COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE BUDGET HEARING
STATE SYSTEM OF HIGHER EDUCATION
STATE CAPITOL HARRISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA ROOM 140, MAJORITY CAUCUS ROOM
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2, 2016 9:30 A.M.
BEFORE: HONORABLE WILLIAM ADOLPH, MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HONORABLE JOSEPH MARKOSEK, MINORITY CHAIRMAN HONORABLE KAREN BOBACK HONORABLE JIM CHRISTIANA HONORABLE GARY DAY HONORABLE GEORGE DUNBAR HONORABLE KEITH GREINER HONORABLE SETH GROVE HONORABLE SUE HELM HONORABLE WARREN KAMPF HONORABLE FRED KELLER HONORABLE JIM MARSHALL HONORABLE KURT MASSER HONORABLE DAVE MILLARD HONORABLE DUANE MILNE HONORABLE MARK MUSTIO HONORABLE JEFFREY PYLE HONORABLE MARGUERITE QUINN HONORABLE CURT SONNEY HONORABLE MIKE VEREB HONORABLE MATTHEW BRADFORD HONORABLE LESLIE ACOSTA HONORABLE TIM BRIGGS HONORABLE DONNA BULLOCK HONORABLE MARY JO DALEY HONORABLE MADELEINE DEAN HONORABLE MARIA DONATUCCI HONORABLE PETER SCHWEYER 2
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2 HONORABLE KEVIN SCHREIBER HONORABLE MARK ROZZI 3 HONORABLE STEPHEN KINSEY HONORABLE MICHAEL O'BRIEN 4
5 NON-COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
6 HONORABLE MATT BAKER HONORABLE WILL TALLMAN 7 HONORABLE BERNIE O'NEILL HONORABLE KRISTIN PHILLIPS HILL 8 HONORABLE STAN SAYLOR HONORABLE RICK SACCONE 9 HONORABLE ROBERT GODSHALL HONORABLE MARK GILLEN 10 HONORABLE JAMES ROEBUCK
11 COMMITTEE STAFF: 12 DAVID DONLEY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR (R) 13 RITCHIE LAFAVER, DEPUTY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR (R) CURT SCHRODER, CHIEF COUNSEL 14 MIRIAM FOX, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR (D) TARA TREES, CHIEF COUNSEL (D) 15
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18 TRACY L. MARKLE, COURT REPORTER/NOTARY PUBLIC 19
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1 INDEX TO TESTIFIERS
2 NAME PAGE
3 FRANK T. BROGAN, CHANCELLOR 6
4 MICHAEL DRISCOLL, PRESIDENT 23 INDIANA UNIVERSITY OF PA 5 LOIS JOHNSON, ASSOCIATE VICE CHANCELLOR 138 6 FOR ADMINISTRATION AND FINANCE, PASSHE
7 DREW JOHNSON, PRESIDENT, STUDENT SENATE 54 SAA, INC., EAST STROUDSBURG UNIVERSITY OF PA 8
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1 ---oOo---
2 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you.
3 And good morning, everyone. I'd like to
4 reconvene the Pennsylvania House Appropriations
5 Committee Budget Hearings for the fiscal year
6 '16-'17.
7 This morning, we have before us
8 Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education,
9 the Chancellor, a student, and his staff. But
10 before we get started with the testimony, I'm
11 just going to go over a little housekeeping.
12 I don't know why I say this, because
13 nobody listens to me anyway. This is being
14 televised by PCN and, you know, iPhones and
15 iPads and all those electronic devices interfere
16 with the telecast.
17 I see that the testifiers have the mics
18 as close to them as possible. These are really
19 not that powerful of mikes, and it's a big room
20 and you need to talk into them. Okay?
21 It's also customary that we go through
22 some morning introductions so the viewers at
23 home and the testifiers have an understanding of
24 how large this Committee is. It also gives you
25 an idea of where the members of this Committee 5
1 reside, and we cover all the areas of
2 Pennsylvania. So I'm going to start.
3 My name is Bill Adolph; I'm the
4 Republican Chair of the House Appropriations
5 Committee, and I reside in Springfield, Delaware
6 County.
7 MINORITY CHAIRMAN MARKOSEK: Thank you,
8 Mr. Chairman. And just an aside, Chairman
9 Adolph's cell phone went off the other day and
10 he got mad at himself. Okay? So just -- Hi,
11 everybody. Good morning. I'm State
12 Representative Joe Markosek, the 25th
13 Legislative District, which is the eastern
14 suburbs of Allegheny County.
15 (INTRODUCTION TO MEMBERS AND STAFF.)
16 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you.
17 These hearings take so long mainly because of
18 just the introductions. And when you add the 37
19 members of the Appropriations Committee and
20 throw in a couple of the standing committee
21 chairs, you know, we are the size of the State
22 Senate. So you're going to hear from everybody
23 today.
24 And with us today, also, it's my
25 pleasure to introduce Representative Matt Baker, 6
1 who's a member of the Board of Governors for
2 PASSHE. Also here today is Representative
3 Bernie O'Neill and also Representative Will
4 Tallman. And, of course, it's customary that
5 Chairman Markosek and I invite the standing
6 committee chairs and Representative Jim Roebuck,
7 the Democratic Chair. And I'm under the
8 impression that Representative Stan Saylor, the
9 Republican Chair, was supposed to be here. He's
10 probably on his way.
11 (Cell phone interruption.)
12 So somebody's not listening to me
13 already, so we'll try to figure out who that is
14 and send the Sergeant in Arms over there. Okay?
15 So, Chancellor, if you would begin.
16 MR. BROGAN: Yes, sir.
17 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you.
18 MR. BROGAN: I will. And I hope you'll
19 indulge me, members. Good morning. And thank
20 you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Chairman, for giving
21 us the opportunity to be with you this morning.
22 I'm going to save until last, the
23 introduction of my colleagues here at the table.
24 But if you'll indulge me, just a few members of
25 the audience who are here and important to us. 7
1 We have with us today the Chairman of the Board
2 of Governors, Chair Guido Pichini, who is
3 somewhere behind me. Also, we have Governor Ron
4 Henry. Ron is also the Chairman of the Finance
5 Administration & Facilities Committee for the
6 Board of Governors.
7 We also heard introduced, Representative
8 Matt Baker. One of the interesting pieces of
9 our government structure in the Commonwealth is
10 the fact that we have four seated members of the
11 General Assembly on the Board of Governors,
12 active members: Two Republicans, two Democrats,
13 two members of the House, two members of the
14 Senate.
15 I found that to be very productive and
16 very helpful in terms of maintaining a line of
17 communication between our system and the General
18 Assembly. Representative Baker is here, and
19 also Representative Mike Hanna is a member of
20 our board, as well.
21 Also with us in the audience today is
22 Marcia Welsh, who is the President of East
23 Stroudsburg University. She is here also to
24 support one of her students who is seated at my
25 right -- that's not you, Mike; I'm sorry -- who 8
1 will be joining us today, and I'll introduce him
2 in just a moment. Also with us today, President
3 Jody Harpster, the President of Shippensburg
4 University; he is with us in the audience. And
5 representing President David Soltz from
6 Bloomsburg is Dan Knorr, who is from Bloomsburg
7 and works at that institution.
8 I will now go, if you'll allow me, to an
9 introduction of my colleagues at the table.
10 Starting with my left, your right, is Lois
11 Johnson. Lois is a longtime member of the
12 System office and is here today to help support
13 me and us in the event we get questions
14 regarding statistics, data, or information that
15 you would like to have and quickly try to help
16 us find that if we've got it, but also to note
17 it if we don't so that we can get it back to
18 you.
19 To my right, I already talked about, but
20 I will introduce more formally, is President
21 Mike Driscoll. President Driscoll is President
22 of Indiana University, and is doing an
23 outstanding job at Indiana. And we believed,
24 because of the unique positioning of Indiana
25 University within our system, because they are 9
1 our comprehensive research university, that it
2 would be good to have not always a president as
3 we do, but in this particular case, this
4 particular president; and we hope that you will
5 use him through the course of these
6 conversations to your advantage in terms of
7 on-the-ground representation by a president.
8 They are the folks who are there every
9 day. And I think you will find him to be very
10 helpful, as he is to our entire system, not just
11 to Indiana University.
12 To Mike's right, we have our student who
13 is with us today. Drew is from East Stroudsburg
14 University, Drew Johnson. He is a
15 communications major, a senior at East
16 Stroudsburg, so he'll be leaving us at the end
17 of the year unless we can coax him into staying
18 and doing some graduate work. Drew, it's
19 always a possibility. And he's also student
20 body president at East Stroudsburg University;
21 and so we're very proud of him, his
22 accomplishments and, again, how he represents
23 not only the students of East Stroudsburg; but
24 today, I really believe strongly you will find
25 he represents the over 107,000 students that we 10
1 have as part of our system; and we're delighted
2 to have him with us today.
3 So those are the members of our group
4 today, Mr. Chairman. And, again, indulge me, if
5 you will, just a few comments; because, more
6 importantly, we want to get to your questions.
7 Just a few thoughts: Recently, we have
8 engaged participation with our system by a
9 university that some know, Georgetown
10 University; it's a well-respected and
11 well-regarded institution.
12 They have become very interested in what
13 we are doing in our system to help better align
14 the needs of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
15 with the degrees that we offer in the education
16 that we provide to our 107,000 students.
17 We're doing a great deal of work on the
18 issue of supply-demand gap analysis, not only
19 for us but for the Commonwealth: What jobs are
20 out there; where are we oversaturated; where are
21 we undersubscribed; how do the degrees within
22 our system match up with the needs of the
23 Commonwealth now and in the future? We'll be
24 sharing that with all of you in the months to
25 come as that continues to unfold. 11
1 But Georgetown has also looked, through
2 their Center of Education & Research, at a great
3 deal of the work that our system is currently
4 contributing to the Commonwealth. I'll share
5 some of that with you as the time will allow, in
6 the questions that I will respond to.
7 But I wanted to make you aware of that,
8 because you need to know. They did a study and
9 a couple of things that they cited, which I
10 thought you might find interesting and
11 important, are the fact that in the last 5
12 years, our 14 universities have increased the
13 number of degrees that we are offering by 10
14 percent.
15 And this exists in a day and time where
16 enrollments have consistently been declining
17 overall. We're down two percent again this year
18 over last; and yet our degree production, those
19 actually being awarded a baccalaureate degree, a
20 master's degree, a doctoral degree, has
21 increased at the same time by ten percent.
22 We are becoming more efficient in
23 retaining students and helping students to
24 graduate to that degree. We also remain a major
25 producer in the areas such as education, 12
1 business, the arts and humanities; but we've
2 also increased the number of bachelor's degrees
3 awarded in STEM education and healthcare fields
4 by 37 percent. This is a concerted effort to
5 try to better balance our portfolio between the
6 humanities, other offerings, and STEM education
7 programs, as well. It is possible to do both
8 and do both well.
9 We are aligning our programs to meet the
10 needs of the Commonwealth, as I mentioned; but
11 we also want to make sure that no matter the
12 degree, every student comes away with the
13 ability to think critically, to communicate, to
14 solve problems; this is what the real work of
15 today demands of all the people who will go
16 there with one of our degrees.
17 And as I mentioned, we are working very
18 hard on the supply-demand gap analysis. We
19 believe that will be important not only to our
20 system, that is something we intend to share.
21 We think it's going to be important to the
22 Commonwealth and the future of the Commonwealth.
23 We're a good investment for our
24 students. We are still the most affordable game
25 in town in higher education in the world of 13
1 baccalaureate degree, master's degree, and
2 doctoral degree-granting institutions. We are
3 generally about $7,000 less expensive than the
4 other brands within the state. That's not only
5 important because it should be that way, but
6 also Act 188, which created this system, says
7 so; and so we take that very seriously. Access
8 and affordability are very important to us.
9 We have a higher percentage of Pell
10 Grant recipients than any other higher-education
11 sector in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. We
12 are somewhere in the neighborhood of 37 percent
13 of our students are on a Pell Grant, the
14 federally-funded Pell Grant program. Just so
15 you know, another 32 percent, and it could
16 include some duplication there, also receive
17 awards from PHEAA from our State Grant program.
18 We have an annual economic impact in our
19 system based on a current economic impact study
20 that was done of $6.7 billion to the
21 Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Some of that just
22 because we exist: jobs, commodities, all of the
23 things that go on; but then, again, our
24 graduates, who turn over those paychecks out
25 there in the system every single day. 14
1 We have about the same funding as we had
2 in 1997. Our state appropriation is almost
3 identical to what it was back in 1997, but we do
4 have 13,000 more students today than we had in
5 1997.
6 Many people who hear about declining
7 enrollment believe that we have gone below some
8 low-water mark in the past. We are still 13,000
9 students beyond where we were in 1997, with an
10 appropriation that is similar to that of 1997 by
11 age.
12 We're now working with the Board of
13 Governors to begin an effort, and this is really
14 important for you to know, and I know I've had
15 this conversation with many of you individually.
16 All of that having been said, we also recognize
17 things change. We must, too. And we have been
18 working hard over the last several years to
19 change.
20 Some, because we need to based on the
21 economy. A great deal because we need to, to
22 remain relevant in current -- in the
23 higher-education market around our country.
24 We're 900 employees less today than we were 8
25 years ago, through a variety of activities that 15
1 have gotten us there. We are leaner and meaner
2 in that regard. But having said that, as you
3 can see in many ways, we're more efficient in
4 terms of our primary function, which is to
5 graduate students with marketable degrees.
6 We are working, however, today and into
7 the months to come on what we're calling an
8 operational and organizational modernization
9 plan. What should our system, our 14
10 universities, our system look like for the next
11 25 years? They all have long and illustrious
12 histories behind them: 125, 150, 175 years of
13 age. That's important. But how should we
14 organize our system for the next 25 years, which
15 is a world vastly different in a state that will
16 be vastly different than it was 175 years ago?
17 So, Mr. Chairman and members, we
18 appreciate the opportunity to be here. We will
19 be honest and truthful in our responses. And
20 again, as I mentioned, Mr. Chairman and Mr.
21 Chairman, anything we don't have today that you
22 ask and want, we will turn around a response to
23 you as rapidly as we can.
24 Thanks for the chance to make those
25 remarks, Mr. Chairman. 16
1 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you,
2 Chancellor. Chairman Markosek.
3 MINORITY CHAIRMAN MARKOSEK: Thank you
4 very much, Chairman. I do not have any specific
5 questions, but I'd be remiss in not thanking
6 President Driscoll. A couple of years ago, he
7 was so kind to nominate me as one of their
8 legislative fellows and had a very nice ceremony
9 up at IUP. It just made me feel very special,
10 and I treasure that moment. And I just can't
11 tell you how impressed I was with the facilities
12 up there, and I'm sure that's just a microcosm
13 of your entire system.
14 I know you have your problems. We all
15 do. But -- and a lot of that will come out here
16 with the questions, but I'll let the members --
17 I'll give them my time to ask the questions, but
18 I did want to say thank you for that. It was
19 really a proud moment.
20 Thank you.
21 MR. BROGAN: Thank you.
22 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you,
23 Chairman Markosek. Chancellor, it's a Budget
24 Hearing.
25 MR. BROGAN: Yes, sir. 17
1 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: It's a Budget
2 Hearing. So my first question is related to the
3 state funding. Okay? And I'd like to hear from
4 the Chancellor and the President of the State
5 System School how the lack of funding affected
6 you and how you stand now, as a result of the
7 blue-line of about $20.6 million?
8 You mentioned in your opening comments
9 your students also receive about -- 32 percent
10 of your students also receive PHEAA Grants. Do
11 you have that dollar amount? That would be
12 helpful.
13 And for budgeting purposes, were you
14 budgeting the extra 23 million? Were you -- I
15 want to thank the state system presidents and
16 the schools for working with this situation with
17 the PHEAA Grants during this impasse. You're
18 probably going to hear from the Democratic
19 Chair, Jim Roebuck, who is also a member of the
20 PHEAA Board, who I've worked hand in hand with
21 for many years in trying to keep the PHEAA Grant
22 relevant in helping students receive access and
23 affordability.
24 So, you know, it's been tough. It's
25 been embarrassing at times. Okay? But this is 18
1 what these hearings are all about. I want to
2 hear what you had to do when you did not receive
3 state funding for the first semester, okay, and
4 did not receive the 5-percent increase as a
5 result of the blue-line, and how you would work
6 it out with the PHEAA Grants. Thank you.
7 MR. BROGAN: Yes, sir. And, Mr.
8 Chairman, I'll work backwards, if that's okay,
9 and start with PHEAA Grants.
10 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: That's fine.
11 MR. BROGAN: I'm glad you said what you
12 said. I'm incredibly proud of our 14
13 universities, not only their desire to meet that
14 need during the temporary period when the PHEAA
15 Grant stopped, but how they went about it to
16 make certain, first and foremost, that no
17 student lost a PHEAA award by virtue of that
18 temporary stoppage. They did an incredible job.
19 Many took the money right out of their
20 general operating budgets, many took the money
21 out of money set aside in their general
22 operating budgets for student financial
23 assistance, some worked with their local
24 foundations to make up some of that difference;
25 and it was really, I think, heartwarming to see 19
1 the creativity on the part of the universities
2 dedicated to making sure that no student was
3 negatively impacted as a result.
4 We knew all along that ultimately those
5 dollars would flow, which was helpful to us,
6 that we were dealing with a temporary situation.
7 But, again, I think it shows the passion on the
8 part of the people at these local universities
9 in Pennsylvania to make that kind of commitment.
10 So, to my knowledge, and I always
11 qualify with things like that, it's a big
12 system. But, to my knowledge, I have not been
13 made aware of nor heard of any student that was
14 negatively impacted on the issue of the PHEAA
15 award situation during that period of time; and
16 that says a great deal about the universities.
17 I will also say about the PHEAA awards,
18 because I wasn't born in Pennsylvania, cling to
19 it. I know that is easy to say to people who
20 work with PHEAA every day and of course to the
21 university folks who use it every day; but I
22 think sometimes in states, it's easy to take
23 what you have for granted.
24 There are states around the country that
25 don't have anything like PHEAA; and therefore, 20
1 their students lack that direct opportunity to
2 receive state money to help support their
3 educational costs. None of these things are
4 perfect, and they all can change over time. But
5 believe me, the basic component that you have
6 here in PHEAA that we have is something that we
7 need to cherish and we need to nurture over
8 time, especially as costs continue to grow.
