COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE JOINT WITH THE EDUCATION COMMITTEE PUBLIC HEARING
STATE CAPITOL HARRISBURG, PA
MAIN CAPITOL BUILDING ROOM 14 0
MONDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2 02 0 9:05 A.M.
PRESENTATION ON PENNSYLVANIA STATE SYSTEM OF HIGHER EDUCATION (PASSHE)
APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT: HONORABLE STAN SAYLOR, MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HONORABLE ROSEMARY M. BROWN HONORABLE GEORGE DUNBAR HONORABLE MARCIA M. HAHN HONORABLE DOYLE HEFFLEY HONORABLE R. LEE JAMES HONORABLE JOHN A. LAWRENCE HONORABLE JAMES B. STRUZZI, II HONORABLE JESSE TOPPER HONORABLE DAVID H. ZIMMERMAN HONORABLE MATTHEW D. BRADFORD, DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN HONORABLE CAROLYN T. COMITTA HONORABLE AUSTIN A. DAVIS HONORABLE PATTY KIM HONORABLE STEPHEN KINSEY HONORABLE LEANNE KRUEGER HONORABLE PETER SCHWEYER 2
APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT VIRTUALLY: HONORABLE LYNDA SCHLEGEL CULVER HONORABLE JONATHAN FRITZ HONORABLE MATT GABLER HONORABLE KEITH J. GREINER HONORABLE JASON ORTITAY HONORABLE CLINT OWLETT HONORABLE CHRISTOPHER B. QUINN HONORABLE GREG ROTHMAN HONORABLE RYAN WARNER HONORABLE MORGAN CEPHAS HONORABLE MARIA P. DONATUCCI HONORABLE ELIZABETH FIEDLER HONORABLE STEPHEN MCCARTER HONORABLE BENJAMIN V. SANCHEZ
EDUCATION COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT: HONORABLE CURT SONNEY, MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HONORABLE ROSEMARY BROWN HONORABLE MARK M. GILLEN HONORABLE BARBARA GLEIM HONORABLE JESSE TOPPER HONORABLE MARY ISAACSON HONORABLE PATTY KIM HONORABLE DAN MILLER HONORABLE GERALD MULLERY
EDUCATION COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT VIRTUALLY: HONORABLE VALERIE GAYDOS HONORABLE DAVID HICKERNELL HONORABLE MIKE JONES HONORABLE JERRY KNOWLES HONORABLE JASON ORTITAY HONORABLE MIKE PUSKARIC HONORABLE MEGHAN SCHROEDER HONORABLE JAMES ROEBUCK, DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN HONORABLE CAROL HILL-EVANS HONORABLE MAUREEN MADDEN HONORABLE STEPHEN MCCARTER HONORABLE JARED SOLOMON
Pennsylvania House of Representatives Commonwealth of Pennsylvania 3
REPUBLICAN CAUCUS STAFF PRESENT: CHRISTINE SEITZ DANIEL GLATFELTER
REPUBLICAN CAUCUS STAFF PRESENT VIRTUALLY: CHRISTINE CRONE
DEMOCRATIC CAUCUS STAFF PRESENT: CHRISTOPHER WAKELEY
DEMOCRATIC CAUCUS STAFF PRESENT VIRTUALLY: ALYCIA LAURETI MARLENA MILLER 4
I N D E X
TESTIFIERS
~k ~k ~k
NAME PAGE
DANIEL GREENSTEIN CHANCELLOR, PENNSYLVANIA STATE SYSTEM OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 13
SUBMITTED WRITTEN TESTIMONY
* * *
(See submitted written testimony and handouts online.) 5
1 P R O C E E D I N G S
2 * * *
3 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: We’ll
4 call the Appropriations and Education Joint Committee to
5 order. And I want to welcome Chancellor Greenstein to this
6 quarterly update, the first of many quarterly updates on
7 our State system.
8 With that, I ’ll turn it over to our Republican
9 Education Chairman Curt Sonney.
10 EDUCATION MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SONNEY: Thank you,
11 Chairman Saylor. And good morning, Chancellor Greenstein.
12 It’s good to see you.
13 MR. GREENSTEIN: Good to see you.
14 EDUCATION MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SONNEY: Of course,
15 this is the first of many meetings to come.
16 MR. GREENSTEIN: Hundreds.
17 EDUCATION MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SONNEY: I believe we
18 have quarterly updates, and so, you know, looking forward
19 to hearing the progress that’s been made so far and get a
20 good sense of direction of where the State system is headed
21 and when do we think that, you know, we will be financially
22 stable. So I really don’t have anything else other than
23 that to say.
24 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: Okay.
25 EDUCATION MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SONNEY: Chairman? 6
1 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: With
2 that, I’ll recognize the Democratic Chairman of the
3 Appropriations Committee, Matt Bradford.
4 APPROPRIATIONS DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN BRADFORD:
5 Thank you, Chairman Saylor. It’s to see you, Chancellor.
6 I realize you have a very difficult job ahead and
7 appreciate the update.
8 Chairman Saylor, I also just wanted to again
9 apologize. I ’m going to have to duck out in a couple of
10 minutes, but I know Representative Schweyer is going to
11 help us out in that regard, so I want to thank Pete as well
12 for that.
13 With that, you also asked me to have us introduce
14 our Democratic Members. Just for the record, I ’m Matt
15 Bradford, State Rep from Montgomery County.
16 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: Peter Schweyer, State
17 Rep from Lehigh County, city of Allentown.
18 REPRESENTATIVE KIM: Good morning. Patty Kim,
19 103rd District.
20 REPRESENTATIVE KRUEGER: Leanne Krueger, Delaware
21 County.
22 REPRESENTATIVE MULLERY: Gerry Mullery, Luzerne
23 County.
24 REPRESENTATIVE ISAACSON: Mary Isaacson,
25 Philadelphia County. 7
1 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: Is that
2 everybody? Again, I ’m Representative Stan Saylor, Chairman
3 of the House Appropriations Committee.
4 EDUCATION MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SONNEY:
5 Representative Curt Sonney, House Education Chairman, 4th
6 Legislative District.
7 EDUCATION DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN ROEBUCK: Good
8 morning. Good morning. This is Jim Roebuck.
9 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: We hear
10 you, Mr. Chairman.
11 EDUCATION DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN ROEBUCK: Oh, you
12 can hear me? Okay, very good.
13 MALE SPEAKER: Why don’t you say a few words?
14 Say thank you for having this meeting.
15 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR:
16 Chairman Roebuck, we can’t hear you. Do you have an
17 opening comment? Chairman, if you can hear me, you’re on
18 mute. You need to unmute yourself. Chairman, we can’t
19 hear you. Can you unmute yourself? There you go.
20 EDUCATION MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SONNEY: There you
21 go.
22 EDUCATION DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN ROEBUCK: This is
23 mute?
24 MALE SPEAKER: No, it ain’t muted, Jim.
25 EDUCATION DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN ROEBUCK: They 8
1 unmuted me, yes.
2 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: We can
3 hear you now. Okay. John?
4 REPRESENTATIVE LAWRENCE: Representative John
5 Lawrence from Chester and Lancaster Counties.
6 REPRESENTATIVE DUNBAR: Representative George
7 Dunbar, Westmoreland County.
8 REPRESENTATIVE TOPPER: Jesse Topper, 78th
9 District, Bedford, Fulton, and Franklin Counties.
10 REPRESENTATIVE HAHN: Marcia Hahn, 138th
11 District, Northampton County.
12 REPRESENTATIVE GILLEN: Representative Mark
13 Gillen, Berks and Lancaster Counties.
14 REPRESENTATIVE STRUZZI: Representative Jim
15 Struzzi, Indiana County.
16 REPRESENTATIVE GLEIM: Representative Barb Gleim,
17 Cumberland County.
18 REPRESENTATIVE JAMES: Good morning,
19 Representative Lee James, Venango and Butler Counties.
20 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: Very
21 good. If we could have -- those that are on satellite
22 coming in, if you would introduce yourselves as well that
23 you’re here.
24 EDUCATION MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SONNEY: They just
25 need to unmute themselves and -- 9
1 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: Unmute
2 themselves and then introduce themselves.
3 MALE SPEAKER: They can’t hear you. They're
4 saying there's no audio coming into that.
5 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: They
6 said they can't hear us. They should. Can you hear me
7 now, those that are on satellite?
8 REPRESENTATIVE KNOWLES: Yes, Jerry Knowles here.
9 I can hear you.
10 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: Very
11 good. Jerry, you want to introduce yourself and your
12 county and then we'll keep going if people would unmute
13 themselves and introduce themselves.
