Dead Last

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Webster’s defines ‘commonwealth’ as “a state founded on law and united by compact or tacit agreement of the people for the common good.” As the people, we choose the Pennsylvania legislature to decide what “the common good” means.

Among other issues, many people are wondering whether the common good extends to the full support of our state’s higher education students. The legislature has steadily reduced support for state colleges every year since 1980. “From 2011 to 2016 Higher Education funding per student declined 19%.” (Mark Dent. http://billypenn.com/2017/07/12. 6 June 18.). As a result, our ranking among states has sunk to the bottom. We are DEAD LAST, ranking 50thout of 50 states in higher education support.

This ranking is from US News and World Report, (https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/education/higher-education. 6 June 2018) whichdoes not use subjective information. Their ranking comes from numbers compiled from reliable sources. They use five criteria to evaluate the kind college support provided by each state. They are 2-Year Graduation Rate—percentage of students from 2 year schools who gain degrees in three years, 4-Year Graduation Rate—percentage of students gaining degrees in six years, Educational Attainment—the percentage of degree holders in the state, Low Debt at Graduation—compares student debt to other states, and Tuition and Fees—the average combined cost for all schools of higher education receiving state support.

Pennsylvania ranks 39thin two year graduation, 12thin four year graduation, 27thin Educational Attainment, 48thin low debt ranking, and 48thin tuition and fees. Putting these all together, Pennsylvania comes out DEAD LAST. 

The critical criteria are debt and tuition and fees. This is significant because it directly reflect the serious lack of support from the state legislature. Therefore, students have to pay more and borrow more to complete their educations.

Interestingly, the Pennsylvania k-12 schools are ranked quite high. US News ranks them at 11th. This boost gives Pennsylvania an overall education ranking of 38th. What this seems to show is that the schools are probably producing some very good students, who are financially challenged when choosing state supported colleges in their own home state. 

For the last several sessions the legislature has shown their belief that reducing corporate taxes best serves the ‘common good,’ and would attract new businesses to the state. However, it seems probable that executives of high tech and light industry companies would look at the US Newsnumbers and perhaps rethink their choice of Pennsylvania as a good place for their employees to live.

There are some concrete proposals which would thoroughly improve the support by our legislature for the more than 137,000 ‘state supported’ college students. The Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center has researched and prepared a highly detailed plan to make college much more affordable for these students. The complete 27 page plan is available at www.pennbpc.org.

The plan is very well thought out. Among other things, it would provide direct support to students in proportion to family income. Also, that funding amount would be determined at the “last dollar.” That means their plan first looks at total funding garnered by each student from Pell grants, private or state scholarships, etc., and then the amount of funding would be determined.

Obviously the big question is how to fund the program. The Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center has determined that the whole program could be funded by just a part of ANY ONE of these proposals:

• An increase in the corporate net income tax rate (CNI) from 9.99% to 13.99%.
• Reenacting the Capital Stock and Franchise Tax at 3 mills.
• A natural gas severance tax at a rate similar to the 5% in West Virginia.
• A higher personal income tax rate of 4.36% on unearnedincome (excluding interest).
• An across‐the‐board increase in the personal income tax rate of from 3.07% to 3.32%.
• A wealth tax of 0.054%. 

(PBPC. “The Pennsylvania Promise: Making College Affordable and Securing Pennsylvania’s Economic Future.” P.11)

All but one of these proposals addresses the PBPC philosophy that the parents who are stretching to meet college costs should not be additionally taxed. The idea is that higher bracket taxpayers who have benefited greatly from past tax policies should pay a ‘fair share’ of a program that truly would be for the ‘common good’ of Pennsylvania.

The Pennsylvania Promise: Making College Affordable and Securing Pennsylvania’s Economic Futureis not just a hopeful, ‘castles in the air’ idea with no chance to be enacted. Every aspect of the plan has been researched in relation to other states’ successful plans. Every funding proposal is fully explained in both its details and impact on the economy.

The legislature representing our commonwealth clearly needs to spread the wealth around in order to give college students the kind of support all other states have. 

R. Lasco is a retired high school librarian and chair of the Gettysburg Democracy for America Education Task Force.