9 The second issue, Mr. Chairman, is the
10 issue of the blue-line. I've got to digress
11 just a little bit, and I'll do it quickly; and
12 then I'm going to turn my attention to Dr.
13 Driscoll and let him give you an on-the-ground
14 take, from a president's standpoint, on both the
15 issue of PHEAA and what I'm about to say.
16 We did our budget last October and
17 forwarded it to the Governor's Office. It was a
18 request for, approximately, $50 million, a
19 little bit less than that.
20 That was dedicated to cover the costs of
21 inflation, healthcare, and pension in order to
22 meet those numbers and not have to ask the
23 students -- or not have to ask the universities
24 to cut their budgets, which at the time were
25 flat and remained flat during the course of the 21
1 year. We had to figure out how to absorb that
2 some $50 million of rising costs that go up even
3 when we are going in the other direction as far
4 as the operation of our universities. Those
5 costs continue to escalate.
6 So it was really very important to us
7 that we ask for the amount of money to at least
8 cover that nut so that we would not have to ask
9 the universities to make further reductions on
10 top of the ones they were already making in
11 their budget.
12 There are three ways to fill that hole:
13 One, more money from the state. Two, and it's
14 an and/or situation, if you will, tuition
15 increases; and then I suppose an and/and, or/or
16 situation, or cuts. Some facsimile thereof,
17 depending on how the other two are measured.
18 We, ultimately, because we got to the
19 July deadline for tuition setting by the Board
20 of Governors, and the Board of Governors made
21 the decision to increase tuition by 3.5 percent.
22 Footnote here: We have increased tuition over
23 the past several years 3 and 3-and-a-half was
24 the largest increase over the last several
25 years. Typically, it's about 3 percent; because 22
1 we are sensitive to the impact of rising tuition
2 on students. That total made up about $30
3 million during the course of the year of that
4 $50-million deficit, leaving, obviously, do the
5 math, $20 million.
6 The 5-percent increase that we were
7 looking at, the Chairman got the number right,
8 is just equivalent to over $20 million. It's
9 about $21.6 million, I think, Mr. Chairman,
10 you're right. And so you can see the
11 combination of the student tuition increase
12 combined with that $20 million would have
13 enabled us to cover the deficit.
14 With the protracted conversations and
15 negotiations moving us well into the second half
16 of the academic year and fiscal year, we, of
17 course, working with the universities, made it
18 clear that we couldn't wait to get that one
19 figured out.
20 Preblue-line and postblue-line, we were
21 running out of the ability to make those
22 reductions in a way that would not be as huge if
23 you wait later in the fiscal year to start
24 making those reductions earlier in the fiscal
25 year, whether they came in the form of freezing 23
1 budgets in terms of travel or whether it had to
2 do with not filling open positions, whatever it
3 happened to be. And by virtue of that fact, the
4 universities are working hard today hoping that
5 there's the possibility but knowledgeable of the
6 fact that if that doesn't happen, we still have
7 to cover that additional $20 million remaining
8 in the deficit; and that's what they're working
9 very hard to do today.
10 So I hope that answered your question,
11 Mr. Chairman. If not, I'll take another stab.
12 But I'd like to turn to Dr. Driscoll and get a
13 president's perspective on both PHEAA and that
14 issue.
15 MR. DRISCOLL: Thank you, Chancellor.
16 And thank you, Mr. Chairman.
17 First I want to say that there's a
18 historical context, so if you'll briefly allow
19 me to mention that I looked at the amount of
20 appropriation coming to IUP for our operating
21 budget; and the last time it was lower than it
22 is this year was 1992-'93.
23 So let's just recognize that there's
24 been a challenge for some period of time. And I
25 also have to say that I've been very 24
1 appreciative of the strong support shown to
2 reinvestment in the state system by the
3 Legislature, by the House, from whichever side
4 of the aisle, recognizing the value of the
5 system. So that's a good thing, and I brag to
6 my colleagues about that support when I'm around
7 the country. So I thank you for that. We would
8 like to actualize that, of course, at some
9 point.
10 In the last several years, since
11 '11-'12, we have eliminated slightly over 45
12 positions at IUP or equivalent positions
13 permanently. We have cut about $45 million.
14 About $32 million of that are permanent cuts.
15 This year, we have been required to
16 continue a practice of holding faculty positions
17 open, using selectively temporary faculty
18 instead of regular faculty to make sure we're
19 meeting instructional need.
20 And I have to also point out that
21 between about '11-'12 and now we've gone through
22 our record enrollment year; this is the highest
23 enrollments ever at IUP. So we have been
24 managing by cutting; we have been managing by
25 holding positions open and not meeting the 25
1 entire instructional need, perhaps, at the level
2 we would see as appropriate.
3 This year, we have been able to manage
4 through a budget by spending one-time dollars to
5 fill some of the gap that was reflected because
6 of the lack of the 5-percent increase in what we
7 would have seen from that.
8 If I look forward, we can't do that
9 forever, I project somewhere between an 11 and
10 $15-million shortfall in my operating budget in
11 '16-'17, which means we'll have to continue to
12 exercise some of those cuts and, quite honestly,
13 find ways to charge students more for the good
14 education they receive if we don't want to erode
15 quality.
16 So I think that, perhaps, Mr. Chairman
17 addresses the substance from my chair. I would
18 mention that each of the 14 universities in the
19 system is in a slightly different position. I'm
20 fortunate enough to be at one of the larger
21 institutions, which provides us with a little
22 more flexibility than some of my colleagues have
23 in the short-term to try to manage through some
24 of these short-term challenges, hoping for that
25 long-term reinvestment that we would all like to 26
1 see.
2 Thank you.
3 MR. BROGAN: And, Mr. Chairman, you had
4 asked for some numbers. Lois provided me with
5 some of those. PHEAA: The average PHEAA award
6 for us this year is about $3,000 per student.
7 That is a total of $85 million, in that about
8 32,000 students in our system receive a PHEAA
9 award.
10 She also reminded me, diligently, that
11 the reduction remaining is not 20 million;
12 because the costs of healthcare and pension is
13 slightly larger than we projected it to be. We
14 still have a remaining deficit of 32 million, as
15 opposed to 20 million. She's correct on that.
16 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Okay. And
17 thank you very much for that explanation. And,
18 like I said, you know, many of us feel that --
19 we're confused with the Governor's blue-line of
20 the 5 percent.
21 We understand some of the other issues
22 on the table. Okay? But the 5 percent, you
23 know, we feel very strongly that should have
24 went out; the money was there, but I'm sure
25 you're going to get further questions. 27
1 And I'm just going to ask, because of
2 the length of time and the number of members
3 that we have, if we can shorten up the answers,
4 that would be great.
5 MR. BROGAN: Sure.
6 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: It's my
7 pleasure now to turn the mike over to the
8 Democratic Chair of the House Education
9 Committee, Representative Jim Roebuck.
10 CHAIRMAN ROEBUCK: Thank you, Mr.
11 Chairman. Mr. Chancellor, in your presentation
12 you referenced the legislation which established
13 the state system and you noted both the
14 importance of access and affordability.
15 I want to just focus a little bit on
16 access. One of the continuing issues in higher
17 education in Pennsylvania relates directly to
18 access. The state system is established by
19 Pennsylvania tax dollars; and, in fact, should
20 be based on the premise that every taxpayer
21 should have equal access to an opportunity at
22 higher education within the state system.
23 And I think we all know that is not
24 necessarily true, and I think any vision of
25 building a new state college campus is probably 28
1 illusionary; that's not going to happen. But
2 what are we doing about trying to open up lines
3 of access for every resident of Pennsylvania?
4 Is there a vigorous distance learning
5 program within the state system that drives out
6 your education to every community in this
7 Commonwealth? Is there anything that gives to
8 all Pennsylvanians access to the excellence of
9 the state system?
10 MR. BROGAN: Representative, I'm going
11 to answer that; but I want to broaden my answer.
12 First of all, to encompass the fact that -- on
13 the issue of higher education in Pennsylvania,
14 this is an incredible state by way of access, if
15 you consider access to be sheer volume, 350
16 institutions of higher education or more, most
17 of whom offer some variation with online
18 education; and that includes our community
19 colleges.
20 But access is not always counted by just
21 available volume of offerings or institutions,
22 because one might have 350 institutions; but if
23 one can't get into one of those, it's a problem.
24 I have noted in the time I've been here, which
25 will be three years in the not-too-distant 29
1 future, that while we have a trifurcated system
2 of higher education -- what do I mean by that?
3 We have our state system; we have the
4 state-related universities; and we have the
5 community colleges, public now, I'm talking
6 about.
7 There still exists, I think, too many
8 lines that separate those three institutions
9 from the issue of access. The 14 community
10 colleges were created with a very specific
11 mission: open enrollment. Take students who
12 may not otherwise rise to the level of
13 qualification for a publicly-funded state
14 university, state-owned or state-related, give
15 them the tools that they need, including in many
16 cases, remediation; and prepare them either then
17 for a degree that will take them to the world of
18 work or a degree that will launch them on to a
19 state-related or a state-owned university to
20 finish their baccalaureate degree and beyond.
21 And I think one of the issues we still
22 have to wrestle with as a Commonwealth is the
23 articulation between community college,
24 state-owned and state-related. And I think that
25 still exists today. We are working very 30
1 carefully with the community colleges. It's
2 sometimes a little difficult, because they are
3 not a system. I'm not criticizing, but they're
4 not an organized system in the way some are
5 around the country. And they do a great job of
6 trying to take that differentiated approach that
7 they have 14 times and work together with us.
8 We're getting ready to make some
9 announcements in the near future about some
10 seamless opportunities for students between our
11 community colleges and our 14 state-owned
12 universities. But access is one of those terms,
13 to your good point, that is not defined easily.
14 What might just sound like, Gosh, there's 350
15 institutions of higher education, anybody who
16 wants should be able to go anywhere they want;
17 it's not always that easy.
18 These universities fight to maintain
19 access relative to affordability, which even
20 compounds the issue. How many things can you
21 offer and to what total demographic group can
22 you make it available? And that gets to be an
23 even greater struggle. It's something we
24 wrestle with every day.
25 Having said that, and I'll end here, and 31
1 hopefully be able to answer any follow-ups you
2 have. But trying to make sure that we better
3 articulate our community colleges, our
4 state-owned and our state-relateds, I think, is
5 going to be imperative to the future of the
6 Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, to maintain both
7 access and affordability for those who want it
8 and need it and just look that our board has
9 commissioned on modernization and reorganization
10 for our system is going to be dedicated in large
11 measure not only to what we need to do but we
12 want to even talk about what we believe we're
13 going to have to do with those state-owned,
14 state-relateds and community colleges to do a
15 better job.
16 If we do it in a silo, it will be half a
17 loaf. We're going to have to have ongoing
18 conversations with the other two providers at
19 the same time.
20 CHAIRMAN ROEBUCK: Thank you.
21 MR. BROGAN: Yes, sir.
22 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you,
23 Chairman. Representative Sue Helm.
24 REPRESENTATIVE HELM: Thank you, Mr.
25 Chairman. Welcome, Chancellor Brogan, and all. 32
1 I appreciate you being here to answer our
2 questions.
3 Student debt resulting from paying for
4 higher education is an ongoing concern
5 nationwide. And could you give us an idea of
6 the debt load of a typical student leaving a
7 state system university and also discuss what
8 the state system is doing in trying to reduce
9 the debt burden?
10 MR. BROGAN: Yes, Representative. Our
11 average debt from our system, with a takeaway,
12 is just about $30,000. That also includes about
13 79 percent of that where students have borrowed.
14 So beyond PHEAA Grants and beyond Pell Grants,
15 it also includes loans that they have borrowed
16 privately. So our takeaway debt is 30,000.
17 To give you some context then, which I
18 know you think is important, as do I, the United
19 States average is just about similar to that on
20 a national level.
21 But from a Pennsylvania standpoint, when
22 you take all of the providers in Pennsylvania,
23 the average debt load is about 33-and-a-half
24 thousand dollars; so we are below the average in
25 Pennsylvania and we're about the same as the 33
1 national average when it comes to debt load.
2 REPRESENTATIVE HELM: I hear that all
3 the time, so it's nice to know we're below; but
4 yet it would be nice if we could lower it even
5 yet.
6 I do have one more question. Of the 14
7 state system universities, which of them have
8 struggled the most with enrollment and maybe the
9 most financially vulnerable?
10 MR. BROGAN: That's probably a two-fold
11 answer. Number one, Cheyney University is
12 struggling with enrollment. We're working very,
13 very closely with them to try to see if we can
14 reverse that trend in making some significant
15 changes at the institution based on academic
16 program alignment and business model function.
17 But they have dropped precipitously over the
18 years by way of enrollment.
19 But at the same time, Mansfield
20 University has experienced some significant
21 enrollment decline over about a dozen years, and
22 they also are trying to reverse that trend and
23 adopting some new academic branding for their
24 institution based on liberal arts offerings for
25 the future to see if they can reverse that 34
1 enrollment trend. But behind them, literally
2 racked up behind them, you can go up the list to
3 California University, to Clarion University and
4 multiple other universities that have seen some
5 sort of enrollment decline.
6 There are a variety of reasons for that.
7 Primarily, the demographic trough that we face
8 in the Commonwealth today; and that means just
9 simply less students coming out of Pennsylvania
10 high schools, not because they're there and not
11 graduating; there are just less high school
12 students today than there were 10 years ago.
13 And because our universities largely
14 serve markets, I'm generalizing to some degree,
15 largely serve markets, there are less students
16 coming out of local high schools that would
17 ordinarily have gone directly to one of our
18 universities within their market. That's had a
19 significant impact on many of our 14
20 universities, because those markets have changed
21 dramatically.
22 There's good news. We hope to find the
23 bottom of that demographic trough at some time
24 in the near future, but the overriding news is
25 the fact that it will take years for that trough 35
1 to begin to turn around and come back up in
2 Pennsylvania. It will not see an overnight fix.
3 Second, and to be candid with you,
4 markets are changing, in general, in higher
5 education. People could typically open the
6 doors in our system a bunch of years ago and
7 know that they were going to be full when the
8 students came out of high school, when the
9 students came across the state line, wherever
10 they hailed from or other markets in
11 Pennsylvania, turn on the lights, open the
12 doors, you were going to be looking at,
13 generally, a full complement of students.
14 That's changed dramatically.
15 We are seeing far less students coming
16 from out of state because of what they're doing
17 with price changes within their states, New
18 York, Ohio, and others; and we're also seeing
19 people's taste change in universities.
20 It doesn't mean good university, bad
21 university; it simply means offerings,
22 geographic location, costs associated. All of
23 these things have had an impact on enrollments
24 within our system. Primarily, West Chester
25 still is maintaining, not only maintaining but 36
1 growing the number of students that they bring
2 in. IUP, as the President mentioned, is still
3 maintaining and even growing in certain areas;
4 but the predominant number of our universities
5 have seen some decrease in enrollment up to
6 precipitous decreased enrollment over the last
7 ten years.
8 REPRESENTATIVE HELM: Thank you. Thank
9 you, Mr. Chairman.
10 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you,
11 Representative. Representative Kinsey.
12 REPRESENTATIVE KINSEY: Thank you, Mr.
13 Chairman. Good morning, everyone. Chancellor,
14 I know you and I have had some conversations in
15 the past as it relates to Cheyney University,
16 and I just want to go back over some of the
17 trends that you shared earlier.
18 You mentioned that enrollment is pretty
19 much down across the board at 2 percent. You
20 anticipate for 2016-2017, there's an
21 anticipation that at least three of the 14
22 schools will continue to show a decrease in
23 enrollment. Cheyney University, I assume, is
24 one of those universities that you're talking
25 about that's going to continue to show a 37
1 decrease in enrollment; and we've had some
2 conversations in the past specifically about
3 Cheyney. Representative Helm just asked you a
4 specific question about as it relates to the
5 schools that are having some struggles.
6 I know a year ago, you met with this
7 Committee and you shared some of the bold,
8 innovative ideas that PASSHE was looking at as
9 it related to Cheyney University.
10 One of the ideas was, I think, a sharing
11 or collaboration to some extent with West
12 Chester University, my alma mater. Can you sort
13 of update us as to how that collaboration is
14 going, if it's still in effect, and the outcomes
15 thus far?
16 MR. BROGAN: Yes, sir. And just an
17 amendment, if you'll allow me?
18 REPRESENTATIVE KINSEY: Sure.
19 MR. BROGAN: We're not sure where the
20 enrollments will be for those three universities
21 yet for this next year.
22 REPRESENTATIVE KINSEY: Okay.
23 MR. BROGAN: As a matter of fact,
24 they're projecting increases.
25 REPRESENTATIVE KINSEY: Cheyney 38
1 included?
2 MR. BROGAN: Cheyney included. Based on
3 a lot of the changes that we have been making.
4 Now, are we talking explosive growth? No.
5 REPRESENTATIVE KINSEY: Okay.
6 MR. BROGAN: But they are projecting
7 some increased enrollment at Mansfield. They
8 are expecting some increased enrollment at
9 Cheyney for this next fall.
10 REPRESENTATIVE KINSEY: Okay.
11 MR. BROGAN: Based on many of the
12 changes that they are not only making, but
13 marketing to potential recruits coming to the
14 university. We, of course, will get you those
15 real numbers when they manifest themself in the
16 fall of this next year. I just wanted to get
17 that on the table.
18 REPRESENTATIVE KINSEY: Thank you.
19 MR. BROGAN: To the other part of your
20 question, yes, we are continuing to work with
21 Cheyney, trying to reorganize the academic
22 program array. And then the other side of the
23 business model function of a university are
24 those business functions that they carry out
25 every day, whether it's IT or whether it is HR, 39
1 those kinds of functions, in trying to marry
2 universities together to decrease the amount of
3 redundancy.
4 There is no sense, in my opinion, and
5 maybe that's a crass way of putting it, but in
6 my opinion and many, there's no sense in having
7 14 universities service those functions 14 times
8 in redundant fashion. We don't have the money
9 to do that anymore, even if it was a good day.
10 And so we have been strategically
11 marrying universities together to then create
12 consortium on purchasing issues. We do payroll,
13 HR, as a system; and we have a whole slate of
14 other functions where we intend to bring
15 together universities.