14 REPRESENTATIVE KNOWLES: Representative Jerry
15 Knowles, the 124th District, representing portions of
16 Berks, Schuylkill, and Carbon Counties.
17 REPRESENTATIVE OWLETT: Representative Clint
18 Owlett. I have the privilege of serving Tioga, part of
19 Bradford, and part of Potter County, 68th Legislative
20 District.
21 REPRESENTATIVE FRITZ: Good morning.
22 Representative Fritz proudly representing Wayne and
23 Susquehanna Counties.
24 REPRESENTATIVE GABLER: Good morning,
25 Representative -- 10
1 REPRESENTATIVE HICKERNELL: Dave Hickernell,
2 Lancaster and Dauphin Counties.
3 REPRESENTATIVE GABLER: Good morning.
4 Representative Matt Gabler, 75th District, Elk and
5 Clearfield Counties.
6 REPRESENTATIVE ORTITAY: Good morning.
7 Representative Jason Ortitay, Allegheny and Washington
8 Counties.
9 REPRESENTATIVE JONES: Mike Jones, York County,
10 93rd District.
11 REPRESENTATIVE GAYDOS: Good morning. Valerie
12 Gaydos, 44th District, Allegheny County.
13 REPRESENTATIVE SOLOMON: Good morning. State
14 Representative Jared Solomon, northeast Philadelphia,
15 2 02nd.
16 REPRESENTATIVE PUSKARIC: Mike Puskaric
17 representing Allegheny and Washington Counties, 39th
18 Legislative District.
19 REPRESENTATIVE DONATUCCI: Representative —
20 REPRESENTATIVE GREINER: Representative Greiner,
21 Lancaster County.
22 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR:
23 Chairman Roebuck, you’re muted right now. When everybody’s
24 done introducing themselves, I ’d like you to have any
25 opening comments, but we couldn’t hear you there earlier, 11
1 so I apologize. If everybody else would finish introducing
2 yourselves, and then w e ’ll recognize Chairman Roebuck.
3 REPRESENTATIVE DONATUCCI: Representative Maria
4 Donatucci, 185th District, Philadelphia and Delco.
5 REPRESENTATIVE MCCARTER: Steve McCarter
6 representing 154th District, eastern Montgomery County.
7 REPRESENTATIVE SANCHEZ: Ben Sanchez, also
8 representing Montgomery County.
9 REPRESENTATIVE FIEDLER: Representative Elizabeth
10 Fiedler, 184th, south Philadelphia.
11 REPRESENTATIVE SCHROEDER: Representative —
12 REPRESENTATIVE MADDEN: Representative Maureen
13 Madden representing the 115th District, Monroe County.
14 REPRESENTATIVE SCHROEDER: Representative Megan
15 Schroeder representing the 29th District in Bucks County.
16 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: I
17 believe that’s everybody.
18 REPRESENTATIVE ROTHMAN: Representative Greg
19 Rothman -
20 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR:
21 Chairman Roebuck -
22 REPRESENTATIVE ROTHMAN: — from Cumberland
23 County.
24 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: Oh,
25 sorry, Greg. 12
1 REPRESENTATIVE ROTHMAN: No, that’s okay.
2 Representative Greg Rothman, Cumberland County.
3 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: Okay.
4 Chairman Roebuck, if you would like to make any comments.
5 You are muted right now. You need to unmute yourself. I
6 apologize.
7 EDUCATION DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN ROEBUCK: Unmute
8 myself here -
9 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: There
10 you go. You got it. We hear you.
11 EDUCATION DEMOCRATIC CHAIRMAN ROEBUCK: You hear
12 me? Good. Okay. Good morning. This is Representative
13 Jim Roebuck, 188th Legislative District, Philadelphia. I
14 look forward to this discussion about the State System of
15 Higher Education. Although I am not a product of that
16 system, I did in fact in part get my education at the State
17 system both at West Chester and Cheyney because I did
18 summer courses while I was in college. And I would like to
19 point out that I did my course at Cheyney, was in State and
20 local government, which I spent the last 25 of my years of
21 my life, the last actually 35 years of my life focused
22 upon, so I feel a very close relationship to the State
23 system. I look forward to our discussion this morning as
24 to what we can do to continue to support that system and
25 provide educational opportunities to young people in 13
1 Pennsylvania. Thank you.
2 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: Thank
3 you, Chairman Roebuck. And with that, I ’ll ask Chancellor
4 Greenstein to begin his testimony. And w e ’ll have
5 questions after the presentation is done. Thank you.
6 MR. GREENSTEIN: Thanks very much, Chairman, and
7 thanks, Members, for this opportunity. I will be very
8 brief because I realize there are a number of you, and you
9 may have questions of me, so I just want to begin by
10 thanking Members of both Committees for their support and
11 the support of their colleagues for the State system, in
12 particular for Act 50 and then honestly for the FY 2021
13 budget. I realize how difficult that must have been given
14 the fiscal challenges that the State continues to
15 experience.
16 So, obviously, we have just completed the first
17 round of a long process looking at potential for
18 integrating universities. W e ’ve completed the financial
19 review. The results or the summary of it are in front of
20 you. I look forward to discussing that and any other
21 aspect of the work of the system.
22 I just want to conclude my remarks by saying that
23 while the financial review was largely a technocratic
24 exercise, you know, budget modeling in some ways, it really
25 tapped into a sense of tremendous opportunity that we see 14
1 not just in stabilizing the system financially but in
2 expanding opportunities for all of Pennsylvania. And I
3 think we keep our eyes on the prize and that our future is
4 a future of opportunity. And if we get that right, my
5 guess is that the financial stabilization will follow.
6 So thank you for your time and attention. I look
7 forward to questions.
8 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR:
9 Representative Sonney.
10 EDUCATION MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SONNEY: Thank you,
11 Chairman Saylor.
12 So the process has begun. You know, when the
13 bill was moving through the process, it was often mentioned
14 the extraordinary powers that would be given to the
15 Chancellor. And there was that shift in the power
16 structure. And while your PowerPoint, you know, shows us,
17 you know, kind of what you're doing financially, how has it
18 been working with the changes in power since that has
19 shifted?
20 MR. GREENSTEIN: Wow, that's a great question.
21 Funnily enough from where I sit I'm not necessarily
22 experiencing a huge amount of powers. The financial review
23 was largely a technocratic exercise. It was conducted
24 almost entirely at the office of the Chancellor. It was
25 about bringing together budget data that we routinely 15
1 collect from our universities and building a model to
2 evaluate them in the way that you’ve seen.
3 The one aspect of the work that was really
4 visionary was conducted at the universities’ level. This
5 is intrinsically and must continue to be a consultative
6 process. And so in the exercise of that authority, my
7 response has been and will continue to be to tap into the
8 universities, their constituencies, their councils of
9 trustees, obviously their leadership, faculty, and staff in
10 order to derive a sense of direction for the integrated
11 universities. So I think with the enhanced authorities and
12 with the enhanced powers, it is probably more important
13 than ever to acknowledge and to pay close attention to the
14 kind of history and culture of shared governance which
15 exists across our system.
16 EDUCATION MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SONNEY: And we know
17 that six will become two so to speak. Six of the
18 universities will become two. Excuse me. We know that six
19 will become two. What’s happening with the rest of the
20 schools in the system?
21 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes, so a couple things. One of
22 them is we’re evaluating the potential for six to become
23 two, so I don’t want to get out in front of the process.
24 There’s a lot more to do.
25 Across the system elsewhere, I mean, every 16
1 university is involved in really I think a number of
2 activities. One of them is ensuring that they’re aligning
3 their expenditure to meet their new enrollment realities.
4 And as part of doing that, working more closely together in
5 order to affect greater opportunity for their students but
6 also greater cost efficiencies. So you’re seeing a whole
7 range of shared services and shared programmings which fall
8 short of complete integration but which are very closely
9 coordinated collaborations.
10 EDUCATION MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SONNEY: So all our
11 corroborating in some way -
12 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
13 EDUCATION MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SONNEY: — in some
14 manner with other members of the system?
15 MR. GREENSTEIN: And with one another and all are
16 deeply engaged in the integration process because if
17 universities become integrated, there will be obligations
18 for the other universities not integrating to support them
19 in a variety of tangible ways.
20 EDUCATION MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SONNEY: Thank you.
21 MR. GREENSTEIN: Thank you.
22 EDUCATION MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SONNEY: Thank you,
23 Mr. Chairman.
24 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR:
25 Representative Mullery. 17
1 REPRESENTATIVE MULLERY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
2 Thank you, Chancellor Greenstein.
3 I want to talk a little bit about athletics. As
4 the father of a student athlete at one of the six
5 institutions being considered for integration, I can
6 personally speak to the stress, anxiety, fear being
7 experienced not only by the student athletes but their
8 families as a result of this process. It hasn’t been easy
9 or enjoyable for any of those involved.
