); Slippery Rock, $58,908,895 ($54,858,813); West Chester, $97,694,529 ($89,800,850).