16 I call it insourcing, because you're not
17 really outsourcing to a private vendor. You're
18 insourcing those functions to another public
19 university where they're already performing it,
20 they have volume and scale; and with a little
21 additional money that you could provide through
22 a contract, you'd save money. They'd get a
23 little additional money to add to their
24 complement to be able to service not only
25 themself but also your institution as the 40
1 sending institution. So we've been doing that
2 not only at Cheyney, Representative; we've been
3 doing more of that across the spectrum, and we
4 believe that will provide a futuristic approach
5 to how we operate as a system going forward on
6 the business side of what we do.
7 I'll do this real quickly, but to prove
8 a point. Financial aid is a perfect example.
9 Most of our financial aid is federal and PHEAA.
10 The rules are the same for everybody with
11 federal financial aid and PHEAA awards, and yet
12 we duplicate and replicate 14 times how we
13 approach PHEAA and federal financial aid on all
14 of our campuses.
15 You know who doesn't know that? The
16 students and their families; they have no idea
17 where that's done. And so we believe if we can
18 continue to take something like financial aid,
19 allow the universities to continue to handle
20 their own unique financial-aid packages that
21 they provide but better organize the federal and
22 state and tamp down the redundancy, the savings
23 can be plowed back into the universities in the
24 form of opportunities for students going
25 forward. 41
1 REPRESENTATIVE KINSEY: So, Mr.
2 Chancellor, with the insourcing over the past
3 year, has Cheyney University received and/or
4 West Chester -- like, can you talk about some of
5 the positive effects that -- the impact that it
6 has had?
7 And the reason I bring this up is
8 because I know that at one point in heeding with
9 Cheyney's call, there was some concern about,
10 they used the term takeover.
11 MR. BROGAN: Yeah.
12 REPRESENTATIVE KINSEY: And, you know,
13 we -- Chairman Roebuck and I met with the
14 students and faculty and with that group a
15 couple times and sort of shared that our
16 understanding was that it was not a takeover but
17 yet this insourcing would allow some possible
18 benefits, especially with Cheyney University.
19 We recognize that Cheyney University is
20 the only historical black university as part of
21 the PASSHE system, and I think that part of the
22 concern that was also shared is that being the
23 only historical black university -- as we talk
24 about branding, again, I went to West Chester.
25 I visited Cheyney. Two distinctly different 42
1 schools. So how do you still maintain the brand
2 of university being a historical black
3 university?
4 How do you also, I guess, advertise to
5 increase enrollment, you know, without the
6 suspicions of it's being taken over by West
7 Chester University, which is really a totally
8 different cultural-type school?
9 MR. BROGAN: Yes, sir. Great question.
10 And the answer is this: In that we are doing
11 this all over the system; it is no more a
12 takeover than Bloomsburg working with Mansfield.
13 It is not to even take over their functions. It
14 is to provide on a contract basis those
15 functions to save the institution funds.
16 So whether it is West Chester and
17 Cheyney or, as we've talked about, any one of
18 our other universities who provide those
19 services, who may provide them for Cheyney, it
20 is strictly a business move to make sure that
21 Cheyney can redirect the savings back into
22 Cheyney University; but it doesn't really change
23 the governance structure of the way an
24 institution operates. It really is just
25 changing the business model approach. And by 43
1 the way, this is now something that is being
2 done all over the country. As people are
3 recognizing more and more the two halves of a
4 university, the academic and the support
5 services, and the fact that the support services
6 are costing more and more over time.
7 Folks, 80 percent of our budgets, or
8 thereabouts, are people. We're in the people
9 business. It's what we do. And what we find
10 during these budget-cutting experiences is, you
11 can turn off the lights more, you can turn the
12 air-conditioning down, you can turn the heat
13 down; you can only do so much of that and you
14 get back to the lion's share of your costs,
15 which are people, personnel; it's what we are.
16 And by reducing the cost associated with
17 providing many of those services, you can
18 realize significant savings that can go back to
19 the institution; and that's what it's all about.
20 REPRESENTATIVE KINSEY: Chancellor --
21 and I know that we're running out of time, so
22 very quickly if I may, Mr. Chairman? Just two
23 quick questions, and if you can just answer
24 these very quickly.
25 MR. BROGAN: Sure. 44
1 REPRESENTATIVE KINSEY: Cheyney
2 University, I think when we met last year, had
3 an interim president. Do they now have a
4 permanent president, or is it still an interim
5 president?
6 MR. BROGAN: No, sir; they still have an
7 interim president.
8 REPRESENTATIVE KINSEY: How long does
9 that -- what's the plan in regards to getting
10 permanency there?
11 MR. BROGAN: We are still trying to get
12 our arms around some of the major issues that
13 Cheyney is dealing with, so that by the time we
14 post that job for a permanent president, we'll
15 be as attractive as possible to the most
16 attractive candidates.
17 Hopefully between now and the end of the
18 year, if we can continue to make those kinds of
19 changes and see a return on investment by way of
20 efficiency and effectiveness; then we can post
21 that job and feel good about the candidates that
22 we would get for it.
23 REPRESENTATIVE KINSEY: Okay. My last
24 part is really a comment. I recognize that
25 there is a request to increase funding for the 45
1 Keystone Honors. My hope is that PASSHE or
2 whoever's involved, will really take a vigorous
3 approach to advertising so that Cheyney can, you
4 know, basically try to do an outreach to
5 encourage students to attend the university
6 under the understanding that the Keystone Honors
7 Grant is available.
8 MR. BROGAN: Yes, sir. Our public
9 relations folks are working with theirs.
10 They're short staffed. We're trying to
11 supplement that effort in terms of marketing and
12 recruitment.
13 REPRESENTATIVE KINSEY: Great. Thank
14 you, Chancellor. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
15 MR. BROGAN: Yes, sir, Representative.
16 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you.
17 Representative Warren Kampf.
18 REPRESENTATIVE KAMPF: Thank you, Mr.
19 Chairman. Chancellor, so, you know, there are
20 three legs to this stool, right? There's public
21 support, taxpayer support, there's tuition; and
22 then I think it's just operating costs.
23 You know, House Bill 1460, our budget
24 bill, had a $20 million, 5-percent increase for
25 you. I was pleased to see that in there and 46
1 proud to vote for it. I think we're in this
2 strange position where the Governor blue-lined
3 that, crossed that 20 million out; although, now
4 in his budget book for '16-'17, he's assuming
5 that same 20 million's going to come back in for
6 '15-'16, a little, odd contradictory situation
7 that blue-line has placed us in.
8 That's the taxpayer support piece of
9 this. You've talked about cost savings. You've
10 talked about how enrollment is down. I think
11 over the last three or four years it's down
12 10,000.
13 And based on a joint state government
14 commission report I saw, essentially, enrollment
15 has been down over the last ten years at every
16 one of the universities but two.
17 And the IFO actually came in here and
18 told us that demographic, that student
19 demographic, whether we like it or not, for the
20 next decade or more is going to be flat or
21 smaller.
22 Specifically, what cost savings, you've
23 referred to them generally, the economies of
24 scale and that kind of thing, what cost savings
25 in particular are you planning on implementing, 47
1 have you implemented? And if you have any
2 dollar figures associated with those, I'd love
3 to hear them.
4 MR. BROGAN: Yes, sir. And this will be
5 a good one, too. I'm not trying to dump this
6 on Dr. Driscoll. But, yeah, I think it is
7 important before I'm finished that you do hear
8 from someone who's an on-the-ground practitioner
9 about how it affects IUP; because that, in some
10 way, shape or form, will tell you how it's
11 affecting all of the other 13 of his colleagues.
12 The new normal that we deal with are
13 budget reductions. We understand that. And I
14 got to tell you, the 14 presidents know every
15 day when they go to work, they're probably going
16 to have to look at everything they do and how
17 they're organized.
18 And I'm not taking about just marginal
19 reductions in their budget. As I've outlined,
20 we're looking at a $30-million reduction yet in
21 this fiscal year, and this fiscal year is
22 quickly ebbing away.
23 Next year, I can tell you, that even if
24 we satisfy this one, and we have to, to balance
25 our budgets, next year we're staring, based on 48
1 projected growth in pension and healthcare,
2 general rate of inflation, at about $41 million,
3 which is part of our request this year for next
4 year, for the next fiscal year.
5 That, again, is to cover healthcare,
6 pension, and general rate of inflation, those
7 costs associated. We also are seeing rising
8 costs in new degree creation.
9 There's an interesting myth that exists,
10 which is, if you close a program, and we have
11 closed many over the last several years, because
12 they're under-subscribed, under-enrolled, that
13 there should be enough money generated by the
14 closure to move over to open a new program in
15 its place.
16 The problem is, by the time we've closed
17 that program, it probably is not only not
18 self-sufficient economically, it probably is
19 taking money from other programs to continue to
20 support, leaving us with an inability to more
21 quickly add, even though we are adding a great
22 many new programs, and again, programs largely
23 dedicated to the future of Pennsylvania.
24 Those programs, however, are high-cost
25 programs. They are STEM oriented. They have a 49
1 requirement for smaller class sizes based on the
2 content, higher costs in equipment, higher costs
3 in facilities based on what you have to have to
4 offer those programs. So there's that intricacy
5 that goes along with trying to remain current
6 and buoyant in the markets.
7 But to that end, Lois, we've cut over
8 the last several years?
9 MS. JOHNSON: 300 million.
10 MR. BROGAN: $300 million in the last --
11 MS. JOHNSON: -- in the last ten years.
12 MR. BROGAN: In the last ten years; $300
13 million and 900 employees over the last ten
14 years. And I will say, $20 million to us is a
15 billion dollars to somebody else. It is not
16 going to totally insulate any of our 14
17 universities by itself, but I looked at that $20
18 million and still do for next year as an
19 additional investment in our system to simply
20 help us meet the costs that we are required to
21 bear and also hopefully put some of that money
22 into new ways of doing old business to assure
23 that these students have a 21st Century
24 educational opportunity.
25 REPRESENTATIVE KAMPF: If I might, Mr. 50
1 Chairman, just to follow up? Could you unpack
2 the 300 million a little bit for me, other than
3 staff? Are there sort of going-forward cost
4 savings, $10 million for this move, 20 million
5 for that move, things that are making the system
6 leaner, more efficient, you know, tighter and
7 better?
8 MR. BROGAN: I'll give you one. I had
9 talked about some of those shared services. If
10 you take the shared services in which we engage
11 at the system level: HR, payroll, and some of
12 those functions, we calculate that as about an
13 $11-million-a-year savings systemwide.
14 Those are the kinds of things we're
15 trying to do. We will be calculating those
16 things that I mentioned to Representative
17 Kinsey. As we develop more of those, we want to
18 have a baseline data so that we know how much we
19 are saving when we put five universities
20 together in the west, for example, to deal with
21 procurement or when we put all of our
22 universities together to handle some other issue
23 where there's power in the whole by way of cost.
24 But those are the kinds of efficiencies we're
25 doing. 51
1 Another one, we recently looked at each
2 of our 14 universities. I'll do this real fast,
3 I promise, Mr. Chairman; but each of our
4 universities, our faculty, full-time faculty are
5 required to teach four sections each semester.
6 We did a survey because we also know
7 that a faculty member can be released from that
8 obligation for a section or two based on other
9 obligations that they take on. So if you are
10 elected the president of APSCUF at the local
11 level, you are given one of those sections as
12 release time. If you chair some committee at
13 the institution, you can be given, at the
14 discretion of the institution, release time for
15 another section.
16 Now that's been going on for years, so
17 we thought it was a good time to take a look at
18 that and see how we were doing. We did; we
19 received the surveys back from the universities.
20 It was about an average of 65 percent of our
21 full-time faculty were teaching four sections.
22 It went all the way down to 48 percent. But the
23 average was about 65 percent.
24 So our presidents have been looking at
25 that to try to see if, in fact, we are 52
1 maximizing those very talented full-time
2 professors where we want them to be more than
3 anywhere, which is in the classroom with our
4 students.
5 And the reason that's an important
6 variable is because when they are released for
7 that period of time, many times or more often
8 than not, they are replaced with a temporary
9 faculty member who received compensation and
10 benefits and there's a cost associated with that
11 at the same time.
12 So not only do we want to keep great
13 professors full-time with students who need
14 them, but there is a cost differential
15 associated with that as well.
16 Thanks, Representative Kampf.
17 REPRESENTATIVE KAMPF: Thank you,
18 Chancellor.
19 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you,
20 Representative. Represent Dean.
21 REPRESENTATIVE DEAN: Thank you, Mr.
22 Chairman. Welcome, Chancellor Brogan, and
23 colleagues. Glad to see you today. I thank you
24 for being here.
25 I wanted to begin my remarks by giving 53
1 you a little lens through which I look at the
2 conversation about higher education. Before I
3 was a legislator, I taught at La Salle
4 University for more than 10 years.
5 I'm also a mother and a grandmother, who
6 I think maybe my number one aim, my husband's
7 number one aim, is to make sure our kids are
8 educated so that they can have a happy,
9 productive future.
10 I want to thank you for jumping on
11 enthusiastically on the Governor's rollout of
12 It's On Us. I'm a member of his commission for
13 women, and I was proud that our governor was the
14 first governor in the country to embrace the
15 federal campaign; and I really appreciate the
16 state system doing the same.
17 To take a look at the budget picture, we
18 were informed in our earlier hearings of that
19 which you already know probably, and it's part
20 of your mission, DCED Secretary said the number
21 one issue facing Pennsylvania is a trained,
22 educated workforce, a workforce for the future.
23 I think it matches very much with the
24 challenge and the opportunity in front of your
25 system. And I take a look at that in light of 54
1 the fact of you're suffering a declining
2 demographic. As you say, fewer high school
3 students are graduating, enrolling into the
4 higher-education system. And also in light of
5 -- and your materials pointed out very clearly a
6 historic -- and you mentioned it, Mr. President,
7 a historic decline over a long period of time of
8 state support for higher education.
9 Right now, state support, it looks like,
10 is about 26 percent tuition and fees; and the
11 students are making up the remaining 74 percent.
12 That's inverted from where the system began. If
13 you take a look at the numbers and the graph,
14 it's very, very clear.
15 MR. BROGAN: Sure.
16 REPRESENTATIVE DEAN: And then compound
17 that with the budget uncertainty and the budget
18 failure. And I, for one, am sorry that we put
19 you in that predicament.
20 I think government has a responsibility
21 to predictably fund that which we're supposed to
22 be doing. So I thought maybe I would ask you,
23 Student Council President, Drew, what did the
24 impasse mean to you? How did you and your
25 friends feel the effects of the budget impasse? 55
1 MR. JOHNSON: Thank you for allowing me
2 to speak. At ESU, our students -- we had to
3 reprioritize a lot of things. We had to choose
4 between, as far as our off-campus students are
5 concerned, rent and paying our books. What's
6 more important, getting a meal plan on campus
7 or, you know -- we had to make a lot of those
8 decisions kind of on our own, really asking one
9 another, what are you doing, you know, and
10 comparing our situations.
11 I would just like to say, since I have
12 the opportunity to, that I thank my university,
13 you know, for providing that opportunity for us
14 to get our refund checks in a timely enough
15 manner, given the impasse that we're in.
16 So our university has stood on behalf of
17 us in spite of, you know, the work that's being
18 done here in Harrisburg. But as students, we
19 just need to really reprioritize a lot of
20 different things.
21 I mean, from my freshman year, I've been
22 getting the Parent Plus loan, as well as the
23 PHEAA Grant; so the Parent Plus loan has been
24 coming in on time for me personally. You know
25 what I mean? So I'm good to go. 56
1 But as far as my other friends who are
2 getting simply the PHEAA Grants, yeah, they've
3 had to do a lot of nail biting, honestly, trying
4 to figure out how long do I have to wait or if
5 at all. It hasn't been fun.
6 REPRESENTATIVE DEAN: I give you a lot
7 of credit, and you guys are smart; and I'm sorry
8 you were put in that position, frankly.
9 As I said, I think we as policymakers
10 have to figure out what we're going to do. And
11 I hope we never do this again the way we have
12 done it.
13 I also wanted to shift over just briefly
14 to what you're talking about, which is with the
15 declining demographic. And I was reading today
16 in the New York Times, Tom Friedman talked about
17 that accelerations in technology and
18 globalization and climate change are demanding
19 greater education for lifelong learners and for
20 technical learning.
21 So how is it that those kinds of
22 pressures, and I do see them as opportunities as
23 well as challenges, how's that change what
24 you're offering in the state system?
25 MR. BROGAN: Yes. And I promise I am 57
1 going to kick it to Dr. Driscoll on this one,
2 too, because he lives this every day. But to
3 bear out what you were saying, as if I need to,
4 but if you'll indulge me, along with other
5 information, the Georgetown study showed that in
6 Pennsylvania, 60 percent of the jobs in PA will
7 require at least some postsecondary education by
8 2020.
9 And that's how we're going to find the
10 future of Pennsylvania, which means whether it's
11 advanced vocational technical training,
12 community colleges, universities,
13 undergraduate/graduate degrees, certificates,
14 online education, we have got to become as
15 nimble and organized as possible.
16 Nimble can be people evacuating a
17 building on fire. But it also, in this case,
18 has to be an organized effort or we will lose to
19 chaotic and frenetic pace. And we have got to.
20 We are looking at the issue of online education
21 trying to discern how we can be more efficient
22 for access and accessibility, and I know many
23 are.
24 We've got to look at our governance
25 structure. We have -- Penn State -- I love Penn 58
1 State. They're an incredible institution.
2 They're sitting there with 22 branch campuses
3 around the state. Many of those branches are
4 facing declining enrollment, and many of those
5 are within the shadow of our 14 universities.
6 There has to be a better way to build a
7 mousetrap for this state going forward with the
8 communication, with the community colleges and
9 others.
10 So I know I'm speaking outside of my
11 lane on some of these things, but I don't know
12 any other way to do this. It has to be a
13 holistic look at higher ed getting ready for the
14 new century. We've already started, much less
15 are deeply involved with.
16 And if you'll indulge me, I'd really
17 like to turn it over to Dr. Driscoll.
18 MR. DRISCOLL: I'd like to briefly
19 mention a few initiatives that we're
20 undertaking. I appreciate the question.