10 My first question is have you had any interaction
11 with the NCAA either giving them notice or receiving any
12 feedback from them regarding the participation or continued
13 participation of these institutions in the NCAA or the
14 eligibility of the student athletes involved?
15 MR. GREENSTEIN: So I want to remind the Members
16 that the process, as defined in Act 50, is very deliberate
17 and very staged. The current part of the process is simply
18 a budget exercise. It is simply about taking multiyear
19 budgets from different universities, looking at them, where
20 there’s universities, what’s their trajectory going forward
21 as-is, and then integrating them using some modeling
22 techniques and say what could be their financial
23 trajectories, that the detailed process of planning, what
24 will integrated universities look like, how will we get
25 there, what will happen to things like sports, academic 18
1 programming, student services, the library? All of that
2 starts now and runs through April.
3 And this is a frustrating part of this process
4 for me personally and I know for others that the real
5 questions that people want to ask are questions like you’ve
6 asked. And they are the most important questions to ask to
7 be perfectly honest. But we haven’t begun -- we start
8 addressing them, frankly, today, after last week’s board
9 meeting.
10 REPRESENTATIVE MULLERY: Well, then let me just
11 give a couple primers on things that I think are very
12 important for you to consider as those discussions
13 progress. Not only do you need some type of acknowledgment
14 whether it’s the form of guidance from the NCAA. I would
15 encourage you to get the same from the PSAC, the Mid-
16 Atlantic Conference, which sponsors four Division I
17 wrestling programs in these six schools, and my daughter’s
18 conference, which is the A-10, which sponsors Division I
19 field hockey program because I think you need that in order
20 to make qualified decisions.
21 I also need to know if you are familiar with the
22 title IX lawsuit that has been brought in the United States
23 District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania by
24 female student athletes at Lock Haven University. Are you
25 aware of that lawsuit? 19
1 MR. GREENSTEIN: I am not fully abreast of that
2 topic.
3 REPRESENTATIVE MULLERY: Okay. Well, you need to
4 be because that has to be part of your decision-making
5 process moving forward because not only was the lawsuit
6 filed, but there was a settlement agreement reached between
7 Lock Haven University, the plaintiffs in the case, which
8 were six female student athletes, and Attorney General Josh
9 Shapiro. And that settlement agreement was approved by the
10 court in the Middle District, so Federal order that is in
11 place that outlines what needs to be done at that
12 university moving forward to ensure compliance with the
13 Federal law. And I think you should at least reach out to
14 at the least Attorney General Josh Shapiro to make certain
15 that you have an understanding of what that agreement
16 provides for and can make appropriate decisions so you
17 don't find yourself in court yet again.
18 Are you aware, other than the lawsuit that was
19 filed on behalf of Lock Haven student athletes, if any of
20 the athletes at any of the other five institutions
21 currently being considered for integration have either
22 current or pending lawsuits against the system or against
23 their individual schools?
24 MR. GREENSTEIN: I am not aware.
25 REPRESENTATIVE MULLERY: I would advise you to 20
1 take a look at that in depth as well.
2 Finally, you talked about this being a budgetary
3 consideration. I know last week when you had your meeting,
4 I was expecting a large volume of information to be
5 provided, not simply a press release and the slideshow that
6 we got today. Is it your intention moving forward that the
7 next step will be what I think many of us expected to get
8 last week, which is a more formalized plan, more series of
9 intentions so that we can digest that then? Is that your
10 understanding?
11 MR. GREENSTEIN: So the process that w e ’re
12 following is the one that’s explicitly defined in Act 50.
13 It is statutorily required. The statute required that we
14 conduct a financial review in advance of going through the
15 detailed planning phase, which is the one phase that begins
16 today in effect.
17 REPRESENTATIVE MULLERY: In your understanding of
18 Act 50 the next step, would that be what we all thought we
19 were getting last week, a more detailed plan?
20 MR. GREENSTEIN: Correct. That is what Act 50
21 defines.
22 REPRESENTATIVE MULLERY: Okay. That’s all I
23 have. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
24 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR:
25 Representative Jesse Topper. 21
1 REPRESENTATIVE TOPPER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman,
2 thank you, Chancellor.
3 The work, obviously, that we have done over
4 really a course of years is w e ’ve been asking for ways to
5 find our financial footing with universities was done -
6 much of the work was done before March. And of course now
7 we have this new set of challenging circumstances. So can
8 you kind of walk through, depending on how long we have to
9 continue to modify what w e ’re doing at our current
10 universities because of COVID and the reapplication of, I
11 think, the COVID mitigation plan, you know, how much
12 flexibility do you see moving forward or movement will we
13 see in some of these numbers, you know, look, I mean,
14 really, quite frankly, there’s no end in sight. I mean, we
15 don’t have any kind of an idea of how long w e ’re going to
16 continue to operate under circumstances which are, you
17 know, quite frankly, w e ’re not even going to be able to see
18 anything close to what we are hoping to see in terms of
19 numbers.
20 MR. GREENSTEIN: So I can’t predict the future.
21 Only the pandemic can do that. But I can say, as I did in
22 my state-of-the-system address last January and to the
23 Appropriations hearings last February and March in both
24 chambers and I ’ve said this to I think many of you in our
25 conversations, this can has really financially been kicked 22
1 down the road for years. The road ended before the
2 pandemic. The pandemic just makes the situation worse.
3 You know, w e ’re out of time, ladies and gentlemen. We just
4 are. The state of public higher education in this
5 Commonwealth is in some ways in our hands.
6 And I ’ve testified before about the importance of
7 public higher education as a pathway not only to social
8 mobility but to economic development, which guarantees the
9 strength of the State. That’s what w e ’re talking about
10 here.
11 REPRESENTATIVE TOPPER: And I appreciate the fact
12 that, you know, for years we have asked for real dynamic
13 change, and w e ’re finally getting it. And I find that
14 ironic that of course now that w e ’re getting what we asked
15 for, there certainly will be the pushback from certain
16 stakeholder groups, and I understand that. However, that’s
17 important that we continue to move forward.
18 That being said, I ’m also looking at the effects
19 that w e ’re dealing with through this pandemic and that at
20 some point do we come to the realization that we simply
21 have to get these universities open in a way that students
22 expect, that students are paying for, or are we really
23 looking at possibly potentially a year or so or are there
24 any metrics as to getting these universities back up
25 operating whether it be through scholastics or any of the 23
1 normal course of what we would consider college life?
2 MR. GREENSTEIN: So, again, as you know, I think
3 the authority to make those decisions is delegated to the
4 Presidents. They make those decisions in a way which is
5 respectful of their local needs, circumstances, student
6 bodies, and communities. They have made those decisions
7 differently. I think on the whole across the system, they
8 have acted well, and the results, I think, demonstrate
9 that.
10 You know, again, like everybody else, w e ’re
11 waiting to see what the course of the pandemic will entail.
12 I’m proud of our leadership for doing the right thing for
13 their students and their communities and not necessarily
14 simply following the money.
15 REPRESENTATIVE TOPPER: Thank you. Thank you,
16 Mr. Chairman.
17 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: For the
18 purpose of an introduction, I want to recognize
19 Representative John Lawrence. Mr. Lawrence?
20 REPRESENTATIVE LAWRENCE: Thank you, Mr.
21 Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity to introduce a
22 guest that’s joined the Committee today. Jamal Clark is
23 with us today. He’s the President of the undergraduate
24 student government at Lincoln University, so his visit
25 today is very timely to stop by to hear, you know, a 24
1 conversation about higher education in the Commonwealth, so
2 he'll be joining us also later for session. And I
3 appreciate the opportunity to introduce him to the
4 Committee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
5 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR:
6 Welcome. Welcome.
7 With that, we'll move to Representative Isaacson.
8 REPRESENTATIVE ISAACSON: Thank you, Mr.
9 Chairman.
10 Hi, how are you?
11 MR. GREENSTEIN: Good, thanks.
12 REPRESENTATIVE ISAACSON: I just have a couple
13 questions. The first one deals with the staff with our
14 potential redesign. And what are the considerations going
15 to be when we're determining what we're doing with staff?
16 Is it going to be on seniority basis? You know, with
17 diversity and women being the newest and least senior in
18 the system, I worry about what's going to happen to the
19 workforce, so if you could -
20 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
21 REPRESENTATIVE ISAACSON: — address that.
22 MR. GREENSTEIN: So in the process as defined,
23 obviously, we'll look to plan what the integrations look
24 like and then determine how to accomplish those
25 integrations. And that question would come up in that 25
1 phase how. Obviously, I ’m as concerned as you not only
2 about the diversity considerations but about the staffing
3 considerations generally speaking. Obviously, we are bound
4 by our collective bargaining agreements and we need to
5 follow them. Where they have detrimental impacts on our
6 diversity, we would have to open up those conversations
7 with the collective bargaining units to see if we can
8 address those impacts.
9 REPRESENTATIVE ISAACSON: Well, I certainly hope
10 you will do so because we need to make sure that we
11 continue diversifying so that staff looks like the
12 population of students that go there.
13 And then also with regard to this integration -
14 and it’s not just for the campuses, but they’re expanding
15 online learning according to this presentation that was
16 given to us. And in doing so, notwithstanding COVID -- and
17 we understand what’s going on. As somebody with a freshman
18 in college, I understand the necessities right now. But we
19 need to look further into the future. And I see what
20 you’re proposing here, and I’m questioning as the public
21 universities that we are trying to support and you’re going
22 to be asking for more support of, you’re supposed to be
23 providing the college campus experience, the university
24 experience.
25 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes. 26
1 REPRESENTATIVE ISAACSON: I worry about the
2 competition of your expansion going into other spaces of
3 public education we support such as community colleges. So
4 could you address how you’re not going to be competing with
5 the different spaces you’re supposed to be operating in as
6 different offering of public education in the Commonwealth?
7 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes, sure. So the size of the
8 student market that’s looking for traditional residentially
9 based comprehensive education is shrinking. It has been
10 for well over a decade across the country. W e ’re shrinking
11 with it. And so there’s a public policy choice that
12 confronts the Members. We could simply just continue to
13 shrink or we could grow into areas which are currently
14 underserved, fully online degree and degree completion
15 programs. Fifty thousand students leave this State every
16 year for an out-of-state provider. Those are dollars that
17 are being spent out-of-state which could be spent here.
18 There are adults looking to reskill and upskill who are
19 underserved currently in public higher education. They
20 have no public higher education option.
21 And so, again, this is about growing. It’s not
22 about competing with sectors. It’s about providing the
23 needs of the people of this State and supporting the State
24 in achieving its social mobility and workforce goals. That
25 is our objective. 27
1 REPRESENTATIVE ISAACSON: Okay. And I appreciate
2 that, but I would say that we all have to be very mindful
3 and careful about keeping the ability to have -- because
4 you have different price points for different sectors in
5 different areas that -- the different opportunities that we
6 have for public education. Yours is a specific sphere, and
7 we need to make sure that we uphold all different ones.
8 Thank you.
9 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR:
10 Representative Struzzi.
11 REPRESENTATIVE STRUZZI: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
12 Good morning, Chancellor.
13 MR. GREENSTEIN: Good morning.
14 REPRESENTATIVE STRUZZI: It’s good to see you
15 again.
16 MR. GREENSTEIN: Thank you.
17 REPRESENTATIVE STRUZZI: I appreciate the
18 information you shared with the PASSHE caucus a week or so
19 ago, but I do have some concerns. I understand that
20 difficult decisions are being made, have to be made. As
21 you know, I represent Indiana County, home of Indiana
22 University of Pennsylvania, and I will add that it is one
23 of the premier schools in the State system. But in looking
24 at the modeling for this integration, you have the
25 northeast trio and you have the western trio. And again, I 28
1 understand these decisions need to be made, and I
2 appreciate that.
3 Last week, IUP President Dr. Driscoll announced
4 that they were combining a few colleges on campus,
5 humanities, social sciences, and fine arts. There was also
6 some proposed retrenchment up to about 130 faculty members
7 and other employees. And you would understand that that
8 created sort of a concern with the local community, people
9 losing their jobs. And again, I understand that this is an
10 effort to right-size in many cases and position IUP and the
11 State system for the future. But when we talk about the
12 western trio and the northeast trio, how do you see those
13 integrated schools impacting the enrollment at the
14 standalone schools?
15 MR. GREENSTEIN: Well, I think that’s actually a
16 great question. That’s some of the modeling w e ’ll need to
17 do over the next several months. You know, the
18 opportunities that those integrated schools are pursuing is
19 sort of hinted at in the DAC goes back to the previous
20 question. They’re really looking at underserved
21 marketplaces. They’re also looking into serving students
22 who are interested in subjects which are low enrolled at
23 individual universities but potentially can be better
24 enrolled looking across universities.
25 So, you know, if we do this right, we should all 29
1 be able to grow. The market that we are currently in -
2 and I can't emphasize this point enough -- is shrinking,
3 and the perversity here is that the demand for some form of
4 postsecondary education is actually growing. So by staying
5 in the market that we're focused on, we're under serving
6 the State. We have got to break out of that.
7 And the sector-by-sector approach -- and I
8 testified in this regard to the Higher Education Funding
9 Commission, the sector-by-sector approach is promulgating
10 more higher education in the wrong places than the State
11 needs in order to serve its economic development interests.
12 REPRESENTATIVE STRUZZI: So long-term you think
13 that the integrated schools will actually help boost
14 enrollment across the entire system?
15 MR. GREENSTEIN: I believe integrated schools
16 will help the system diversify its offering so it as a
17 system can better serve the needs of the State.
18 REPRESENTATIVE STRUZZI: Okay. Well, I think
19 that's the right approach to take. I do -- just so it's
20 clear, I do have concerns, and I'm voicing the concerns of
21 the local community that, you know, these integrated
22 schools are going to draw enrollment away from the
23 standalone schools, so it's something -
24 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
25 REPRESENTATIVE STRUZZI: — to keep in mind, 30
1 so -
2 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
3 REPRESENTATIVE STRUZZI: — thank you.
4 MR. GREENSTEIN: Thank you. Thank you.
5 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: We had
6 a question, I believe, from Representative Comitta, who I
7 believe is online.
8 REPRESENTATIVE COMITTA: Yes. Thank you very
9 much, Mr. Chair. And good morning, Chancellor.
10 MR. GREENSTEIN: Good morning.
11 REPRESENTATIVE COMITTA: Thanks very much for
12 being with us today.
13 My question is this. Going back to who was at
14 the table in making decisions to this day so far and moving
15 forward, so my question is in the category of transparency
16 and process, including a multi-stakeholder input. It came
17 to my attention that faculty and staff members heard about
18 the integration measures by a press release. And of course
19 we know about the signed contract just last year and that
20 the layoffs were not mentioned at that time. So I wonder
21 if you could talk about transparency and the importance of
22 transparency in these processes. And also how have
23 stakeholders, faculty, presidents, students, staff been
24 involved in the process to date? And how will you include
25 stakeholders prior to the important decisions being made 31
1 moving forward? Thank you.
2 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes. So the financial review,
3 which was prescribed in Act 50, is a very technocratic
4 modeling approach. It is basically taking budget numbers
5 and putting them together into a model and looking at the
6 various different trajectories that sort of are spit out of
7 the model. And that was done at the Chancellor’s office.
8 We did engage directly with all key stakeholder groups,
9 collective bargaining units, councils of trustees,
10 presidents, et cetera.
11 I know the narrative about people being taken by
12 surprise, but I don’t frankly understand it. The July
13 board meeting anticipated a process where a review would
14 take place. It started by looking at three pairs of
15 schools. The board anticipated a process where we would
16 follow the data and let the data determine where we would
17 land and was specific in terms of saying we might end up
18 landing with different combinations of schools and
19 different approaches to integration. We shared that
20 information as it was available.
21 So I think, thing one, this process has been as
22 transparent as it needed to be for a very technocratic and
23 very centralized function. It was centralized simply
24 because that’s where the budget numbers are. As we move
25 into the next phase, as you’ve seen in the materials that 32
1 were circulated, we will devolve the leadership for
2 planning what integrations look like and how to accomplish
3 that to the university level. W e ’ve appointed leads in
4 each sector. President Hanna will be the lead in the
5 Northeast, and President Pearson will be the lead in the
6 West, and they will build teams and ensure the consultation
7 takes place in the way that you’d expect for a system of
8 universities.
9 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR:
10 Representative, are you done? Representative Comitta?
11 REPRESENTATIVE COMITTA: Thank you, Mr. Chair.
12 One caveat. Thank you, Chancellor. A question about
13 shared services in particular and unintended consequences.
14 My understanding is that some of the universities have
15 long-time relationships with local vendors and actually,
16 you know, can have good contracts and pricing and so on.
17 And I just wanted to ask you, how will the shared services
18 process be handled to make sure that the unintended
19 consequence of sharing services and costs doesn’t end up in
20 elevating costs?
21 MR. GREENSTEIN: You know, that’s a great
22 question. So the shared services approach, the shared
23 services themselves are managed by the Presidents. The
24 Presidents, as an executive leadership group for the
25 system, in effect are the governing body for our shared 33
1 services. Obviously, all of our shared services are, you
2 know, put out to bid in the normal way, and so we will be
3 able, in advance of making a selection, to determine what
4 the financial impacts, staffing impacts, et cetera, are.
5 So I ’m confident that the process is one that is designed
6 to at least give us visibility into the potential negative
7 effects and obviously hope and seek to avoid them.