21 Something we did about a year and half ago is we
22 reorganized and restructured to create an office
23 of extended studies, recognizing that our market
24 for education is not just 18-year-olds coming
25 from high school; but lifelong learning is going 59
1 to be part of preparing and addressing the
2 challenges that you cite. That organization is
3 providing for-credit and not-for-credit learning
4 via alternate technologies, online learning and
5 so on in areas of interest to Pennsylvanians and
6 Pennsylvania's needs, again, very briefly.
7 Second is that we have retargeted some
8 of the work that our students do while they're
9 students as part of their education to be out in
10 the field connected to some of the issues that
11 are facing us.
12 So, for example, IUP has a strong
13 history, strong program set in water quality.
14 Our students are out testing reservoirs in
15 western Pennsylvania to establish baseline with
16 funding from the Commonwealth, actually, as a
17 research project, so that we know what's
18 happening as we appropriately use the natural
19 resources we've been blessed with.
20 And then the third thing that I'll
21 mention is that the new programs that IUP will
22 bring forward, as is true for my colleagues, are
23 strongly connected to the needs of the
24 Commonwealth for workforce development. So we
25 expect over the next three years to bring 60
1 forward a degree in public health, an
2 engineering degree, environmental engineering in
3 particular, and a degree in digital security as
4 examples of things that we know will be growing
5 needs for the Commonwealth and connecting those
6 opportunities and needs with our own students,
7 our citizens in Pennsylvania, so that they can
8 have access to those jobs, so just very briefly.
9 REPRESENTATIVE DEAN: I think that's
10 very exciting. And I'm certain how we invest in
11 higher education and all education is how we
12 invest in our economic future. So, Drew, thank
13 you for your answers; and thank you all.
14 MR. BROGAN: Thanks, Representative.
15 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you,
16 Representative. Representative Duane Milne.
17 REPRESENTATIVE MILNE: Thank you, Mr.
18 Chairman. Good morning again, Chancellor.
19 MR. BROGAN: Good morning.
20 REPRESENTATIVE MILNE: First let me just
21 offer my admiration for you and your entire team
22 for a tremendous mission I think you're meeting
23 for the entire Commonwealth in providing
24 affordable, accessible education for our
25 citizens. And I commend the great work that is 61
1 taking place throughout the PASSHE system.
2 MR. BROGAN: Thank you.
3 REPRESENTATIVE MILNE: I can speak a
4 little bit, because of my three of my most
5 important constituents to me are all PASSHE
6 graduates. My wife and both of my parents are
7 PASSHE graduates; and, in fact, my parents.
8 MR. BROGAN: Would they be in search of
9 graduate degrees at this time, Representative,
10 any or all of them?
11 REPRESENTATIVE MILNE: Do you give
12 tuition assistance around here? So we certainly
13 appreciate that and understand from our family
14 perspective what PASSHE does for allowing
15 families to get upwardly mobile and pursue the
16 American dream along the way.
17 In fact, reflective of many of our
18 students in the PASSHE system, both of my
19 parents actually were the first in their
20 respective sides of their family to graduate
21 from college; and I know it's something very
22 important for the PASSHE institutions as well.
23 Do you have any statistics or figures in
24 terms of first-time attendees for a family at
25 our institutions? It's certainly part of our 62
1 mission.
2 MR. BROGAN: I'll turn to my scribe here
3 and see if she has anything. I don't, in front
4 of me.
5 MR. DRISCOLL: I was just looking at
6 these numbers, and slightly over 30 percent of
7 our students are first in their families to be
8 in college.
9 MR. BROGAN: And I just saw Dr. Welsh at
10 ESU indicated they're even a little bit higher
11 than that. Those are the kinds of numbers that
12 you would hear at all of our universities and
13 probably around the Commonwealth, because a
14 major growing market for us are those
15 first-time-in-college students, first-generation
16 college students.
17 By the way, quick commercial message:
18 Many of those students come with very little by
19 way of experience nor support, largely because
20 they come from families that never attended
21 higher education, so they don't have that kind
22 of an experience to pass on to their sons and
23 daughters.
24 I was one of those way back in the
25 seventies. First one in my entire extended 63
1 family to ever be blessed to go to a university
2 because I wanted to be a teacher. But I can
3 tell you, short of an "Attaboy" and "Go get
4 them", that was about it; because nobody knew
5 how to organize around a university experience.
6 And to have the people available to help
7 that large a percentage is very important to us,
8 because without that additional support we'll
9 lose many of those students, which would be a
10 tragedy.
11 REPRESENTATIVE MILNE: And in terms of
12 setting up those students for success as well as
13 our universities in continuing to try to attract
14 students, certainly part of that process, as
15 you've referenced some already, is internal
16 reviews; and that includes, of course, looking
17 at programs, degrees, majors, doing regular
18 reviews about which ones are attracting
19 students, which aren't, which might have to be
20 eliminated, some may be put in moratorium.
21 I also want to tie it to your
22 observation about the economic impact of PASSHE
23 in terms of what we contribute to the
24 Commonwealth. Maybe you could tie those two
25 together and talk a little bit about trying to 64
1 use the internal review, the implications of the
2 economic studies and then being prepared to meet
3 the employer needs of the 21st Century.
4 MR. BROGAN: Yes, sir. That's a big
5 one, but I'll try to break it down into very
6 small responses. First of all, internal review:
7 That internal review is systemic. We are
8 looking at not only what each of our
9 universities provides by way of academic program
10 array and we're looking not only for those new
11 program ideas, but which of their programs can
12 no longer survive the market and, therefore,
13 have to be, as Representative Milne mentioned,
14 placed in moratorium. That's an interesting
15 phrase. It's higher-education related, and it
16 means set aside. So if ever there were a time
17 to bring it back out, you don't have to start it
18 from scratch; but it's the same net effect.
19 We also look at reorganizing existing
20 programs. Because we keep a program doesn't
21 necessarily mean it's lined up exactly with what
22 those students have to take away for the 21st
23 Century. So we reorganize programs, as well as
24 add new programs to the mix as we move forward.
25 We're now doing that with greater scrutiny than 65
1 ever before, not only at the institution level
2 but also at the system level, to look for
3 redundancy -- inefficient redundancy. There's
4 always going to be redundancy in any system of
5 our size. It should be necessary redundancy
6 based on geography or need but also to look at
7 issues of inefficiency and make sure that if
8 degrees can't translate somehow to a job, and
9 some are a little bit fuzzier than others. It's
10 easy to say I have an electrical engineering
11 degree and I want to be an electrical engineer,
12 boom.
13 It's another thing to have a degree in
14 the humanities and make the case that that has
15 the potential to turn into a law degree and a
16 career in the law, for example.
17 But very important as we look at these
18 is, how do these degrees line up with the needs
19 of the Commonwealth moving forward before we are
20 asking our Board of Governors to accept new
21 degree offerings or before we look at putting a
22 program in moratorium.
23 And, again, it's not only individually;
24 but how does it stack up on a system side? What
25 we hope is with the new supply/demand gap 66
1 analysis, we'll not only be able to look at us,
2 we're a contributing factor in that
3 baccalaureate degree percentage of 60 percent by
4 2020.
5 We also have compatriots out there in
6 the state-relateds and in the private
7 universities who are contributing factors to
8 hopefully getting to the point where we're
9 meeting that 60-percent opportunity by 2020.
10 And for us to just look at it is a part of a
11 whole that can't be satisfied.
12 We have to look at this thing
13 collectively and stare it down through our
14 strategic plans, through our academic program
15 array and the way we approach getting these
16 107,000 students but the hundreds of thousands
17 of students in higher education at all levels in
18 Pennsylvania to a great job, thus a great
19 quality of life; but also make sure that the
20 Commonwealth is better off as a result of that
21 moving forward.
22 REPRESENTATIVE MILNE: And just to bring
23 it full cycle then, we are bringing in and
24 attracting students, first generation or not,
25 we're giving them proper supports. 67
1 The State is investing as much as it can
2 and will continue to do so moving forward. The
3 universities are making due-diligence efforts to
4 remain relevant for offerings that are
5 appointment-based among other stakeholders'
6 needs.
7 What is sort of the outcome of success?
8 I mean, how are we looking in terms of student
9 graduation rates compared to other sectors of
10 higher education?
11 MR. BROGAN: Good question. Our grad
12 rates -- and, of course, we use on a national
13 level, a four-year graduation rate and a
14 six-year graduation rate. They vary, as you
15 might understand.
16 But when we look at our graduation rates
17 for our system, I've got it here because I
18 figured that would be a good question. Oh,
19 thank you, Lois. Our four-year graduation rate
20 for our system is 38 percent. That's up three
21 percent from about five years ago. Doesn't
22 sound like much of an increase in five years,
23 but graduation rates are slow to move because
24 you have to go all the way back and retool; and
25 the net effect is you're going to see slow, 68
1 incremental increases. So three percent in five
2 years for our system is not bad, I've got to
3 tell you. If you look at the six-year
4 graduation rate, we're now at 60 percent, which
5 is significantly higher.
6 But this is an important statistic: 80
7 percent of those who are in our schools
8 graduated or are still enrolled somewhere else
9 in search of a degree. There's a belief that if
10 you don't count in the graduation rate that you
11 dropped out. That's not true.
12 Many students, because of mobility, move
13 to other institutions of higher education, move
14 to other states and other institutions of higher
15 education but are still working to finish those
16 degrees; but they didn't do it here in four
17 years or six years.
18 But 80 percent collectively are still in
19 the hunt somewhere, and have either finished
20 with us or are still working on it somewhere
21 else.
22 The national level, just to give you
23 some context, as I like to do, the four-year
24 graduation rate at the national level, I said
25 ours was 38 percent, is 27 percent at the 69
1 national level. The six-year graduation rate
2 for us I said was 60 percent. It is 40 percent
3 at the national level. So while we are not
4 where we want to be, you should never be where
5 you want to be on a graduation rate. We go
6 significantly farther than the national numbers.
7 REPRESENTATIVE MILNE: All right. And
8 just to close it up and relate it to that,
9 certainly part of the reason for doing strategic
10 program review is to find majors that are
11 attracting students and hopefully getting them,
12 of course, placed in good career paths.
13 Do we have a sense of how the PASSHE
14 system's doing in terms of placements and
15 employment opportunities, considerations of that
16 nature?
17 MR. BROGAN: IUP got a take on that?
18 MR. DRISCOLL: Well, I appreciate the
19 question because I love this number. We do a
20 survey of our graduates. Undergraduates receive
21 degrees shortly after they leave, about a year
22 out.
23 From that, if we do the statistics, and
24 I can provide the report to everyone if they'd
25 like it, but only about 7 percent of our 70
1 graduates are not actively engaged in something
2 appropriate. That may not mean that the history
3 major has a job working as a professional
4 historian, but they're productively employed,
5 they're in graduate school, they're in the
6 military, or so on. And so that's a great
7 number to think about in terms of what comes
8 from a credential from one of our universities.
9 REPRESENTATIVE MILNE: Thank you. Thank
10 you all very, very much. Thank you, Mr.
11 Chairman.
12 MR. BROGAN: Thanks, Representative.
13 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you,
14 Representative. Representative Daley.
15 REPRESENTATIVE DALEY: Thank you, Mr.
16 Chairman. I'm sitting here thinking that I
17 spent 32 years of my life working in the
18 administration and finance area of universities
19 in the Philadelphia area.
20 MR. BROGAN: Well, you've maintained
21 your sanity very well. Congratulations.
22 REPRESENTATIVE DALEY: Well, I'm now a
23 State Representative, so I'm not sure that you
24 can actually say that.
25 So my thoughts about budget are clearly 71
1 over on the admin and finance side, because I do
2 understand, at least from the institutions I
3 worked at, you know, what it's like. The budget
4 is a big deal. Universities do not like
5 deficits. I had one once, and they were very
6 strict with us in how we were going to clear
7 that up. And I had to meet with the Vice
8 Provost of Research on a monthly basis with my
9 boss to give updates.
10 So I really appreciate when you talk
11 about the $32-million deficit, and I appreciate
12 Ms. Johnson updating you on that number so that
13 we could have a clear picture of it.
14 I also wanted to tell you that this
15 booklet that you have given us (indicating) is
16 really terrific with a huge amount of
17 information.
18 MR. BROGAN: Good.
19 REPRESENTATIVE DALEY: And I appreciate
20 that you brought a student with you, because I
21 think that that's -- you know, you provide the
22 real face of who we're talking about and who
23 universities are there to benefit; so thank you
24 for being here.
25 So I'm going to go to a question about 72
1 -- it's covered on Appendix (b(18), Educational
2 and General Facilities. And so a lot of the
3 conversations about the operational support that
4 the Commonwealth provides, but we also help with
5 the building and facility needs, primarily with
6 the Key 93 allocations from a portion of the
7 realty transfer tax that's been in place for
8 quite a number of years and also with capital
9 budget dollars. So you provided an overview of
10 what you're seeing with the facilities' need and
11 the universities.
12 Could you just elaborate on that a
13 little bit, anything that you want to point out
14 related to the deferred maintenance and what
15 that means?
16 MR. BROGAN: Sure.
17 REPRESENTATIVE DALEY: Because I'm
18 looking at the average age of your buildings,
19 and it's like pretty old; so --
20 MR. BROGAN: First of all, thank you for
21 the question. It is -- back to what I said
22 about PHEAA. First of all, cling to the Key 93
23 program. We're lucky to have it. And the
24 General Assembly and the Governor continue to be
25 wise in supporting it, because as you can attest 73
1 to, we just don't have extra money that we can
2 put into things like deferred maintenance and
3 construction projects; and that money is
4 critical to us.
5 But to your very good point,
6 Representative, and to put a number on it, you
7 talked about the age of our facilities. As I
8 mentioned, we're 175 years of age at many of our
9 institutions, 150, doesn't mean our buildings
10 are; but we've been around a long time. And 54
11 percent or more of our facilities have not gone
12 through an organized renovation process in the
13 last 25 years.
14 We do everything on triage, as you might
15 imagine, from deferred maintenance; and
16 oftentimes because of declining funds, we will
17 patch a roof instead of replace a roof, when we
18 really should replace it or we're going to pay
19 the piper somewhere else; so we have a mounting
20 backlog of deferred maintenance. And we really
21 do, on that score, and our presidents do a
22 terrific job, take care of the bleeders first on
23 the deferred maintenance issues; but it still
24 allows for many deferred maintenance
25 possibilities to go untended to. 74
1 Key 93, during '14-'15, our E & G
2 facilities' expenditures, $13 million, Key 93 on
3 deferred maintenance; but also the universities
4 kicked in $37 million from their own E & G
5 budgets or their reserves on the issue of
6 deferred maintenance. And capital
7 appropriations spent on us was about $35 million
8 out of a $65-million pot.
9 It isn't that we put the rest into a
10 Christmas club account, but many of our projects
11 are large enough where they have to be parsed
12 out and you have to have the money but you can
13 only do phase one, phase two, or whatever it is.
14 So, again, a testament to Key 93 dollars. Keep
15 that up. That's my take on that.
16 And if you'll indulge me, I wanted to
17 see if Dr. Driscoll might have anything he
18 wanted to say about deferred maintenance
19 especially.
20 MR. DRISCOLL: Well, I will repeat the
21 thanks that Pennsylvania has invested at the
22 level it has and to keep doing that.
23 We have significant challenges. My
24 office is in a 141-year-old building that's in
25 okay shape because it was renovated, but we have 75
1 a growing backlog of deferred maintenance issues
2 and are left with facilities that are not
3 adequate in a high school in some cases because
4 we're not able to keep up with the current
5 demand and needs for instructional technology.
6 Keeping buildings open and functioning
7 becomes more and more expensive in these times
8 when we can't modernize and renovate; so more
9 would be great, too, I guess.
10 REPRESENTATIVE DALEY: Just as a
11 follow-up, I mean, I listen to you talk about
12 your emphasis on STEM studies. So do those STEM
13 courses and programs require a higher level of
14 maintenance or more modern buildings or -- I
15 mean, it seems like they may go together.
16 MR. BROGAN: Yeah. Mike might be a good
17 one to field that one. The short answer is,
18 yes.
19 REPRESENTATIVE DALEY: Okay.
20 MR. DRISCOLL: The next significant
21 construction project on IUP's campus is a new
22 sciences building to replace a building that was
23 built in the early sixties and has been doing
24 Yeoman's work for the last 50-plus years. We
25 cannot provide adequate power, cooling, 76
1 networking, etc. in that building for today and
2 tomorrow's technology. We've done a wonderful
3 job with our alum who have been successful in
4 specking what we need for the future.
5 It's a great, great project; and it will
6 cost anywhere, just rough numbers not on this
7 particular project, but the science engineering
8 facilities generally run 50 to 100 percent
9 higher per square foot than just a normal
10 classroom building might do.
11 MR. JOHNSON: And to add, at East
12 Stroudsburg University, we have a science and
13 technology center. It's our nicest, most new
14 building on campus as a matter of fact.
15 So from the recruitment perspective, I
16 was a campus tour guide and orientation leader
17 for two and three years, respectively; it's a
18 great selling point, no doubt. But it is hard
19 to sell your product called ESU when your
20 buildings, you know, aren't as competitive as
21 some other universities that students are
22 looking at; so I do just echo your comments.
23 REPRESENTATIVE DALEY: And I asked that
24 thinking of my own experience at working at a
25 major research university. And in biomedical 77
1 research area, I know, you know, wow, it's just
2 unbelievable the progress that has been made in
3 a lot of these areas but also then the great
4 need. So thank you for answering.
5 I just did want -- there was one other
6 thing. I really appreciate the fact you
7 emphasized the consolidation of some of the
8 administrative functions across the
9 universities, because I think that is really an
10 area that, you know, you can make strides.
11 Because the administration's expensive,
12 and it's one of those kind of quiet little
13 areas. So having been in that area, I also
14 understand that it can cause great stress but it
15 can also make an impact lead to that efficiency
16 and economy.
17 I was very comfortable listening to you,
18 because -- we must all talk the same way when we
19 come from this place, so thank you.
20 MR. BROGAN: Thank you, Representative.
21 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you,
22 Representative. Representative Keith Greiner.
23 REPRESENTATIVE GREINER: Thanks, Mr.
24 Chairman. Good morning, Chancellor. I want to
25 talk a little bit about tuition. We've been 78
1 talking about costs and it's a critical area.