8 REPRESENTATIVE COMITTA: Thank you, Mr.
9 Chancellor, and thank you, Mr. Chairman.
10 MR. GREENSTEIN: Thank you.
11 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: We’ll
12 recognize Representative Jerry Knowles, who is also online.
13 REPRESENTATIVE KNOWLES: Thank you very much,
14 Chairman.
15 And Chancellor, thank you very much for the job
16 that you are doing.
17 My question, it’s a very simple question. So
18 when we look at the schools that deal with the trades, when
19 we look at Penn Tech and when we look at Thaddeus Stevens,
20 we have schools that are graduating young people with
21 associate degrees that are going into the workforce making
22 $50-60,000 a year, and the demand -- well, out of the
23 people Thaddeus Stevens graduates, 97 percent of those kids
24 go to work on Monday.
25 So my question to you, Chancellor, is has any 34
1 thought or consideration been given to shifting the goal of
2 some of these universities and focusing on getting more
3 welders and plumbers and electricians? That is my
4 question, sir.
5 MR. GREENSTEIN: No, that's great. And
6 obviously, Thaddeus Stevens does tremendous work. I think
7 some of their subject areas in particular are returning
8 that kind of 97 percent employment rate, and that's
9 fantastic.
10 I mean, I said it and you'll see it in the slide
11 deck. I said it in my opening remarks. One of the things
12 that so excites me about this process is it's tapped into a
13 well of enthusiasm for expanding opportunities for students
14 across the State of Pennsylvania, including opportunities
15 for students who are currently underserved. The Northeast
16 is particularly interested in looking at creating
17 opportunities for, you know, adults looking to reskill and
18 upskill in a very challenging economy. This would mean,
19 you know, offering what we would call sub-baccalaureate,
20 you know, credentials, so, you know, short-course
21 certificates that enable people to get that bump in the
22 workforce that they need and that they need particularly
23 now in the years ahead as we struggle with the challenges
24 created by this pandemic.
25 REPRESENTATIVE KNOWLES: Thank you, Chancellor, 35
1 and thank you, Chairman.
2 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: We’ll
3 move to Representative Davis.
4 REPRESENTATIVE DAVIS: Thank you, Chancellor.
5 Thank you for being here today.
6 You know, California University, while not
7 located specifically in my district, has been an extremely
8 valuable resource for particularly underserved kids in the
9 Mon Valley who seek to further their education and progress
10 in terms of an economic status. So in terms of this
11 integrated plan, I have a few questions, and they’re not
12 altogether. But who would be making the decisions for in
13 an integrated entity? So like Cal U would be integrated in
14 with Clarion University and Edinboro. Would the Edinboro
15 President be making decisions on behalf of Cal U? Can you
16 talk about how you envision that being set up?
17 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes. I mean, organization,
18 governance, leadership would all be subjects for detailed
19 review in the next phase of the process. Again, this phase
20 has been pretty technocratic. We have given some
21 guidelines in a number of these areas, the board-affirmed
22 guidelines, which assume a single leadership, which would
23 mean a single President or CEO for the three universities,
24 a single faculty, a single staff, a single signatory
25 authority against contracts, a single accredited entity, 36
1 but there are any number of different ways that one can
2 structure leadership within that context, and that will be
3 what w e ’ll be looking at before the next -
4 REPRESENTATIVE DAVIS: Okay. And did you
5 envision like campus services would be consolidated across
6 the three universities?
7 MR. GREENSTEIN: So, yes, I think one would need
8 to be more specific. An old colleague and mentor of mine,
9 you know, used to say in the context of system, you know,
10 do commonly what you can and customize where it counts,
11 right? And I think that applies to, you know, what
12 services are we talking about. Where we need those high-
13 touch, you know, student-facing kind of services, you know,
14 you can’t really just pull those away and do them from some
15 abstract place in the center of something. They have to be
16 on the ground, and they have to face that student. But
17 there are many transactional things that we can in fact
18 extract from the local service and do that more cost-
19 effectively and, frankly, with higher quality.
20 REPRESENTATIVE DAVIS: Okay. And I believe the
21 next phase of your project starts in April, correct?
22 MR. GREENSTEIN: The next phase actually was
23 supposed to start today, but it started last Thursday. I
24 did get the weekend off but not the last part of last week,
25 which I’m disappointed by. 37
1 REPRESENTATIVE DAVIS: Okay. For me, it’s of
2 particular interest of how those decision-making processes
3 are going to be made, and I think many of my colleagues
4 that have universities would care about that process as
5 well.
6 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
7 REPRESENTATIVE DAVIS: And finally, my final
8 point is California University, along with many of the
9 other universities, have a greater impact than just the
10 folks who work in the university, the faculty, the staff
11 there. The broader community are significant stakeholders
12 to making that a successful place. I know you have a
13 public hearing process that’s laid out under Act 50, but do
14 you have a process to engage the broader community in terms
15 of what this impact would have in those communities, in
16 those towns? I mean, there’s certainly going to be an
17 economic impact -
18 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
19 REPRESENTATIVE DAVIS: -- that many of these
20 communities are going to face, you know, because of less
21 foot traffic, less -
22 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
23 REPRESENTATIVE DAVIS: — staff.
24 MR. GREENSTEIN: So we continue to review the
25 economic impact. So the track that w e ’re on, the path, the 38
1 trajectory that w e ’re on, the impacts will be horrific.
2 W e ’re trying to change that trajectory, so the integration
3 is about ensuring that these universities continue to serve
4 their communities in the new ways, as well as in the
5 historic ways they’ve been so successful in. But not
6 acting is no longer an option for the State system in the
7 current environment.
8 REPRESENTATIVE DAVIS: So I’m not suggesting the
9 non-acting, but what I ’m saying to you is that there are
10 broader stakeholders that, quite frankly, make the schools
11 a success where they’re at, and I think not to take their
12 thoughts and considerations into account would be a
13 mistake.
14 MR. GREENSTEIN: Correct. I agree with you. And
15 we work closely with our council of trustees. I hope that
16 w e ’ll continue to work even more closely because often they
17 represent those communities. And we can dig deeper into
18 those communities and find other pathways for consultation,
19 so it’s a great point.
20 REPRESENTATIVE DAVIS: All right. Thank you,
21 Chancellor.
22 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR:
23 Chancellor, a couple questions from me. One, PPE,
24 critical. How has it been in acquiring that? The farm
25 show was filled to the rooftop with PPE, so I want to know 39
1 if you guys have been able to acquire everything you need.
2 If you go out to the farm show, you can't really even get
3 in because of all the PPE that's stored there now.
4 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes. I have not heard -- so
5 Presidents meets together twice a week for two hours at a
6 time. That's a lot. We talk about a lot of things, but a
7 lot of it is about COVID and how our responses to COVID are
8 going. I have not heard any real complaints about PPE.
9 What I would tend to hear more challenges around testing
10 and contact tracing.
11 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: Okay.
12 The other thing I have is recently I talked to several of
13 your board members at different events and stuff, and the
14 one thing, you know, I think that I'm concerned about is
15 the integration and how it's working for community
16 colleges. One of the complaints I heard from some of your
17 board members and that of the different universities around
18 the State is they don't feel that there's enough
19 collaboration between the State system and the community
20 colleges. You know, the community colleges recently signed
21 I want to say a contract, whatever you want to call it with
22 Southern New Hampshire University, and the real concern
23 they have is they believe that the system will work better
24 if actually every community college funnels every student
25 to the State system, which would help the State system with 40
1 students and also help those students who are low income.
2 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
3 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: What is
4 being done to do more of that? They actually went outside
5 Pennsylvania to do it, and, like I said, some of your board
6 members have expressed to me the desire that something has
7 to be done to be more cooperative. And I ’m not saying
8 you’re not.
9 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
10 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: I’m
11 just saying their perception is w e ’re not doing enough -
12 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
13 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: — to
14 work with our community colleges.
15 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes. I must admit I was as
16 stunned as you were by the contract with Southern New
17 Hampshire simply because it does add to the 50,000 students
18 who go every year outside of State and they take their
19 dollars to out-of-state providers, many of which -- I think
20 Southern New Hampshire I think operates with 17 or 20
21 faculty, and the rest are teachers or instructors of some
22 sort, so I think there’s some impacts not just in terms of
23 economic but also in terms of quality of education.
24 We do have arrangements for community college
25 articulation. Obviously, those can be and I hope will be 41
1 strengthened. The western integration is looking very
2 aggressively, as you know, at adding to its portfolio of
3 instructional programs to include fully online degree and
4 degree completion programs, looking at those areas which
5 are in particular demand for community college transfer
6 students hoping potentially to, you know, win back some of
7 the dollars that community colleges have directed out-of
8 state .