2 Two areas: I'm going to start first with the
3 nonresident tuition. And I know that you have
4 some plans that actually lower the non-resident
5 tuition rates in order to attract more
6 out-of-state students in certain areas. I think
7 you mentioned Mansfield, for instance.
8 However, I also noticed in your budget
9 materials you also have numerous flexible
10 pricing pilots that expand on these sort of
11 programs. Just two things: Could you talk a
12 little about these pricing pilots and what
13 you're trying to accomplish with them? And
14 then, also, your budget materials indicate that
15 some of these pilots will be evaluated in a two
16 or three-year period to see where they should be
17 expanded. And my question is, Have any of these
18 evaluations taken place? And, if not, when's
19 that going to occur and are we going to expand
20 these past the pilot stage? That's the first
21 one. I'm focusing on the nonresident tuition in
22 this question.
23 MR. BROGAN: Understood. Yes, sir. We
24 have made some adjustment in nonresident
25 tuition, but not at all of our universities. 79
1 Largely, we're talking about universities that
2 are trying to increase the number of
3 out-of-state students that they are bringing
4 into their institution.
5 A good example of that recently was
6 Edinboro, trying to draw more students from a
7 state line that you can almost see on a clear
8 day from Ohio and see if they could become a
9 more attractive part. It may seem
10 counterintuitive, and I understand that. To
11 think by decreasing the amount of out-of-state
12 tuition there will be a return on the
13 investment.
14 But, first of all, it is a marginal
15 decrease to try to become more competitive with
16 Ohio schools. Second, when you are able to
17 attract that student even at a slightly
18 decreased tuition over the traditional
19 out-of-state tuition, you still have a student
20 who is taking a full load of courses and paying
21 for them; you have a student who is in the meal
22 plan and a student who is in resident housing
23 paying full cost. So what you do is try to
24 create a volume on this thing to not only
25 recapture the amount of costs that you have 80
1 decreased but even increase over that based on
2 the fact that you have enough students from out
3 of state doing it to increase your enrollments
4 at the same time. And that's become a very
5 important part of the price pointing that you
6 alluded to, that the Board of Governors now
7 provides to our universities.
8 We also margin the cost of veteran at
9 many of our universities where we've lowered the
10 cost to veterans of their full cost of education
11 to try to become a more attractive location for
12 veterans, and that has become very successful,
13 as well as providing them a price break to do
14 that.
15 But it's not always a downsize in
16 tuition. Sometimes it's an increase, with the
17 idea that behind STEM education, especially, the
18 cost of that degree is significantly larger than
19 the cost of many nonSTEM programs; so therefore,
20 can you increase or vary the cost that you pass
21 on to the student to try to get back at least a
22 larger share of the full cost of operating that
23 master's degree in nursing or that specialized
24 degree in engineering or whatever it happens to
25 be. Because without that, you're going to have 81
1 to take it from other programs at the university
2 to realize true cost; so, yes, we are trying to
3 be very nimble in that regard.
4 But to the second point you made, which
5 is a good one, not in an ask and ye shall
6 receive and let us know how this is working out
7 someday, which is sort of higher education's
8 approach typically, the Board of Governors
9 decided to use a pilot process to this; and
10 therefore, say to a university after they hear
11 the case to be made for lowering out-of-state
12 tuition, for example, what is it you hope to
13 accomplish? What makes you believe it will have
14 a positive impact on your institution? And will
15 you be prepared if we grant you one to two years
16 of doing this to come back to us on an annual
17 basis and give us a review, statistically, of
18 exactly how that change is impacting not only
19 the out-of-state students but your entire
20 university structure with the idea that over
21 multiple reviews if you see a trend downward
22 significantly in those things, you stop the
23 program, which is very different for higher ed;
24 we typically ride a horse until it is down
25 before we decide to dismount. 82
1 Second is, Do you need to tweak what
2 you're doing because it might not be having the
3 full flower impact? And then, third, is it
4 going great and do you need to do more of it
5 and extend the opportunity?
6 REPRESENTATIVE GREINER: How close are
7 we to evaluating those outcomes? Is that
8 something that's occurring this year, next year;
9 where are we at in that process?
10 MR. BROGAN: Just some months ago,
11 Representative, we went through the first round.
12 We're still rather new at this, but we decided
13 that rather than wait for a prolonged period of
14 time, so we took all of those price points that
15 had been approved and had at least a year under
16 their belt, and we had some of those, and go
17 through that first process. Governor Henry, who
18 is behind me, is the head of that committee,
19 Finance Administration and Facilities. We told
20 the universities how we needed to do this, what
21 information we were looking for.
22 And what we found, probably not
23 surprising, in the very, very early stages, we
24 couldn't find any that seemed to be having a
25 negative impact on the university, some that 83
1 were having a marginal impact, and some that
2 seemed to be having very early positive returns
3 to the institution.
4 REPRESENTATIVE GREINER: Let me follow
5 up. My district, before redistricting, included
6 Millersville University; so I still have a very
7 good relationship with them. We met -- when I
8 say, we, myself and other colleagues in my
9 delegation met with them just in the last couple
10 of weeks; and they're looking at a pricing pilot
11 that deals with, you know, the undergraduate
12 tuition on a per-credit basis. And I'm going to
13 tell you, at least the preliminary data, I was
14 very impressed with that model and the data that
15 they showed. And I wanted to just expand on
16 that. My understanding is, I think they might
17 be in the second year of that. I think some
18 other schools are looking at that.
19 MR. BROGAN: They are.
20 REPRESENTATIVE GREINER: Can you just
21 expound on that? Because I saw a lot of
22 advantages to that, particularly for people who
23 are part-time students who need to work when
24 they only need to carry a 12-credit load. Some
25 people, I know the argument on the flip side is, 84
1 now you're -- you know, because you can take
2 between 12 and 18 credits, usually the person --
3 that it's going to cost more. I mean, that's
4 the flip side of the argument. However, from
5 the data that I saw in the analysis, and I'm a
6 statistics and numbers guy, I was pretty
7 impressed with that. Can you just talk about
8 that?
9 MR. BROGAN: Yes, sir, as quickly as I
10 can. First, Millersville is the first
11 university but not the last university, to move
12 to what is called a cost-per-credit system.
13 If you look around the country, members,
14 probably about half the universities in the
15 country, and that's a swag, but probably not far
16 off, use a cost-per-credit approach, maybe the
17 universities you attended did, where you don't
18 do an all-you-care-to-eat buffet and pay one
19 price, it's an a la carte. You select the
20 courses you are taking and you pay an amount per
21 credit for that particular course. Okay?
22 And in Millersville's case, they wanted
23 the chance to move to that methodology and away
24 from the one-size-fits-all, whether you take 3
25 credits or 9 credits or whether you take 15 or 85
1 18 credits, oftentimes, it is the part-time
2 students who subsidize the students who are
3 taking the larger number of credits to make up
4 the difference. They are now, you're correct,
5 in their second year of that. They were part of
6 that review that we alluded to. It is meant not
7 only to increase the real cost for students of
8 what they're taking, but it also has the net
9 effect of having students take a more serious
10 look at how many credits they are taking and the
11 need to graduate on time, less you face the
12 additional cost of lingering at a university.
13 Some people don't like that idea. They
14 believe that grazing in the vineyard of higher
15 education for a prolonged period of time is the
16 way to go. This does not discontinue that, but
17 students have a better awareness of how many
18 credits they need, which is generally 120
19 credits to a baccalaureate degree, the cost to
20 get there, and the time necessary to start it
21 and finish it so they can move on to other
22 things; and those are the kinds of things we're
23 beginning to see at Millersville.
24 But we do, to end, have a number of
25 universities that have asked for the ability to 86
1 do that and are preparing to implement that for
2 the fall of this next year in some cases.
3 REPRESENTATIVE GREINER: I just want to
4 say I appreciate your thinking outside the box
5 there. I think it's important; I think it's
6 something we need to continue to evaluate. I do
7 want to encourage, too, that you continue to
8 keep costs in line.
9 I may have another question if there's a
10 follow-up concerning that, but thank you for
11 being here today; and thanks, Mr. Chairman.
12 MR. BROGAN: Yes, sir.
13 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you,
14 Representative. Representative Bullock.
15 REPRESENTATIVE BULLOCK: Thank you,
16 Chairman. Good morning, Chancellor; and good
17 morning to the rest of the members of the panel.
18 I've been asking all the secretaries and
19 department heads questions about our employment
20 and opportunities within our state government.
21 Before I ask you that question, I'd like
22 to preface my questioning with a few comments.
23 Some have questioned why I ask these questions,
24 what are my motives. Let me be clear, when I
25 ask about diversity and I'm asking about our 87
1 workforce, I am asking about the recruitment,
2 hiring, development and promotion of qualified
3 women and minority candidates. What I know to
4 be true is that there is a lot of talent in our
5 Commonwealth, but often the opportunity is not
6 presented; and often, that talent chooses to go
7 elsewhere.
8 What I also know, is that our
9 universities are doing a great job in educating
10 our future chancellors, our future department
11 secretaries, and future employees. But let me
12 also be clear that a diverse workforce is not
13 only beneficial to the worker but also to our
14 agencies and also to our Commonwealth and
15 everyone else that we serve.
16 And let me be clear that even though we
17 have made some strong strides, a history of
18 discrimination has resulted in a workforce that
19 is not reflective of our Commonwealth
20 population. Even with the answers that I have
21 received over the last few days, we have a far
22 way to go.
23 We have reported numbers with far less
24 percentages that reflect our Commonwealth's
25 women and minority populations. Several of our 88
1 department heads have shared that they are the
2 first: the first Latina, the first woman, the
3 first African-American in a position. It is
4 2016, and we should be far beyond announcing our
5 firsts.
6 The fact is this: Women make up more
7 than 50 percent of our Commonwealth population,
8 50 percent. Minorities are exceeding 20 percent
9 of our Commonwealth population. They are the
10 taxpayers. They are the consumers of the state
11 services we provide, and they should be
12 reflected in all of the opportunities that we
13 make available in funds with state tax dollars.
14 Whether we are trying to make America
15 great again or make it whole, I know this: The
16 Commonwealth must be an example. It must be a
17 model employer that includes all of its
18 residents.
19 And with that being said, I'll step off
20 my soapbox for a moment and simply ask you those
21 questions. Can you share with me your
22 department and our institutions commitment to
23 diversity in its workforce and other
24 opportunities, and what do our numbers look
25 like? 89
1 Thank you.
2 MR. BROGAN: Thank you, Representative.
3 Two-part answer: First are the numbers: First
4 of all, 56 percent of our undergraduate
5 enrollment are female students. Second, we
6 mirror on the African-American and Hispanic
7 front the population of Pennsylvania, just to
8 give you a benchmark in terms of where we are.
9 The broader answer has to do with
10 diversity. It is not something you fix by
11 getting to a number. Numbers come and numbers
12 go. They ebb and flow. But I can tell you --
13 If you'll allow me, I want to turn to these two;
14 because I think they're very important in this
15 answer. Our universities work on the issue of
16 diversity, and diversity is not just color; it
17 is not just gender. I'm a throwback. In 1971,
18 I went to a university as a first-time-ever
19 student, as I told you, in higher education. I
20 helped their diversity pool, because in those
21 days there weren't a lot of me around. It was
22 still, even then, maybe some of you faced this,
23 a fairly elite world. And first-time-in-college
24 students were kind of a new phenomenon. Now,
25 with the explosion and the change, they are no 90
1 longer a phenomenon. They are a major part of
2 who we serve, but still require special
3 approaches based on their backgrounds and their
4 experiences. And you cannot just simply
5 quantify that with a number.
6 So very important to us every single
7 day; but I will, if you'll allow me, turn to my
8 two colleagues and see if they'd like to address
9 the issue.
10 REPRESENTATIVE BULLOCK: Thank you.
11 MR. BROGAN: Yes, ma'am.
12 MR. DRISCOLL: Thank you. I appreciate
13 the question. I would mention just a couple of
14 things to enhance what the Chancellor has said
15 and would turn to Drew, if he has any comments,
16 at that point.
17 First, the state system has an in-place
18 system of performance funding that sets targets
19 and rewards institutions for achieving various
20 measures of diversity. We do reasonably well at
21 hitting those targets, but we don't do well
22 enough.
23 The targets aren't as aggressive as you
24 might like to see, if I understand you
25 correctly. And we need to continue to move in 91
1 that direction in the face of challenges to
2 meeting the demand. And let me just mention two
3 of those for faculty hires in particular. One
4 of those is that many of our institutions are in
5 rural locations that are not as diverse as the
6 urban locations in the Commonwealth.
7 That makes it very difficult for a
8 potential faculty member to choose us over
9 another location which may include more people
10 that they see is like them; and that presents a
11 continual challenge for us, and we hear that
12 from those in our search pools.
13 The second thing, quite honestly, is
14 that it's a very competitive market for faculty
15 members of color, in particular. We have a
16 collective bargaining agreement that provides
17 very little flexibility in starting salaries for
18 new faculty hires that doesn't allow us to
19 address market considerations very well.
20 And that makes us less likely to be able
21 to bid effectively on some of those great
22 candidates. Internally, we're doing a lot of
23 work right now to make sure that our search
24 committees are not screening candidates out
25 because they aren't exactly the same as the 92
1 person they're replacing on a retirement; so
2 we're doing a lot of work there. If you don't
3 have candidates in the pool, those other things
4 I mentioned don't really matter. And so those
5 are just a few things I would add to what the
6 Chancellor said.
7 I think we all agree with your statement
8 that we want to have a representative student
9 population, a representative employee
10 population; but there are some challenges
11 particularly in that area of faculty as we try
12 to move ahead. We're doing good work, making
13 progress; but we're not done yet.
14 REPRESENTATIVE BULLOCK: Thank you.
15 MR. BROGAN: And I come from a system
16 before this one where when you wanted to go out
17 and hire a chemistry professor, you could go out
18 and look for the best chemistry professor in the
19 country and be able to decide how much you were
20 able to pay that particular potential chemistry
21 professor for their experience and their
22 qualifications. We don't do that. We can't do
23 that here.
24 We have to -- we're pretty stuck to a
25 schedule, and it does make it hard to vie 93
1 competitively against all the others in-state
2 and across the country for some of the best of
3 the best. It's a very difficult challenge to
4 face when you're trying to get the
5 highest-quality faculty that you possibly can.
6 MR. JOHNSON: And to be able to add to
7 that point, East Stroudsburg University has the
8 highest percentage of student diversity in the
9 state of Pennsylvania -- well, in the
10 Commonwealth -- excuse me -- with numbers
11 between 34 and 37 percent, I believe.
12 Diversity, as we know, doesn't just, you know,
13 mean color. That's sexual orientation,
14 religion, that's disabilities, you know.
15 So as far as recruitment, once again to
16 go back to my point to another Representative,
17 in selling the University, I was a campus tour
18 guide for two academic years, summer orientation
19 leader for three; and I felt a bit remiss just
20 to give you a bit of a history about why I'm
21 here and why I even do my job at my school.
22 I've been serving as student body president for
23 two academic years. And in selling the
24 university, I realize that we sell ESU as the
25 most diverse population but the governing body 94
1 that represents them doesn't necessarily look
2 like or represent them in that way. So that's
3 the reason I kind of ran for office in the first
4 place, to be able to add voices to those who
5 aren't necessarily heard.
6 So as far as recruitment is concerned,
7 it's high in my university. But as far as the
8 retention piece, and I think that that's where
9 student leadership is so vital at the university
10 as far as retention goes.
11 Finally, we're bringing in so many
12 diverse students but now we can be, you know,
13 educated, upper-class students who can talk to
14 someone about a financial-aid issue that they're
15 having, or a roommate issue that they're having.
16 We become mentors; we become big brothers, big
17 sisters, confidants, to the students who when
18 they're at this foreign place called East
19 Stroudsburg in the Poconos far away from the
20 City of Philadelphia, I don't know anybody who
21 looks like me. You know what I mean? But
22 finally, I'd say in 2016, we have upper-class
23 students who can totally help them out in terms
24 of -- I don't know if that's measurable with
25 statistics, but I do think that it's very 95
1 important to --
2 REPRESENTATIVE BULLOCK: Can I follow
3 up, Mr. Chancellor?
4 MR. BROGAN: Yes, ma'am.
5 REPRESENTATIVE BULLOCK: Are there a
6 significant amount of faculty and staff that was
7 just as diverse and reflective at your school?
8 MR. JOHNSON: To be honest, I think East
9 Stroudsburg University could do a better job in
10 the classroom to provide that face as a
11 professor, but I will say that we have diversity
12 workers who aren't people of color, you know.
13 One of my biggest mentors, Storm Heter,
14 he's a professor of philosophy. He's a Jewish
15 guy, you know; he's a white male who does so
16 much diversity work. He teaches many courses
17 in black studies. So I don't think that -- I
18 think it's a philosophy. I think it's a
19 mindset. I think it's inclusion. I don't think
20 that it has to be just what you look like.
21 REPRESENTATIVE BULLOCK: I agree.
22 MR. BROGAN: Representative, I promised
23 you the numbers. I left two out for you.
24 Forty-five percent of our faculty are female out
25 of faculty. 96
1 REPRESENTATIVE BULLOCK: Great.
2 MR. BROGAN: And 15 percent overall are
3 in minority status.
4 REPRESENTATIVE BULLOCK: Thank you.
5 Those numbers are actually pretty good. Thank
6 you.
7 MR. BROGAN: We're working at it.
8 REPRESENTATIVE BULLOCK: Thank you.
9 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you,
10 Representative. Representative Karen Boback.
11 REPRESENTATIVE BOBACK: Regarding the 60
12 percent that graduate with a six-year degree,
13 now, are they six years because they're staying
14 for additional degrees; or because they've
15 changed their mind and chose different majors?
16 MR. BROGAN: I'm only grinning,
17 Representative, because it could be different
18 for every one of them. It could be economic.
19 We do see students slow down their progression
20 toward a traditional graduation, because they
21 will take time off to work to get more money as
22 opposed to taking out loans, they will work
23 while they're a student and therefore can't take
24 as many credits because they're working a
25 significant number of part-time hours in a job. 97
1 It could be family circumstance. It could be,
2 you said it, change in major along the way; and
3 therefore, the need to add additional hours in
4 that new major that they have chosen. It could
5 be a wide variety of issues that contribute to
6 the extension of a student's education.