9 There are other opportunities that are available
10 to us. As I testified to, the Higher Education Funding
11 Commission, a public higher education in the State of
12 Pennsylvania, in order to meet its goals, at least in my
13 view, needs to line up around opportunities and pathways
14 for students into high-demand careers, not around sectors
15 of historic value, with significant boundaries between
16 them.
17 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: Yes, I
18 think one of the things I had heard was the biggest problem
19 is for the State universities not accepting credits from
20 community colleges. And look, I understand if it’s how to
21 kick a soccer ball, you’re not going to give credit for
22 that, but I really think they’re accredited colleges and
23 their classes and their credits should be accepted
24 wholeheartedly at our State universities. I mean, there’s
25 probably some classes I could point out at PASSHE that are 42
1 somewhat embarrassing at times maybe to some people
2 depending on your point of view.
3 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
4 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: And we
5 all have those kind of judgments, whether that class or
6 this class is worthwhile teaching. But I do think that to
7 build a stronger bond with our community colleges will help
8 save our system.
9 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
10 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: Since
11 I’m a product of IUP, I want to see the systems work, but
12 more importantly, I want it to get back to its original
13 mission, which is helping those who are low-income families
14 and middle-class families because a lot of those families
15 now are going off to private institutions. That doesn’t
16 mean they’re bad. They’re not. But they seem to offer
17 more opportunities for people who are low-income and
18 middle-class families. So that’s my reason for stressing
19 that.
20 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
21 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: I think
22 our system is great, and I ’m very proud of what you guys
23 are doing and moving forward. This is long overdue.
24 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
25 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: So 43
1 thank you for that.
2 And with that, I will call on Representative
3 Madden, who I believe is online.
4 REPRESENTATIVE MADDEN: Yes, I am. Thank you,
5 Mr. Chairman. And thank you, Chancellor, for appearing
6 today.
7 So I ’m hearing a couple of different things. I ’m
8 hearing about how w e ’re losing our students to out-of-state
9 universities. I ’m also hearing how we may begin to start
10 working on shorter degrees or not degrees but workforce
11 programs to get older adults retrained, things that are
12 typically done in community colleges or in career and
13 technical schools.
14 So my question is, keeping this in mind, why is
15 the State system mandating campuses reach their 2010
16 faculty-student 10 ratios of approximately 21 students as
17 opposed to 18, which is really where the SUNY school system
18 is right now? So if w e ’re looking at -- and then my other
19 question to you is if we have to reduce the number of
20 faculty which will undoubtedly cause massive layoffs
21 throughout the State, will we be looking to replace them
22 with adjuncts who typically get paid less? And do you
23 think that replacing tenured professors who, you know,
24 regularly publish and attend conferences and keep updated
25 in their field, do you think our students are being served 44
1 by having more adjuncts as opposed to tenured faculty in
2 the classrooms?
3 MR. GREENSTEIN: So I think there's a lot of
4 assumptions in there, so let me try to unpack a few of
5 them. So one of them is, you know, our universities, if
6 you take out West Chester, which has grown, and Slippery
7 Rock, which is stable, have lost 31 percent of their
8 students over the last 10 years and in order to maintain
9 the kind of expenditure rate to operate at that previous
10 size, we've continued to raise tuition and fees and room
11 and board for our students to the point that we're no
12 longer as affordable as we want to be or as we need to be
13 or as the State needs us to be in order to offer a quality
14 option.
15 So as we return to those operating levels, we're
16 returning to what was and had been normal for about a
17 decade, five, six, seven, eight years. That is the normal
18 rate, not the abnormal rate. And we're doing that because,
19 at least in my view, in my recommendation would be to the
20 board we cannot continue to heap the burden of our
21 excessive costs onto our students. That is not fair.
22 I'm not sure I understand the question about
23 adjuncts. Our use of adjuncts is capped through our
24 contract with APSCUF in our collective bargaining agreement
25 at 25 percent. It is significantly lower than the national 45
1 average, and our sector is about 45 percent, so I think we
2 treat our students very well with respect to the use of
3 tenured and tenure-track faculty.
4 REPRESENTATIVE MADDEN: Okay. And thank you for
5 that. And I have a follow-up. So when we look at the 10-
6 year trend of enrollment, we see that it increased from
7 1999 to 2010 by about 19 percent, and then in the following
8 decade it reduced by about the same, I believe.
9 MR. GREENSTEIN: Correct.
10 REPRESENTATIVE MADDEN: So why are we looking at
11 10-year rather than 20-year because it kind of evens out
12 the curve if we look at it over 20 years as most of the
13 demographers reported.
14 And then back to the question of the professor-
15 versus-student ratio, how do you imagine that we -- and as
16 someone who taught at East Stroudsburg University before I
17 was elected to the House, how do you see that we are
18 serving our students well by adding more students per
19 professor ratio than trying to keep that capped about 18
20 percent?
21 MR. GREENSTEIN: So thank you for your service as
22 an instructor at East Stroudsburg. I didn’t know that.
23 That’s fantastic.
24 I would love to look over a 20-year period
25 because if you go back 20 years, the State was funding the 46
1 State system at a rate of about 55 percent of total
2 expenditure per student. Currently, it’s at 27 percent.
3 We’ve made up the difference by increasing the price to
4 students, and we can’t any longer do that.
5 So in the current funding environment, we have
6 only a very small number of choices. We either operate at
7 a level where we can, you know, keep our costs and our
8 revenues aligned, or we continue this financial decline.
9 This is a public policy issue. This isn’t really
10 an operating issue. This is about, you know, choices that
11 have been made in the General Assembly about funding
12 levels. And what you’re seeing is those choices are
13 reflected in our operating. And, you know, that is where
14 we are.
15 REPRESENTATIVE MADDEN: Okay. Thank you so much.
16 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR:
17 Representative Heffley.
18 REPRESENTATIVE HEFFLEY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
19 Just a quick question. So, overall, in the last
20 couple of years you’ve received about a 2 percent increase.
21 MR. GREENSTEIN: That’s correct.
22 REPRESENTATIVE HEFFLEY: Okay. And what of your
23 costs have risen?
24 MR. GREENSTEIN: Gosh, I can’t do it over the
25 last couple of years. I can do it over the last 10. Our 47
1 costs -
2 REPRESENTATIVE HEFFLEY: Annually about an
3 estimate about what your costs are rising?
4 MR. GREENSTEIN: I can’t get you that number -
5 REPRESENTATIVE HEFFLEY: Okay. All right.
6 MR. GREENSTEIN: — off the top of my head. I
7 apologize.
8 REPRESENTATIVE HEFFLEY: All right. Just as we
9 look at you know -
10 MR. GREENSTEIN: It will exceed the increase -
11 REPRESENTATIVE HEFFLEY: Yes.
12 MR. GREENSTEIN: It will exceed the increase.
13 REPRESENTATIVE HEFFLEY: And that’s exactly why
14 we ’re here today, why w e ’re having this discussion.
15 MR. GREENSTEIN: Correct.
16 REPRESENTATIVE HEFFLEY: So I just want to follow
17 up on some of the community college questions earlier. One
18 of the great opportunities we have here in the State is the
19 community college system. So if a student goes to a State
20 university and maybe they complete one year -- and a lot of
21 students do that, they get their one year, they just decide
22 it isn’t for them and they go back and eventually they may
23 go back to school through their community college. Is the
24 State system set up that those credits automatically follow
25 the students so when they go back to the community college, 48
1 they can take all those credits with them to the community
2 college?
3 MR. GREENSTEIN: So credit transfer, the way
4 credit transfer works is that the receiving institution
5 will determine whether or not to accept the credit. To the
6 Chairman’s point, I ’ve heard the narrative about credits
7 not transferring into the State system. It actually dug
8 into it. Ninety-three or 95 percent of all credits do
9 transfer. Community college transfer students, if they
10 need to take a course or two more, it’s no more than a
11 course or two more, which is exceptionally better than the
12 national average, so our transfer pathways from the
13 community colleges to us, despite the narrative, is
14 actually quite strong.
15 REPRESENTATIVE HEFFLEY: And what about the
16 transfer back to the community college?
17 MR. GREENSTEIN: The transfer back to the
18 community college, the receiving college would determine
19 whether or not the credit transfers just as we determine
20 whether or not the credit transfers -
21 REPRESENTATIVE HEFFLEY: And are there ongoing
22 conversations between the State system and the community
23 colleges to that -
24 MR. GREENSTEIN: There are indeed, yes.
25 REPRESENTATIVE HEFFLEY: — to resolve that? 49
1 Thank you. I think that's very important when you're
2 looking at cost.
3 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
4 REPRESENTATIVE HEFFLEY: Obviously, in these
5 tough economic times right now due to these -
6 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
7 REPRESENTATIVE HEFFLEY: These shutdowns are just
8 crazy, but a lot of folks just don't have that extra money,
9 so a lot of students are going to choose that option.
10 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
11 REPRESENTATIVE HEFFLEY: We want to make sure
12 they get credit for what they already spent.
13 Also, if a student goes and does online courses
14 through a community college, is there anything set up for
15 the State system? So I know a student with dual enrollment
16 high school to community college and a dual enrollment at a
17 community college to the State system.
18 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
19 REPRESENTATIVE HEFFLEY: Awesome program.
20 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
21 REPRESENTATIVE HEFFLEY: I mean, I would
22 recommend every parent look at it because the opportunities
23 are there to save an incredible amount of money.
24 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
25 REPRESENTATIVE HEFFLEY: However, if a student 50
1 does that, do they still have to pay all the extra fees,
2 recreation fees and everything else to that university if
3 they’re not on campus?
4 MR. GREENSTEIN: You know, it really depends on
5 the circumstances. If they’re just transferring out to
6 take a course, the answer is no. If they continue to be a
7 student at that campus paying -- you know, so it really
8 depends on the circumstances.
9 REPRESENTATIVE HEFFLEY: Even if they’re not on
10 that campus, though?
11 MR. GREENSTEIN: It depends on the circumstances
12 of the student.
13 REPRESENTATIVE HEFFLEY: Okay. All right. I
14 think that’s something we can look at. Obviously at the
15 end of the day my biggest concern is, as we go through
16 these changes, how do we make education more affordable?
17 In my opinion, education is about getting the best quality,
18 best price education for the students. It’s not about
19 creating more jobs for faculty.
20 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
21 REPRESENTATIVE HEFFLEY: You know, they can go
22 get a job anywhere. These students need the best price
23 because families simply cannot afford -- and students
24 coming out with hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of
25 debt is not why the State system was set up, so thank you, 51
1 and I look forward to working with you.
2 MR. GREENSTEIN: Thank you so much, sir.
3 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR:
4 Representative Krueger.
5 REPRESENTATIVE KRUEGER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman,
6 and thanks for joining us here today.
7 So in 2019 the State system negotiated a new
8 contract with all of your unions, and my understanding is
9 that many of them agreed to a pay freeze. And also there
10 were hundreds of staff who took early retirements to help
11 with financial constraints at that time. Now, you have
12 noted that at a previous point in this Commonwealth history
13 the State provided a lot more funding to our higher
14 education, and this legislature in part bears some of that
15 responsibility.
16 In looking at your plans, it appears that some of
17 the benefits that you think can be realized through
18 integration include increased retention and graduation
19 rates for students, but at the same time, w e ’re looking at
20 potential staff cuts. In my experience in higher education
21 is that the quality of education is largely due to the
22 quality of the professors providing that education. So
23 those two things appear to be in conflict to me. Can you
24 speak to that, please?
25 MR. GREENSTEIN: Sure. I think the quality of 52
1 the staff and faculty is absolutely critical in all of
2 education. In our case it’s not the quality that’s in
3 question; it’s the allocation of a scarce resource. Do we
4 have the right stuff being thrown at the right people at
5 the right time?
6 REPRESENTATIVE KRUEGER: So this plan, this plan
7 that you’re presenting to us today, how will it impact
8 existing collective bargaining agreements?
9 MR. GREENSTEIN: So I ’m not sure I understand the
10 question. Is that question with respect to the terms and
11 conditions of salary/benefits or -
12 REPRESENTATIVE KRUEGER: Salary/benefits, number
13 of employees, et cetera, everything covered through the
14 existing collective bargaining agreements that you
15 negotiated just last year.
16 MR. GREENSTEIN: So I think one of the parts of
17 the planning process will be to look through -- we have
18 seven collective bargaining agreements -- will be to look
19 through each of the seven collective bargaining agreements
20 and see whether there are aspects of integration which have
21 an impact on the collective bargaining agreement. I don’t
22 know for a fact whether it would or wouldn’t.
23 I mean, I ’ll give you an example of something
24 which seems to me to be obvious, but it’s an example out of
25 my head, which is, you know, if we end up integrating 53
1 universities, there are some questions about how seniority
2 works. I don’t know whether that’s a bargaining issue. I
3 don’t know whether that’s an issue in the contract, but
4 things like that, as we begin to plan the implementation of
5 an integration, we would have to look very carefully at
6 each of our bargaining agreements and see are there impacts
7 we have to resolve.
8 REPRESENTATIVE KRUEGER: And to follow up on
9 Representative Comitta’s question earlier, have these
10 unions been at the table?
11 MR. GREENSTEIN: Have they — absolutely. We
12 meet with our unions at the statewide level I think at
13 least twice over the period. And then as we go into the
14 next part of the process, w e ’ll continue to work at the
15 statewide level with the unions, you know, inviting them to
16 here’s where are going and here’s where w e ’ve gotten to and
17 here’s where we are, but you’ll also see a great deal more
18 consultation happening at the university level, which is
19 where the integration and planning will be taking place
20 from here on.
21 REPRESENTATIVE KRUEGER: And when did those union
22 leaders first see this integration plan?
23 MR. GREENSTEIN: When do they first see the
24 integration plan? So -
25 REPRESENTATIVE KRUEGER: Before or after Members 54
1 of the legislature?
2 MR. GREENSTEIN: I can't tell you that. I don't
3 know. So we met with our union -- obviously, we met with
4 our union as we set up the process and we said here's where
5 we're going. And then we met with our union leaders last
6 week sometime before the board met and, I'm sorry, but I
7 look at the board as the kind of -- no offense, please -
8 but I look at the board as kind of the episodic things that
9 define my life. We certainly met with our union leaders
10 before the board met and said here's what we found as a
11 consequence of the financial review. And that was last
12 week. And then this is my first public testimony to a
13 Joint Committee.
14 REPRESENTATIVE KRUEGER: So as things move
15 forward, I would encourage you to keep them at the table.
16 They are incredibly important as stakeholders, and without
17 quality education and instruction, none of this seems
18 achievable to me. Thank you.
19 MR. GREENSTEIN: Thank you.
20 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: At
21 that, we are joined by Representative Mike Jones, who's on
22 the internet. Mike, you're recognized.
23 REPRESENTATIVE JONES: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
24 Chancellor, thank you very much for the good
25 work. I support your efforts. I would encourage you to 55
1 move obviously wisely but as quickly and aggressively as
2 you can because, as you said, if we don’t get ahead and
3 make these decisions, they’re going to be made for us.
4 I ’d also remind everybody I don’t think we are in
5 the employment business. We are in the education business,
6 and the students are the stakeholder w e ’re most worried
7 about here.
8 But I have two very different questions here.
9 And the first one, if you’d like to take a pass, that’s
10 fine. I don’t want to do anything that would sort of
11 undermine your work with the board, but I am just curious,
12 and if you could confirm this, I believe the bill we passed
13 we had hoped it would only require a majority of the board.
14 I think we had some kind of compromise where it was two-
15 thirds of the board to do any major closures or
16 consolidations. If you can confirm that that’s where that
17 ended up. And then is the board generally aligned here
18 that something has to be done? So, you know, you could go
19 through a lot of work here, but you first have to convince
20 people that there is an issue and have that sense of
21 urgency. So I guess I ’m just curious at a very high level,
22 are they like-minded? Obviously, they’re going to want to
23 see the details. But if you don’t first agree that there
24 is a problem, you can spend a lot of effort coming up with
25 a solution, but people first need to be convinced there’s a 56
1 problem. So I guess I ’m just curious if there’s a general
2 -- I ’m sure there’s a lot of, you know, disagreement on
3 specifics, but is there a general alignment with the board
4 and, you know, are you guys pretty much on the same page
5 that something at least has to be done and something
6 significant?
7 And then second of all on a totally different
8 subject, you and I had had a discussion at Shippensburg
9 University about a year or so ago and we had a real nice
10 core up there. I ’m curious. I know part of your efforts
11 are to increase enrollment and keep students in school
12 longer, but my concern is we already have extremely high
13 dropout rates. I think it’s 45, 50 percent of college
14 students. I ’m not exactly sure what it is in PASSHE but
15 that never graduate and I would argue we waste a lot of
16 students’ time and money by encouraging college when other
17 pathways would be better for them or maybe they need to
18 wait a couple years.
19 Where do you stand on trying to increase
20 enrollment and retention without lowering the bar either on
21 academic rigor and pushing students through and/or
22 encouraging more students to come who we may be doing a
23 disservice to by giving them bad counsel for coming there
24 in the first place if that makes sense? I ’m just curious
25 what the latest -- it’s been a year or so since we 57
1 discussed that sort of recruiting and retention efforts,
2 and I ’m curious where that stands, along with my first
3 question on just the general mindset -
4 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
5 REPRESENTATIVE JONES: — of the board. Thank
6 you.