7 REPRESENTATIVE BOBACK: Thank you for
8 that. Because as soon as I heard that, I
9 thought, are they students who are undecided so
10 now they're going to incur more debt because
11 they have to stay on campus for two more years?
12 So thank you for clarifying that.
13 MR. BROGAN: Yes.
14 REPRESENTATIVE BOBACK: To go on, what
15 percentage of students become employed in their
16 field of study once they graduate? Do you have
17 those statistics overall?
18 MR. BROGAN: I'm going to -- she's going
19 to verify (indicating) it, but I think it might
20 be as close as 80 percent.
21 MS. JOHNSON: It's over 80.
22 MR. BROGAN: It is over 80? Over 80
23 percent of our students who graduate work in
24 their chosen field.
25 REPRESENTATIVE BOBACK: Thank you. And 98
1 do you have data on what your recent graduates
2 are earning based on their field of study?
3 MR. BROGAN: I don't.
4 MR. DRISCOLL: I do not have detailed
5 numbers down to individual field of study at the
6 tip of my tongue. I know that our average
7 graduate is making somewhere in the neighborhood
8 of 40 to $50,000, but I'd prefer to go back and
9 dig out what date we might have rather than--
10 MR. BROGAN: And we will do that for
11 you.
12 REPRESENTATIVE BOBACK: And you'll
13 submit to our Chairman, please?
14 MR. BROGAN: Yes.
15 REPRESENTATIVE BOBACK: Thank you. Last
16 question for Mr. Johnson, if you will. Mr.
17 Johnson, where do you plan to work after you
18 graduate, and is your university helping you
19 find a job?
20 MR. JOHNSON: I intend on pursuing a
21 career in government, local government,
22 specifically. I've grown to be attached to
23 Monroe County and East Stroudsburg. I've had
24 the opportunity to get to meet many
25 Representatives who come to our panels for our 99
1 student discussions over my four years here, so
2 I've shaken a lot of hands; and I'd like to be
3 able to represent someone definitely. My
4 options are still open to any of you guys that
5 need an aide or staffer.
6 Yeah, I'd like to pursue a career in
7 government. As far as my university helping me
8 out, just being able to foster those
9 relationships with our Legislators who actually
10 want to come and speak to students in the first
11 place, I think, has done a lot for students in
12 majors like communication studies, history,
13 political science, any of those.
14 REPRESENTATIVE BOBACK: Thank you.
15 MR. JOHNSON: Thank you.
16 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: It was a
17 relief to our Delaware County members that
18 you're going to stay in Monroe County.
19 Representative Schweyer.
20 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: Thank you, Mr.
21 Chairman. Mr. Johnson, where are you from
22 originally?
23 MR. JOHNSON: Lansdale, Pennsylvania.
24 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: Lansdale.
25 So you're from suburban Philadelphia? 100
1 MR. JOHNSON: Yeah.
2 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: How do you go
3 from suburban Philadelphia to East Stroudsburg
4 University?
5 MR. JOHNSON: I --
6 MR. BROGAN: I-80.
7 MR. JOHNSON: Go for it.
8 MR. BROGAN: Oh, thought that was a
9 geographic question.
10 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: It was. It
11 was, but -- sort of, yes.
12 MR. JOHNSON: To give you a little bit
13 of reference, I'm a Legacy Student, so my Mother
14 graduated from Indiana University of
15 Pennsylvania in '88 or '89, I'm not quite sure.
16 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: Don't ever
17 repeat your Mother's age again.
18 MR. JOHNSON: Right. Right. She moved
19 to Philadelphia and married my Dad, and my older
20 brother actually got a full athletic scholarship
21 to East Stroudsburg University; so I had been
22 going to ESU to support his basketball games for
23 three years before I actually became an actual
24 student. So, yeah, he was a senior when I was a
25 freshman. It was easy as far as socially. I 101
1 was pretty set. I couldn't not go to ESU.
2 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: Thank you.
3 And the reason why I asked that question is
4 because we -- and to you, Chancellor, thank you
5 very much, sir. To you Chancellor, and we had
6 talked about this privately in my office and so
7 this shouldn't come as a surprise that I want to
8 discuss this a little further.
9 We had talked about -- similar to your
10 conversation with Representative Bullock, the
11 number of minority students that you have in
12 your system, you say it mirrors the state
13 population roughly of African-Americans and
14 Latinos. That's helpful.
15 But I'm also very curious, as a
16 first-generation college student myself, how
17 many of your students come from economically
18 disadvantaged backgrounds? I heard 37 percent
19 of your students are on Pell Grants.
20 And the follow-up to that is, How many
21 students are from economically disadvantaged
22 school districts from the Commonwealth?
23 MR. BROGAN: The first question, if you
24 use Pell Grant as an indicator, and that's sort
25 of the traditional indicator across higher 102
1 education in the country, it's an imperfect
2 science, of course, because you could make the
3 case that people who are just on that one side
4 of that Pell Grant line are not doing much
5 better than the people who are on the other side
6 of it; but, generally speaking, you're right;
7 that 36 percent Pell Grant award is what we use
8 to say that students who fall under that
9 category are statistically coming from
10 households that are financially strapped. The
11 second part of your question?
12 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: How many of
13 those students are actually from economically
14 disadvantaged school districts? And there's a
15 very key difference between those.
16 MR. BROGAN: That, I don't know. That's
17 a very good question and one I don't know the
18 answer to.
19 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: If at some
20 point in time you could share that with the
21 Chairman?
22 MR. BROGAN: Sure.
23 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: The reason
24 why I get to that. I represent one school
25 district. My school district is one of the most 103
1 economically disadvantaged school districts in
2 the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. About 80
3 percent of my students are free and reduced
4 lunch. My school district is 65 percent Latino,
5 about 12 percent Caucasian. It's a school
6 district that I represent. I represent a young
7 diverse district, which is contrary to virtually
8 every other district that you're going to have
9 in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
10 In spite of the fact that I have so many
11 young students, my three public high schools
12 have about 1400, 1300 seniors in their
13 graduating class. I have 206 students in your
14 entire system.
15 And that is with Kutztown, in
16 Representative Day's district, an adjacent
17 county, and East Stroudsburg, a county to the
18 north of us. And so I'm not a hundred percent
19 sure of the efforts that are being made by all
20 of our state system schools. Incredible job of
21 educating our students, no doubt. The product
22 you turn out is fantastic. But when we're
23 talking about students from economically
24 disadvantaged backgrounds, you should be on the
25 absolute forefront along with our community 104
1 colleges and state systems -- or I'm sorry --
2 state-relateds, in making sure that those
3 students are the first ones to get a crack at
4 your product.
5 You had mentioned before, your open
6 enrollment with community colleges and trying to
7 streamline that. That's wonderful. East
8 Stroudsburg has a relationship with one of our
9 community colleges, and it's great.
10 But more needs to be done in terms of
11 recruiting and retention and, furthermore,
12 trying to identify and build those relationships
13 with those students. They need to be able to
14 see more than just one or two educational
15 opportunities.
16 And so while you go out and you find out
17 how many of your students are from economically
18 disadvantaged school districts, again, that's
19 dramatically different than poor kids, you know,
20 finding those kids that are in a proportionally
21 -- high proportion of poor folks in one
22 community.
23 Trying to identify those is, again,
24 going to be much harder for you to pull those
25 poor kids out of the school district like 105
1 Allentown than it would be to pull poor kids out
2 of a suburban district who just happened to be a
3 lower economically disadvantaged student.
4 MR. BROGAN: Yes, sir. And if I might
5 pile on? We're doing some work --
6 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: You're piling
7 on yourself? You know it's a budget hearing,
8 right?
9 MR. BROGAN: Piling on your good
10 comment.
11 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: Okay.
12 MR. BROGAN: The College Board, we're
13 doing some work with them on the issue of
14 advanced placement courses and dual enrollment;
15 because there again, if you looked at the map --
16 I wish I had it with me today -- but if you
17 looked at the map of Pennsylvania to see where
18 the predominant number of advanced placement
19 courses are offered and dual-enrollment
20 opportunities, it would not, at least surprise
21 you to know that the more rural communities, the
22 more sparsely-populated communities have a
23 disproportionately lower number of students who
24 are able, even if they wanted to, to avail
25 themselves of advanced-placement course work and 106
1 dual-enrollment opportunities. And I'm -- this
2 is an editorial comment -- that is something not
3 only our system needs to do something about,
4 higher education needs to do something about in
5 this state.
6 We're shutting out large numbers of kids
7 who are capable of taking an AP course or a
8 dual-enrollment course at the local community
9 college, at the local university or college; and
10 there are a whole lot of barriers to that I
11 won't go into today because it's more than you
12 want.
13 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: Sure.
14 MR. BROGAN: But that is an issue where
15 we definitely may need to make an impact, and
16 the faster we can do that, the better off we'll
17 be as a state.
18 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: Thank you.
19 MR. BROGAN: Yes, sir.
20 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: I'll just
21 close, Chancellor, with, you know, I look
22 forward to finding out again how many of your
23 students, particularly your full-time students,
24 are from those economically disadvantaged school
25 districts from the Commonwealth. 107
1 And as you move forward and we continue
2 to look for ways to target those populations,
3 any assistance I can provide, I'm certainly
4 happy to do so.
5 MR. BROGAN: We'll get that information
6 back to you as we find it, sir.
7 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: Thank you,
8 sir. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
9 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you.
10 Representative George Dunbar.
11 REPRESENTATIVE DUNBAR: Thank you, Mr.
12 Chairman. Good afternoon, Chancellor, guests.
13 Good to see you again. I know this is an
14 Appropriation Hearing, but I'm going to toss
15 aside my appropriation hat and put on my other
16 hat, that of daddy, which is -- as you know,
17 Chancellor, my princess Dunbar number 3, has
18 matriculated to Slippery Rock this year,
19 following princess daughter number one, who
20 graduated from Slippery Rock.
21 So my concerns as a dad -- one of the
22 hardest things as a dad is when you leave those
23 little girls off and shut the door and drive
24 away.
25 So my concern deals with safety. 108
1 Representative Dean had hit on earlier, but it's
2 on SAP, which is a program that is designed to
3 raise awareness to prevent sexual violence.
4 It's not only just that, but all forms of campus
5 safety.
6 Can you give us a little more detail on
7 how this is going and how you're also, most
8 importantly, going to measure results of the
9 program?
10 MR. BROGAN: Yes, sir. It's On Us is a
11 national program that our state has signed on
12 to, our system has signed on to, and it's one of
13 many approaches that our 14 universities are
14 utilizing to increase education awareness but
15 also to redouble our efforts in terms of how we
16 deal with the problems of sexual assaults on
17 university and college campuses. Because, as we
18 know, it's like preparing for a natural
19 disaster. All the preparation in the world is
20 wonderful and necessary, but at some point when
21 you actually have a natural disaster you better
22 be ready to deal with the aftermath of that.
23 And half a loaf is not good enough.
24 So part of this program, It's On Us, is
25 that all of us are responsible for the 109
1 atmosphere on our campuses, for the educational
2 opportunities, the awareness opportunities and
3 aftermath opportunities that we need to make
4 available if and when that becomes necessary.
5 These are cultural issues that we're not
6 only dealing with as a microcosm of society in
7 the country, it is prevalent all across the
8 country, and not just in higher ed. I'm
9 mortified at the numbers that I see coming out
10 of high schools and middle schools around our
11 country.
12 That was a big point made during the
13 It's On Us presentation, that it is not just a
14 responsibility of colleges, universities, and
15 community colleges, it's bringing together those
16 sectors with pre-K through 12 education in
17 dealing with this issue.
18 I'll make a statement that will sound,
19 perhaps, a bit glib; but I believe this:
20 Students who walk on to the East Stroudsburg
21 campus don't suddenly become sexual predators.
22 Any time a student is engaged in these
23 activities, it's largely based on issues they
24 bring with them when they come; and that starts
25 very early on in a child's life. 110
1 And we have -- as a nation, we need to
2 begin to address this holistically and recognize
3 that that tragedy that occurs at a university
4 which creates a victim and a perpetrator didn't
5 start there. It got its terrible roots well in
6 front of that, and that's a big part of what
7 we're doing at your universities.
8 And, Representative, I'd like Dr.
9 Driscoll, because they're just one great example
10 of dealing with this national issue, if you will
11 indulge the opportunity to address that as well?
12 MR. DRISCOLL: Thank you. And I'll just
13 mention a few things. I'm proud of what the
14 folks on my campus have been doing for a long
15 time to address the concerns that you raise. We
16 have done a number of things related to
17 education, support for those that are victims
18 and measuring the results; and so let me just
19 highlight that.
20 From 2004 to 2012, we received a total
21 of about 650,000 from the Department of Justice
22 to build programs related to those aspects of
23 the situation, well before some of the current
24 noise has arisen about this important issue.
25 And so we have some things in place, 111
1 including partnerships with agencies in our
2 communities so that if someone comes forward
3 who's a victim of sexual violence, they can find
4 support; they can be told; they can be handed to
5 the right sort of support as they go forward.
6 But in more recent times, as we built on
7 that funding and that experience, we have
8 undertaken significant training activities. And
9 so every year, every one of our employees goes
10 through training related to recognizing,
11 responding to, education about what sexual
12 harassment, sexual violence may be.
13 I'm incredibly proud to say that all of
14 our employees did that in this year. I can't
15 say that about very many things at a university.
16 And so with great work from staff, the great
17 training; we're adding online training; we
18 provide peer educators, so we have students
19 talking to other students to make sure that they
20 have a safe place, a comfortable place to talk
21 about some challenging issues sometimes.
22 And so a lot of activities are going on.
23 And we're not that different from our peers in
24 the system. All of us take these issues
25 seriously. I do want to touch briefly on 112
1 measuring the success of the results, so I can
2 say that we're doing all of these things.
3 Measurement is a difficult challenge here. If I
4 receive more reports of sexual assault from last
5 year, does that mean it's a failure or does that
6 mean that I've enabled folks who have been
7 assaulted to come forward?
8 And so a pretty typical approach that's
9 being standardized across the country is to
10 administer an anonymous survey to allow people
11 to answer freely about their experiences. We're
12 implementing the first survey focus just on that
13 in April.
14 We have some questions that have been on
15 other surveys, but we're going to try to do that
16 annually as well, to see what the real incidence
17 is, as best we can estimate. Again, do people
18 not report? Well, that would, perhaps, seem
19 good because there were no sexual assaults.
20 But, of course, that's not a realistic picture.
21 So I could go on, but that's --
22 REPRESENTATIVE DUNBAR: And, Mr.
23 Johnson, --
24 MR. JOHNSON: Yes, sir.
25 REPRESENTATIVE DUNBAR: -- do you want 113
1 to tell me about East Stroudsburg? Do you feel
2 comfortable there?
3 MR. JOHNSON: Yes.
4 REPRESENTATIVE DUNBAR: You're
5 somebody's prince. I have a lot of princesses;
6 you're somebody's prince or --
7 MR. BROGAN: Somebody's prince.
8 MR. JOHNSON: Yeah. I mean, from
9 President Driscoll's perspective, we have a lot
10 of training programs specifically for student
11 workers. We have our Alcoholics Background and
12 Drugs Department. Those are peer educators who
13 come. They have mandatory sessions with
14 athletic teams on campus.
15 So any time that you have direct access
16 to other people more than likely or when you are
17 a student under a microscope or a highlight, you
18 definitely are given training opportunities.
19 Many of us go through Title 9 trainings,
20 and we're very knowledgeable in campus
21 resources, too. I mean, the campus store guide
22 is going to say, you know, we have emergency
23 blue-light call boxes on campus, standing under
24 one, you can see two others.
25 So at any point you feel uncomfortable, 114
1 press the button, even if you're just
2 uncomfortable. You don't have to actually be in
3 the system or in a circumstance of danger to
4 press the button; you're not going to get in
5 trouble for doing it, just so long as you're not
6 pranking or being immature.
7 So, yeah, we have those emergency call
8 boxes on campus. Also, we have text messaging
9 alert systems, too. You have to opt in through
10 esu.edu. But in doing so, you're getting alerts
11 from snow cancellations to possible
12 circumstances that concern safety on campus as
13 well.
14 So, yeah, I think from my perspective,
15 my university does a wonderful job in terms of
16 safety.
17 MR. BROGAN: And I'll end on that one,
18 Representative, by saying this, because this is
19 a hot topic in higher education, you know as a
20 dad, safety. We match our crime statistics
21 because we're very much like small cities or
22 boroughs. We match our crime statistics up
23 against the crime statistics of the local
24 governments in which we're located, and we are
25 better almost across the board at our 115
1 universities than the local areas. Doesn't mean
2 their crime statistics are significant. It
3 just means we work to try to make sure that our
4 crime statistics, because we try to suppress
5 criminal activity, are always lower than the
6 surrounding areas we're in. Safety is of
7 paramount import.
8 REPRESENTATIVE DUNBAR: Uh-huh. Thank
9 you very much.
10 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you.
11 Thank you, Representative. Representative Maria
12 Donatucci.
13 REPRESENTATIVE DONATUCCI: Thank you,
14 Chairman; and welcome.
15 A lot of discussion has already centered
16 around the job market and marketable degrees.
17 So I have to say a lot of my questions have
18 already been answered about the new trends and
19 the new study programs.
20 I'm surprised to hear that 80 percent of
21 graduates are in their fields, because I know so
22 many college graduates who are working in retail
23 or in jobs unrelated to their study.
24 Having said that, and since a lot of
25 students are now in college for more than four 116
1 years, will we see any trends leaning toward
2 five-year work study programs where students can
3 spend a year working in an internship and many
4 times it results in job placement upon
5 graduation?
6 MR. BROGAN: Yes, ma'am. We are
7 refocusing our energy on the issue of
8 internship. My presidents know; we talk about
9 this all the time; I'm fond of saying, I want to
10 see the day, not would like to see the day, want
11 to see the day when every undergraduate student
12 who walks that stage and receives a diploma has
13 also, beyond the great skill set that our
14 faculty has helped them acquire during that
15 time, have some sort of an internship program to
16 take along for the ride, not only because it's a
17 great opportunity, as you know, for a student to
18 practice what we preach at your universities,
19 but it's also a unique approach to looking --
20 giving students a look to see when you might
21 hire them yourself as that employer while they
22 spend that internship time with you.
23 One of the things we need to do to make
24 that happen, we have 100,000 undergraduate
25 students, we need to redefine internship 117
1 programs. It could be everything from a year
2 internship program or it might be a month-long
3 experience over the course of the Christmas
4 break, because it's difficult for us to get
5 always traditional experiences. It's a little
6 like international education; it's hard for us,
7 if not impossible, for every one of our students
8 to have a study abroad opportunity during their
9 undergraduate experience.
10 But if you redefine both international
11 experience and broaden the definition and
12 redefine and broaden the definition of some sort
13 of an on-the-ground internship opportunity,
14 that's what we would love to see and that's what
15 we're going to work to try to acquire in the
16 years to come for all of our graduate students.
17 It's that important.
18 REPRESENTATIVE DONATUCCI: Okay. Thank
19 you. Also, what are the growth opportunities or
20 the opportunities for growth to accommodate the
21 nontraditional student? I mean, I think there's
22 like 50 percent of the students who are now 25
23 or older. They've delayed their college
24 education with a pursuit of higher degrees.
25 Many of them have dependent children at home; 118
1 they're single parents; they're looking for
2 programs that suit their lifestyle.
3 Do you have the resources to accommodate
4 these changing programs, such as counselors
5 being available or nontraditional hours, longer
6 class days, maybe weekend classes? Can you talk
7 about that a little?
8 MR. BROGAN: We do have some of that,
9 but it goes back to the issue of distance
10 education. We need to reorganize how we provide
11 distance education, so we can become more
12 efficient, thus be able to plow some of those
13 dollars back into how we offer, not just the
14 academic part of online education but the
15 support services online that those students have
16 to have to be successful and to graduate with a
17 degree.
18 It is very difficult to be able to
19 provide the myriad of services necessary. But I
20 will say this: Our system no longer is looking
21 at nontraditional students as a fascinating
22 catchall, because our primary customers have
23 always been traditional out-of-high-school
24 enrollees.
25 Not only with declining enrollment do we 119
1 want to broaden the number of opportunities
2 we're making available to nontraditional,
3 whether they're community college transfers,
4 whether they are a 35-year-old female, single
5 with two children, we're recognizing more and
6 more the importance of making those
7 opportunities available to nontraditional
8 students; because that's what the Commonwealth
9 needs more of.
10 If we're going to hit those targeted
11 numbers for 2020, we've got to look beyond the
12 18-year-olds and broaden the audience of
13 students that we're serving to include a
14 nontraditional population.
15 So our universities are working to
16 retool academic programming, matriculation,
17 recruitment offerings, counseling and advising.
18 It's one thing to counsel a 19-year-old on how
19 to graduate with a degree in an area. It's
20 another thing to counsel a 35-year-old single
21 female with two children, because their hours
22 are going to be different, because how they can
23 rack up course work and credits will be
24 different than that full-time residential
25 student. And we are retooling what we're doing 120
1 to try to not only continue to meet the needs of
2 the traditional but the new and growing and
3 necessary population of nontraditional students
4 in our system. It's going to be key to our
5 future and I think the future of the
6 Commonwealth.
7 REPRESENTATIVE DONATUCCI: Thank you for
8 your answers. And thank you, Mr. Chairman.
9 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you,
10 Representative. Representative Gary Day.
11 REPRESENTATIVE DAY: Thank you, Mr.
12 Chairman. Thank you, Chancellor, for being
13 here. I appreciate, you know, when I look up in
14 the dictionary thorough answers, I think your
15 picture should be there; because you're very
16 detailed in the answers and we appreciate that.
17 My district, you know, contains Kutztown
18 University. That's why I have their tie on
19 today.
20 MR. BROGAN: Nice touch.
21 REPRESENTATIVE DAY: My finger contains
22 Penn State's ring, as an alumni of Penn State.
23 And, also, I have a community college in my
24 district; so higher ed, if you come to the 187
25 District, we have all these choices, which is 121
1 one of the things that you talk about, as well,
2 in a same, similar area.
3 When the Legislature approved a
4 $20-million increase in funding and the Governor
5 vetoed that, he didn't release that money. That
6 20 million that the Legislature approved in new
7 funding must have put you in a tough position.
8 I'm going to just make a comment about
9 this, so you're aware of how I feel about this
10 situation. I think it's important that
11 universities, both state universities and
12 state-related universities, try their best to
13 stay out of the political fray; and I think you
14 do a very good job at that.
15 And we're a team of people; we're an
16 entire board. I think you guys do a great job
17 of doing that. Your administrators do, as well.
18 Your students come to the Capitol, represent
19 themselves very well, and lobby for issues that
20 are important to them; and that's a testament to
21 you.
22 You know, there seems to be here in
23 Harrisburg an ongoing political ideology, oppose
24 $20 million today and promise $30 million
25 tomorrow. And I think it's an idealogy that the 122
1 majority doesn't support. That's my opinion. I
2 believe it takes away from the overall
3 discussion of higher ed in Pennsylvania, and I
4 think that hurts Pennsylvania.
5 I want to just encourage you to continue
6 to stay in that realm of not accepting that
7 political ideology whenever you can and just
8 stay away from the political side. Later today,
9 I'll probably have similar comments for our
10 state-related universities, as well.
11 Now, my question is about foundations.
12 Foundations have been established that have been
13 established for the benefit of the state system
14 universities, are working on an issue regarding
15 public information requests, public information
16 requests of donor records.
17 And I'm curious, I know you've had
18 different thoughts throughout the years about
19 foundations and maybe has evolved; and that
20 might be my follow-up question. But in
21 particular on this issue, if you want to say
22 we're separate and I don't want to comment, I
23 understand that.
24 But if you do have a comment, do you
25 support this effort? And if so, how would it 123
1 benefit foundations and therefore the
2 universities?
3 MR. BROGAN: Representative, the issue
4 of right-to-know and private donors, even
5 private donors to a public endeavor becomes
6 very, very tricky.
7 Having been a president, a chancellor in
8 another system under some different rules and
9 regulations, I can tell you that -- and having
10 worked with donors for a long, long time in
11 education and politically, oftentimes, donors
12 get very nervous about making a donations if
13 they believe the information surrounding that
14 donation and their name is going to become a
15 matter of public record.
16 It's always easy to answer, well, you
17 shouldn't be afraid to do that because you're
18 doing a great thing. But remember, we're not
19 dealing with taxpayer contributions here; we're
20 dealing with individual acts of philanthropy.
21 Sometimes it's as simple as that individual
22 doesn't want anybody to know that they're giving
23 the money. They want to make it anonymous,
24 because they don't want their name attached to
25 it; not out of shame, obviously, but because 124
1 they just believe they're happy to do it that
2 way. It is always a concern with whether or not
3 something should be in the world of public
4 record and public information. It has the
5 potential to dampen, in some cases, that
6 philanthropic effort.
7 And I know having been a president, it
8 makes me nervous as a president to think of
9 anything that would dampen those philanthropic
10 efforts toward my university in this particular
11 case.
12 So you weigh it against the public good.
13 Is it critical that the public know that that
14 individual has donated money to support a
15 student at that university? And what's the
16 benefit for the public of knowing that, or can
17 you protect that and make sure that that
18 person's wishes -- and that's what it is in many
19 cases -- are honored in that regard?
20 I didn't know if President Driscoll, who
21 raises money for a living as part of his job
22 now --
23 REPRESENTATIVE DAY: Right. And let me
24 just jump in with a quick follow-up; and you can
25 answer this, Mr. President, as well. 125
1 But I'm trying to get to the point --
2 it's an Appropriations Hearing -- does it have
3 an impact -- I'm going to be working on this
4 going forward with the PASSHE caucus, and I want
5 to know for the Appropriations Committee, and I
6 want them to understand, does it have a
7 significant financial impact? And that's where
8 I'm trying to drive toward.
9 MR. DRISCOLL: Just the last point, let
10 me give you a couple of numbers. Since I've
11 been president at IUP, about 3-and-a-half years,
12 we have dedicated over $7 million of new funds
13 for student financial aid; and over half of that
14 is coming from the foundation, thanks to the
15 generosity of donors, so just to give you an
16 idea of scale. Those are significant numbers,
17 if you're talking about students trying to
18 attend a university, keeping their debt down and
19 all of the things we've talked about today.
20 The reality is, as the Chancellor says,
21 where do you draw the line? It's very
22 difficult. But some people wish to give
23 anonymously to support good things, and they
24 will not have that discussion if they think that
25 their information is subject to the university's 126
1 rules for most of the work that we do.
2 Certainly, my foundation is not, I think, at the
3 forefront of some efforts you may be referring
4 to; but is very, very concerned about the
5 privacy of those individual records they hold
6 about individuals.
7 Sometimes they're looking at
8 individual's complete financial picture when
9 they structure gifts and things like that, so
10 that's part of the concern.
11 REPRESENTATIVE DAY: I don't know the
12 system exactly, but some of the fears that I
13 find from the balance of public need for public
14 information are: Can I donate $50,000 to your
15 university through the foundation and then have
16 you select quietly out of the public eye that my
17 child can go there and use my tax-deductible
18 foundation money to go to school? I just want
19 to put that out there and ask that question.
20 MR. DRISCOLL: So let me answer that
21 very specifically. I believe my foundation has
22 gone to court to prevent an individual donor
23 from exercising that. They're very ethical
24 about that. Okay?
25 So I understand that concern, and we 127
1 would probably not accept a gift, nor would the
2 foundation under circumstances like that; and we
3 would defend the appropriate scholarship process
4 that exists across all of the scholarships that
5 the foundation administers based on giving.
6 REPRESENTATIVE DAY: So it wouldn't harm
7 to legislate that then if we would change the
8 public information law to legislate that,
9 because everybody's following it anyway?
10 MR. DRISCOLL: I don't know that I can
11 speak directly to the specifics of how you would
12 legislate around that. It's not -- I mean,
13 that's beyond my expertise. But it seems to me
14 that there's not a problem to be solved there,
15 in my experience with --
16 REPRESENTATIVE DAY: And then just a
17 quick follow-up on the process for students, the
18 $3-and-a-half million coming from the foundation
19 and given to students, is that transparent of
20 how -- what students apply and who gets the
21 moneys or not?
22 MR. DRISCOLL: And, again, I'll say that
23 the numbers I threw around were approximate. We
24 could get you exact numbers, if you'd like that.
25 But that's made up of a number of different 128
1 scholarship programs from a number of different
2 donors and other resources. And so in each
3 case, there's a very specific agreement about
4 the qualifications for students that would be
5 awarded. There's a defined review process that
6 involves a number of individuals looking at the
7 applicants. And so, yes, I can't say here's the
8 one; it's many, many different processes, all of
9 the same sort.
10 REPRESENTATIVE DAY: Thank you for your
11 answers today. I really appreciate it. I did
12 have a question for the student, but I'll talk
13 to you after the hearing; because we're trying
14 to stay on time.
15 MR. BROGAN: And, Representative, thank
16 you for your work with the PASSHE caucus. We're
17 about a year and change into the development of
18 a PASSHE caucus, Chairman, where either people
19 who graduated from one of our state universities
20 and are General Assembly members or have one of
21 our universities in their district, have formed
22 together in a caucus to assist us with some of
23 the issues that we deal with. And
24 Representative Day has been very, very involved
25 in that. We appreciate that. 129
1 REPRESENTATIVE DAY: Like many of our
2 caucuses, it is a bipartisan caucus; so
3 everyone's invited to join.
4 MR. BROGAN: Absolutely.
5 REPRESENTATIVE DAY: Thank you very
6 much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
7 MR. BROGAN: Thank you.
8 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you,
9 Representative. Representative Schreiber.
10 REPRESENTATIVE SCHREIBER: Thank you,
11 Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Chancellor. And to
12 our resident student today, Mr. Johnson,
13 congratulations; well done, and continued
14 success, wishes and gratitude.
15 And once you graduate in May, come to
16 York and we'll try to find you a job. We want
17 you to come over and work with us.
18 MR. BROGAN: By the way, Representative,
19 he didn't finish the rest of the story about his
20 brother. His brother is now playing basketball
21 in Europe, hubbed out of Dublin, Ireland; and is
22 playing for that team in Dublin, so --
23 REPRESENTATIVE SCHREIBER: Europe is
24 second only to York, so I just want to throw
25 that out there. So, again, come on over when 130
1 you're done.
2 I'll try to be brief here. I wanted to
3 take a quick walk down memory lane. 1997 was a
4 great year; it was a phenomenal year. Mr.
5 Chairman, I was still in high school. I was a
6 junior, probably looking at schools myself.
7 The Marlins and the Bulls had each
8 respectively won their championships. This was
9 four years after the '93 Phillies incidentally.
10 The pop cultural quotes of the year were, "Oh,
11 my God; they killed Kenny", and "I'm King of the
12 World."
13 Celebrity deaths that year were John
14 Denver, the Notorious BIG, Chris Farley,
15 Princess Diana, and Pennsylvania's own, Jimmy
16 Stewart. Titanic won 11 Oscars that year. Also
17 that year, we were fortunate to see Men In Black
18 and Good Will Hunting, and the Spice Girls and
19 Hanson topped the charts with Wannabe and MMM
20 Bop, respectively.
21 So '97 was a great year, but much has
22 changed since '97. It's been 19 years since
23 1997, and your enrollment has changed. As you
24 testified, you're up 13,000 in student
25 population. Your appropriation has changed and 131
1 fluctuated over those 19 years; but sadly, today
2 we hear that you are back to 1997 levels of
3 funding. And we heard from the IFO, the
4 Independent Fiscal Office, last week, that while
5 student debt growth has slowed in Pennsylvania,
6 we are still alarmingly third nationally in
7 student-debt load, at about 32,000, a little
8 over 32,000 per graduate with debt.
9 Now, you've testified, Chancellor, that
10 you are a bit under that, at about $30,000,
11 which is excellent. I was wondering if you
12 could talk a little bit briefly about the
13 correlation, obviously, between the state
14 appropriation and student debt and tuition
15 rates.
16 And right now, it appears that we make
17 up about a ratio of 26 percent comes from the
18 state, about 74 percent is comprised of tuition
19 rates and other fees and things of that nature.
20 So trying to, obviously, impress upon
21 everyone here, that regardless of any
22 supplemental appropriation that we discuss
23 today, whether it's 20 million, 5 percent,
24 whatever, ultimately it is and hopefully it is
25 more, it is still less than where you were at. 132
1 It still does not fully restore the cuts that
2 you have faced across the system. And,
3 ultimately, that still leads to you having to
4 continue to make miracles happen or to continue
5 to increase tuition or cut programming.
6 If you could just try to expound on that
7 a little bit.
8 MR. BROGAN: First of all, there's the
9 math. It is true. And I'm really embarrassed,
10 because one of the members had talked about this
11 math before; and I apologize, I can't remember
12 who it was, but had mentioned the fact that
13 years ago when this system was formed, it was
14 roughly a 75-percent contribution by the state,
15 25 percent from the students.
16 Well, that's changed over 30 years or
17 more; and in large measure, picked up steam with
18 the advent of the recession; and we are now
19 inverted with said. And it is true, we're now
20 at about 26 percent state, 75 percent, roughly,
21 from the students.
22 It has a special impact to our system
23 because of Act 188 and our desire, and I would
24 submit, need, to hold down the idea of just
25 passing it all on to the students. We can't do 133
1 that. We have, generally speaking, a very
2 fragile student population economically. We're
3 proud of that fact, because many of them come to
4 us because we're affordable; but it also
5 creates, in large measure, a population of
6 students who can't absorb a 9-percent increase,
7 a 10-percent tuition increase and in some cases,
8 double digits.
9 They can't do that, even with Pell
10 Grants and even with the assistance of the
11 universities; those kind of tuition increases
12 are just so out of bounds. But to that end,
13 historically, we've done about 3 percent over
14 the last 3 or 4 years; 3-and-a-half percent this
15 past year; and that, in large measure, is about
16 where we try to stay.
17 We would love to see the day in time
18 where it was zero; but again, we still have real
19 costs that increase, whether we are going the
20 other direction with our budgets, and we are, or
21 not, we still have rising costs; and I've
22 mentioned them during the course of this
23 morning's hearing, that we have to meet as an
24 obligation, whether or not we raise tuition or
25 not, that is there. 134
1 So by trying to hold down tuition to the
2 greatest degree possible and by dealing with the
3 declining state revenues that we face as a
4 system, we have turned to the only thing we've
5 got, and that is ourselves. And that's why this
6 morning we've tried to outline many of the
7 changes that we are making; and there's two
8 reasons for it, as I mentioned. One is sheer
9 economics, the recession, the need to become
10 more efficient because the money isn't there.
11 But also the obligation, as I mentioned, with
12 taking a look at the future of this system and
13 trying to make not only hard decisions but
14 visionary creations as to how this system is
15 going to be organized for the next 25 years.
16 We cannot, and should not any longer,
17 just operate the way we've operated for the last
18 100 years. It not only isn't economically
19 possible, it won't work. It also isn't the way
20 you want to operate for students who aren't
21 going to be living in that last hundred years.
22 They're going to be living in the next hundred
23 years.
24 And so we have two obligations to
25 reinvent, reorganize, and modernize our system; 135
1 and that hopefully will not only bring greater
2 efficiencies in economies of scale, but more
3 importantly we'll make sure that the Drew
4 Johnsons of the future always receive, as one of
5 the members mentioned earlier, the most relevant
6 educational experience for the time in which
7 they live, not the time in which I lived. Those
8 days are gone; that ship has sailed.
9 So thank you for the observation,
10 indulging me the math, but also the passion for
11 our system that goes along with making sure we
12 have to do whatever we have to do to be
13 relevant.
14 And here, we have a variety of
15 challenges that we face, which coming from
16 somewhere else are extra-extraordinary. I will
17 give you contracts that were written 40 years
18 ago. And while, perhaps, appropriate 40 years
19 ago, you want to talk about have become
20 irrelevant but we are still saddled with many of
21 the arcane rules, regulations, and obligations
22 that center in those contracts. That is not a
23 political statement. That is coming from a
24 chief executive officer who marvels on a daily
25 basis at what these guys have to do at the local 136
1 institutional level just to open their doors and
2 operate these universities in the best-they-can
3 way to create a 21st Century experience for
4 those guys, the students that we serve.
5 We have got to start to take a modern
6 look at those sorts of challenges that face us
7 or all of the modernization efforts that we can
8 create that surround them are not going to be
9 nearly enough to make us relevant and
10 competitive in the 21st Century. It will not
11 happen.
12 We are organized in almost an early 20th
13 Century fashion. We've got to change more than
14 just what we control. We've got to change those
15 things that we do not currently control to make
16 this thing become a reality.
17 Thank you for indulging me that
18 commercial message, but it's critical.
19 REPRESENTATIVE SCHREIBER: Thank you
20 very much, Chancellor. I appreciate everything
21 that you guys do within the system to meet those
22 realities head-on.
23 It sounds like, setting funding aside,
24 which obviously is a significant piece of this
25 discussion, sounds like there are things that 137
1 the PASSHE caucus can work on hopefully to help
2 modernize. And not to leave everyone in the
3 room on an even more sobering or depressing
4 note; but, Drew, how old were you in 1997?
5 MR. JOHNSON: In '97, I was three.
6 REPRESENTATIVE SCHREIBER: Okay. Got
7 it.
8 MR. BROGAN: So was this tie.
9 REPRESENTATIVE SCHREIBER: Keep up the
10 great work. Thank you. Thank you, Mr.
11 Chairman.
12 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you,
13 Representative. Representative Marguerite
14 Quinn.
15 REPRESENTATIVE QUINN: Thanks, Mr.
16 Chairman. And I told you this morning that I
17 was going to make a promise and keep within five
18 minutes; so I'll set a stopwatch here, and I
19 appreciate any help you can -- I mean, I can't
20 even get it -- anything you can do to help me
21 keep this. Start.
22 (SETTING STOPWATCH.)
23 First I want to thank you, Chancellor,
24 for being here with your esteemed panel; and
25 thanks for acknowledging earlier that no student 138
1 lost a PHEAA award. There has been some mixed
2 messaging that I've gotten from across the
3 board, parents and students; and it's good to
4 hear at least from the state system how that was
5 implemented.
6 I have a couple of questions. One goes
7 back to when Representative Kampf talked about
8 the three legs to the stool of taxpayer dollars,
9 of tuition and of cost savings. Earlier, a
10 couple of years ago in Bucks County, Montgomery
11 County, and there have been several states
12 throughout the nation that have actually
13 conducted an audit on a dependent eligibility
14 audit for healthcare benefits.
15 In my county, Bucks alone, which has
16 just a small fraction of the employees that your
17 system would have statewide, we found a couple
18 of years ago, $600,000 of cost savings going
19 forward.
20 Has there been an audit of that type
21 under -- you know, in the past ten years at
22 least, that you're aware of?
23 MR. BROGAN: Are you aware, Lois?
24 MS. JOHNSON: Routinely, Highmark, our
25 primary healthcare provider, does work with our 139
1 employees that are in the health benefit
2 programs, to make sure that whoever is enrolled
3 in their healthcare programs are eligible to be
4 enrolled in our healthcare programs.
5 REPRESENTATIVE QUINN: That's great to
6 know. Because what I've found in some of those
7 audits is that when Highmark or the insurance
8 company's involved, what they're doing is
9 auditing the claims and not necessarily the
10 eligibility. So it's just different types of
11 audits.
12 I have sent a letter to your office just
13 with some specifics about numbers and healthcare
14 increases, as I've done for anyone else who's
15 come before us. So when you get that, I'd
16 appreciate the reply.
17 My other question's going to be a
18 follow-up with regard to safety on campuses.
19 This time yesterday, there was a group right out
20 here in the rotunda talking about Narcan; and we
21 heard Dr. Levine talk about this absolute
22 epidemic.
23 And in doing so, you know, saying it's
24 not cultural; it's not race; it's not economics;
25 it's a disease that hits indiscriminately. Have 140
1 you found evidence of this throughout your
2 campuses? And if so, what do you do about it?
3 MR. DRISCOLL: If I may, I'm pulling out
4 something that my staff gave me that is a
5 posting talking about Narcan in particular, and
6 offering training for use at our universities.
7 MR. BROGAN: You might want to expand on
8 what it is.
9 MR. DRISCOLL: And I'm sorry, this is a
10 drug, given my limited understanding, that
11 allows someone who is in an opioid overdose to
12 be saved, basically.
13 The data that I have to the specific
14 risk does not show for our students, as best as
15 we can identify, a significant increase in this
16 particular set of drug use and concern.
17 Can I be a hundred percent confident
18 that we're capturing everything, when I know
19 that our communities are facing this as well? I
20 can't --
21 REPRESENTATIVE QUINN: Parents can't
22 even capture it.
23 MR. DRISCOLL: I can't be certain. But
24 we've not seen the sort of incidents that would
25 suggest we're seeing a lot more than that. So 141
1 most of our students are not engaged in this
2 activity. Almost all of our students are not
3 engaged with narcotics and similar drugs, I can
4 be confident. But are we in a trend? Not sure.
5 Drugs, overall, the numbers and
6 experience we see, primary concern right now
7 actually is a growth in marijuana use and things
8 surrounding that. But the communities around us
9 seem to be seeing more and more with narcotics.
10 And so I'm telling you what I know from the
11 numbers that I have, but it's something that
12 we're looking at in partnership with our region
13 to make sure that we're not missing something.
14 REPRESENTATIVE QUINN: Good. I'd be
15 curious enough from a budgetary standpoint of
16 view; but when, if that happens, you know,
17 policy with regard to what to do with that
18 student.
19 So of the 14-and-a-half-percent increase
20 you're looking for in the budget, none of that
21 is specifically dedicated towards this? You
22 have other --
23 MR. BROGAN: Yes, ma'am. Correct.
24 Correct.
25 REPRESENTATIVE QUINN: Okay. Thank you. 142
1 REPRESENTATIVE QUINN: I'm not going to
2 try and spend the other 35 seconds; so I'm just
3 going to declare victory, Mr. Chairman.
4 MR. BROGAN: And I know the Chairman
5 won't hold this against you, but I did want
6 to --
7 REPRESENTATIVE QUINN: I stopped my
8 clock.
9 MR. BROGAN: -- I did want to get back
10 on the table to the healthcare issue that our
11 board has taken a very emphatic position on
12 costs associated with healthcare, and recently
13 made two decisions and have implemented those
14 with those we can implement them with.
15 Number one, we have ended annuited
16 healthcare for all new nonrepresented hires in
17 the State University System. Those are the mes,
18 those are the hims, those are the folks who are
19 nonrepresented.
20 Now, that has no immediate significant
21 financial impact, because you have to be there
22 20 years to qualify for annuited healthcare.
23 But, nevertheless, we believed it was important
24 to finally end that process with those that we
25 have the ability to do that with. 143
1 Number two, we went into our healthcare
2 plan. I'll be a bit glib and tell you, it's not
3 a Cadillac plan alone; it is a Cadillac with
4 fins. It is an extraordinary healthcare plan.
5 And stack it up against the rest of the country
6 in higher ed, it is one of the best that I've
7 ever seen and some of our experts have ever
8 seen. That's a good thing. Okay?
9 And yet we know the runaway costs of
10 healthcare. And so we went in and took a very
11 careful and calculated look at some of the
12 things that make up our healthcare plan via
13 contributions from our employees, came up with a
14 list of about seven, I think, changes that had
15 to do with co-pays and the like; and altered
16 those parts of the healthcare plan to increase,
17 and I'll say potential contributions from
18 employees, because a lot of things depend on how
19 you use the plan, etc.
20 And we have instituted those not only
21 for our nonrepresented employees, but the other
22 unions that are considered under healthcare,
23 me-too unions, which means on healthcare they
24 will accept the same kinds of changes in this
25 case that we make. 144
1 We believe if that were instituted
2 systemwide with everybody, and it has to be
3 through the collective-bargaining process in
4 some cases, we could save as much as $12 million
5 a year on those costs alone that could be plowed
6 back into the system.
7 And did it make a difference? When we
8 started this process, we looked at universities
9 like Pitt and Penn State and weighed our plan
10 against theirs. Even with these changes, we are
11 now equal to Pitt and Penn State; so we did not
12 have to significantly negatively impact this
13 plan for anybody, and we were very careful about
14 what modest increases people might see and be
15 able to absorb in that regard.
16 REPRESENTATIVE QUINN: Thank you.
17 MR. BROGAN: But it's one of those
18 rising-cost issues where we just have no choice.
19 REPRESENTATIVE QUINN: Yeah.
20 MR. BROGAN: It's eating us alive from
21 the inside out.
22 REPRESENTATIVE QUINN: And in addition
23 to the letter that I sent with some specific
24 numbers, I would love it if you could get a copy
25 of what those tweaks were. 145
1 But I want to make it clear, what I'm
2 looking at is just normal slippage. You know,
3 we found with a woman in Bucks County, her son
4 had passed in a motorcycle accident; and through
5 the trauma, she never took him off the roll, so
6 the county was paying, you know. There's things
7 like that.
8 It's just been -- there's some
9 statistics out there that show, especially with
10 public-sector jobs, that slippage occurs more
11 than it should.
12 MR. BROGAN: Thank you.
13 REPRESENTATIVE QUINN: Thank you.
14 Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
15 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Kept that
16 under five minutes.
17 REPRESENTATIVE QUINN: Hey, that wasn't
18 on me.
19 MR. BROGAN: I accept some
20 responsibility there, Mr. Chairman.
21 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Most of it.
22 Representative Seth Grove.
23 REPRESENTATIVE GROVE: Thank you, Mr.
24 Chairman, Vice Chancellor, Chancellor,
25 President, Mr. Johnson, thank you so much for 146
1 coming in today. And I didn't catch it at the
2 beginning, did you give your year and what your
3 majors are?
4 MR. JOHNSON: Yeah, I'm a senior
5 communications studies major. I'm on the Public
6 Advocacy Track, and have a minor in Political
7 Science and Philosophy.
8 REPRESENTATIVE GROVE: Political theory,
9 very nice. All right. Chancellor, a colleague
10 of mine who is no longer here, Will Tollman, on
11 the Education Committee, wanted me to ask, how
12 many education degrees did the state system
13 graduate in the 2014-2015 school year?
14 MR. BROGAN: I know we have 11,000
15 education degree seekers in the pipeline today,
16 and I'll see if we've got your answer to be even
17 more specific in how many have actually
18 graduated in the last year.
19 MS. JOHNSON: About 3500.
20 MR. BROGAN: About 3500, Lois tells me,
21 Representative.
22 REPRESENTATIVE GROVE: Okay. Did
23 Governor Wolf or his administration consult you
24 or your office about his full veto from June
25 30th or the partial veto on December 29th? 147
1 MR. BROGAN: In other words, did we hear
2 from the Governor's Office before that took
3 place?
4 REPRESENTATIVE GROVE: Yes.
5 MR. BROGAN: Yes, sir.
6 REPRESENTATIVE GROVE: Could you
7 describe the impacts of those two actions to his
8 office?
9 MR. BROGAN: We went through the math in
10 terms of what would that mean to us, similarly
11 to what I went through with you today. Yes,
12 sir.
13 REPRESENTATIVE GROVE: Okay. Does
14 higher education have federal mandates as a
15 result of any federal statutes? If so, could
16 you name a few of them?
17 MR. BROGAN: Wow. You don't have the
18 time. Yes, sir. When we talk about all of the
19 challenges and hurdles that we have to cross,
20 you have to include the federal. We go back to
21 just sheer reports that we do for the federal
22 government, because we receive federal funds.
23 And I'm a big accountability buff, so I know
24 you've got to account for the money that you
25 spend. But we are responsible for an 148
1 extraordinary number of accounting reports that
2 go back to various strata of the federal
3 government. Could be financial assistance; it
4 could be on issues of Title 9, which is where
5 issues of sexual assault are covered, etc. Clery
6 Act Reporting, which is a federal requirement
7 that requires us to transmit and communicate
8 potential or existing acts of sexual assault in
9 or around our campuses, etc. I can give you a
10 long laundry list of those.
11 I understand the need to report when you
12 receive money. I have always believed that's
13 important. You've got to show where you've
14 spent it. But I will tell you the complexities
15 of the federal government from ADD requirements,
16 I can go on for a long time about them. And I
17 think it is something that the feds need to look
18 at.
19 Whenever I speak with members of
20 Congress, members of the Senate, I regularly
21 talk about the overabundance of paperwork and
22 obligations that our universities have to get
23 through. And it isn't even on a pro rata basis
24 for the amount of money we do get. And we're
25 appreciative for every dime. 149
1 The amount of reporting that goes along
2 with it would make you think that all of our
3 money is federal, and that's not the case. So I
4 don't know if the president has a take on that.
5 MR. DRISCOLL: Well, I just agree with
6 everything he said. Let's do that. I have a
7 long list.
8 MR. BROGAN: This is a first, so I want
9 to get that on the public record.
10 REPRESENTATIVE GROVE: Does any state
11 funding go to health, safety, and well-being of
12 students and their faculty?
13 MR. BROGAN: Sure. I'll give you an
14 on-the-ground example: Recently, the General
15 Assembly passed a lot of good legislation on the
16 protection of minors. And most people didn't
17 think that had anything to do with higher
18 education because, gosh, we're all adults;
19 300,000 visits from minor children to our
20 campuses every year. It's remarkable,
21 everything from summer camps to dually-enrolled
22 students who have not yet achieved adult age,
23 etc. And, therefore, we then had to go in and
24 we had to decide how we were going to deal with
25 that. The background check issue is a good 150
1 example of that. We're using our money to do
2 background checks for all of the employees who
3 require background checks to be done; and that
4 comes out of, in many cases, state funding, as a
5 necessity; but we understand the necessity to do
6 that.
7 I come from K-12, where everybody is
8 background checked because everybody is a minor
9 student, for the most part. In our world, it
10 does obviously vary. And yet, the idea that
11 there might be students, again, 300,000 visits
12 and some of them are dually-enrolled students
13 who've matriculated and some of them are
14 students who just visit the campuses to see what
15 we do. We pay for those background checks out
16 of state money, is one good example.
17 REPRESENTATIVE GROVE: Okay. Based on
18 the federal mandates, some dealing with safety,
19 the fact that your state dollars do go to the
20 safety and well-being of the students and
21 faculty, has the Administration discussed at all
22 sending additional payments or supplements to
23 the Treasurer's Office for payment above his
24 vetoed allocation?
25 MR. BROGAN: We have not. 151
1 REPRESENTATIVE GROVE: No? Okay.
2 Mr. Johnson, you obviously do like political
3 science and obviously philosophy. Did you do
4 any course work on checks and balances of
5 government?
6 MR. JOHNSON: To my knowledge -- I don't
7 think we did much of that, no.
8 REPRESENTATIVE GROVE: None of that.
9 Did you take a general government class at all?
10 MR. JOHNSON: Yeah. I mean, American
11 Government.
12 REPRESENTATIVE GROVE: American
13 Government. Did you go over checks and
14 balances, three branches of government?
15 MR. JOHNSON: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
16 REPRESENTATIVE GROVE: Are you familiar
17 with the veto process?
18 MR. JOHNSON: Yes.
19 REPRESENTATIVE GROVE: All right. Are
20 you familiar with the veto override process?
21 MR. JOHNSON: Yes.
22 REPRESENTATIVE GROVE: What's that
23 process?
24 MR. JOHNSON: To my knowledge, if the
25 Chair exercises his ability to veto, the body 152
1 that he represents at a set number, be it
2 two-thirds or whatever, they have the power to
3 override that veto, correct?
4 MR. BROGAN: Yes, that's correct.
5 REPRESENTATIVE GROVE: Correct.
6 Perfect. Do you know how he knows that? Did
7 you know your Chancellor was a former Lieutenant
8 Governor of Florida under Jeb Bush? So he knows
9 all about executive authority.
10 MR. BROGAN: And vetoes.
11 REPRESENTATIVE GROVE: Great. And,
12 Chancellor Brogan, as Lieutenant Governor of a
13 former state, are you familiar with any other
14 process for veto override?
15 MR. BROGAN: No, sir, other than the
16 variance in terms of what percentage of a body
17 it would take to override a veto.
18 REPRESENTATIVE GROVE: Yeah. Have you
19 ever heard of a Governor trying to override his
20 own veto?
21 MR. BROGAN: No, I can't say I have.
22 REPRESENTATIVE GROVE: Thank you, Mr.
23 Chairman. No further questions.
24 MR. BROGAN: There's a story behind
25 that, I trust. 153
1 REPRESENTATIVE GROVE: There is.
2 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: First of all,
3 I want to thank the Chancellor and President and
4 the student, and Lois, for testifying before us
5 today.
6 As a resident of Delaware County, I'm
7 very proud to see Drew Johnson here, from Penn
8 Wood. A couple of my personal friends taught at
9 Penn Wood. I won't mention their names to you.
10 It might bring back bad memories, you know. But
11 I will certainly tell them about your progress.
12 MR. JOHNSON: Thank you.
13 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: And how you
14 are doing so well. And fantastic answers to a
15 very tough question. Budget Hearings are tough.
16 Okay? A lot of policy questions. And I
17 appreciate your honesty and your willingness to
18 bring these tough decisions you had to make over
19 the last six months.
20 In 1997, Governor Ridge was the Governor
21 of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. I was
22 sitting probably right over there, you know, so
23 I remember it quite well. We will continue to
24 work in trying to get the five percent back for
25 you. Okay? I believe the members will, on both 154
1 sides of the aisle, agree with that five
2 percent. Sooner or later we're going to get
3 together and make sure that we have, you know,
4 the Governor in agreement with us. So thank you
5 so much.
6 For the members' information, we're
7 going to reconvene at 1:15 with the Pennsylvania
8 State-Related Universities.
9 MR. BROGAN: And, Mr. Chairman, before
10 we depart, on behalf of all of us, thank you and
11 all of the members. But, in particular, you
12 will not be seated there next year when this
13 happens, who knows, I may not be either; but in
14 that regard, thank you for your service, not
15 only to our system, but your service to the
16 Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for so many years.
17 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: It's been my
18 pleasure, Chancellor. Thank you.
19 (Whereupon, the hearing concluded.)
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25 155
1 CERTIFICATE
2
3 I hereby certify that the proceedings and
4 evidence are contained fully and accurately in the notes
5 taken by me on the within proceedings and that this is a
6 correct transcript of the same.
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8 ______
9 Tracy L. Markle, Court Reporter/Notary 10
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