7 MR. GREENSTEIN: Thank you. So Act 50 does
8 require two-thirds vote of the board to approve an
9 integration plan. The board is aligned. The problems that
10 the State system and several universities face are
11 significant. Yes.
12 Retention, you know, the good news is that we
13 have actually already seen a little bit of an uptick over
14 the last couple of years, I think, which reflects the great
15 work that our universities have been doing. Student
16 retention is not a new issue, and our universities have
17 been doing great work to address it. We are beginning to
18 see the hockey-stick effect as numbers turn up. W e ’re well
19 below the retention rates generally speaking that we
20 enjoyed back in 2010, ’11, even though we had much higher
21 student-faculty ratios. Our students were hanging around a
22 lot longer, which was good, but w e ’re on our way back, and
23 that’s important.
24 You know, there is still -- obviously, a number
25 of our students, it depends, varies by universities, but a 58
1 good number still stop out. That’s where some of this
2 short course certificate and nondegree credentials are so
3 important. Imagine if you will a student who attended a
4 university for a year or even two, didn’t complete their
5 degrees but actually managed to demonstrate mastery and a
6 handful of competencies that are well-defined that earned
7 them a certificate that they could then go into the labor
8 market and do very well, right?
9 And again, I ’m going to come back to this sort of
10 sectoral -- the way we think sectorally about education.
11 If we fund a certain sector of community colleges to do one
12 thing and a certain sector, you know, the vocational-
13 technology colleges to do another, we miss the opportunity
14 of ensuring that our students anywhere, no matter what
15 sector, have access to a credential which will be of value
16 to them whenever they leave that sector and go back into
17 the labor market.
18 REPRESENTATIVE JONES: Thank you. I appreciate
19 it very much.
20 MR. GREENSTEIN: Thank you, sir.
21 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR:
22 Representative Dan Miller.
23 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
24 Sir, just to follow up on I think Representative
25 Davis’s question, when he asked about stakeholders, you 59
1 went to the trustees. And I'll be honest with you, I
2 appreciate that. I got to believe you are talking to your
3 trustees, but that can't be the extent of your plan here,
4 right, in relation to stakeholder conversations?
5 MR. GREENSTEIN: So I think the Representative
6 was asking about contacts with the local community, and I
7 referenced council of trustees in that context, that that
8 was a critical stakeholder group in order to reach into the
9 broader community because they are often representatives of
10 it, so it was very narrowly defined in that context or at
11 least my answer was.
12 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Cool. Who else are you
13 talking to?
14 MR. GREENSTEIN: Faculty, staff, council of
15 trustees, presidents, the usual -- oh, and then I think to
16 the gentleman's question earlier, as we begin to, you know,
17 move into the detailed planning process, we're going to
18 have to engage with the accreditors. We're going to have
19 to engage with PSAC and through PSAC, the NCAA, so, I mean,
20 there's almost nobody that we will not be able to talk to.
21 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: So in relation to the
22 communities themselves to which these institutions have
23 worked and partnered with for obviously quite some time,
24 what is the plan directly for them, and when would that
25 plan be initiated? 60
1 MR. GREENSTEIN: So w e ’re just now moving in
2 starting today into the second part of the process, so one
3 of the first things we will do is set up the process. So
4 we should know and I should be able to come back in two or
5 three weeks and say here is how we are managing the
6 process. Here are the multiple consultation paths -
7 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: All right.
8 MR. GREENSTEIN: -- with some degree of
9 specificity.
10 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: So ballpark it for me.
11 Is this a couple months down the road? Is this a 2022?
12 You know, ballpark it when you think this would be a
13 conversation that you would initiate?
14 MR. GREENSTEIN: In terms of — what
15 conversation?
16 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: With the communities -
17 MR. GREENSTEIN: Right.
18 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: -- who your universities
19 and colleges have been part of there.
20 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
21 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: So when will you be
22 talking and starting a conversation with those communities?
23 MR. GREENSTEIN: Oh, we will begin in this part
24 of the planning process to reach out to the various
25 stakeholder groups and engage them in specific -- 61
1 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Okay.
2 MR. GREENSTEIN: -- and tangible ways.
3 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: So just so I get it, this
4 is something then with those communities that will be
5 coming I guess in just a couple months?
6 MR. GREENSTEIN: Within the next month or so -
7 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Okay.
8 MR. GREENSTEIN: — you will see what the
9 consultation process looks like.
10 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Sir, you also
11 mentioned -- there was some discussion about the cost and
12 some of the increases. You mentioned room and board; you
13 mentioned tuition.
14 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
15 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: You obviously have had an
16 increase in administrative salaries as well -
17 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
18 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: -- during that time -
19 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
20 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: -- right? So the last
21 budget that you submitted, I think one of the gentleman had
22 said that it was for a 2 percent increase. Do I have that
23 right?
24 MR. GREENSTEIN: This year’s budget was flat.
25 The previous budget was, I think, a 3 percent increase. 62
1 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Okay.
2 MR. GREENSTEIN: Two and a half percent, I
3 apologize.
4 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Okay. All right. Close
5 enough. If I got it, you were saying, though, in the last
6 20 years you’ve seen almost a 30 percent drop in the State
7 funding into your system?
8 MR. GREENSTEIN: Right.
9 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Okay. Obviously, I ’m
10 aware of some efforts here. It seems like -- I mean,
11 correct me if I ’m wrong. I ’m almost viewing this here as
12 that when you say that you had to pass the costs onto your
13 students, is that really the entire picture that you have?
14 Is that you and your administration, your system had to
15 pass on the cost? Or is it that the lack of State funding
16 has at least sizably contributed to what has been passed on
17 to your students?
18 MR. GREENSTEIN: Lack of State funding has
19 sizably contributed to what we pass on to our students.
20 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Okay. I guess I ’m kind
21 of viewing your plan here, which, look, definitely some of
22 the integration aspects -- and integration is a broad term.
23 It can mean 100 different things.
24 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
25 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: I appreciate that. But 63
1 there definitely are things technologically, you know, that
2 are of interest and sort of streamlining things that should
3 always be done. That type of efficiency should be found.
4 Again, not sure how broad that would be applied. But like
5 I guess when it comes down to here, would you be making
6 this plan if you had actually just had the State funding?
7 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes. I mean, I think it would
8 be -- well, two things. One, I think it was Senator Hughes
9 at the Senate Appropriations Committee who basically did
10 the math and worked out that if we were funded at the
11 annual rate of about 600-plus million dollars a year, we
12 would be fully funded in the way that would enable a lot of
13 things to allow us to reduce our costs to students and
14 continue to operate at our current operating scale. I
15 think he was right in that regard. I ’ve done the math in
16 other ways and come up with more or less the same number.
17 I do think there are things that universities have to
18 continue to do in order to ensure that they operate
19 effectively, et cetera. So, you know, I see this as a
20 partnership between the State and the State system, and
21 obviously we have our part to do. Yes.
22 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: All right. But if the
23 funding had been there, most likely, you would at least be
24 looking at a much more narrowly tailored plan of
25 integration, let’s say? 64
1 MR. GREENSTEIN: If the funding had been there -
2 and this is highly speculative. If the State were to have
3 funded the Pennsylvania State system at about the national
4 average of expenditure per FTE -
5 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Um-hum.
6 MR. GREENSTEIN: -- we would be looking in system
7 redesign at revitalizing our academic programming so that
8 we could meet the changing needs of students and the
9 changing needs of employers, et cetera, so that component
10 of our work evolving so we continue to meet the needs of
11 the State would still be going forward. The work on
12 financial stabilization would look a lot different, yes.
13 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Understood. And again,
14 the first part of your -- that should always be part of
15 your work. You're never not looking to be sure -
16 MR. GREENSTEIN: Right.
17 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: -- that your education is
18 well-tailored -
19 MR. GREENSTEIN: Right.
20 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: -- to the needs of -
21 it's interesting with it, sir, and I do appreciate your
22 answer with that, but, you know, I feel like there's a
23 question, right, so I get a little bit lost in this here
24 like a question, like a variable that I'm uncertain of
25 because there are some parts of your presentation that talk 65
1 about the demand, that talk about the demand that’s there
2 but yet how it doesn’t correlate into some of the numbers
3 that I think perhaps all of us would like to see. So when
4 you’re having the demand but yet struggling to grow certain
5 parts of the program, there is a question.
6 I guess that this seems to me -- and I appreciate
7 the information on the State funding -- but it seems to me
8 then like this is -- you are sort of taking a -- I don’t
9 want to say a leap of faith without sort of an analysis.
10 Clearly, you’re working on it and have done it, but this is
11 something that will either -- so without State funding
12 increases, so let’s assume that that whole 30 -- roughly
13 almost 30 percent, assume that’s gone and that ain’t coming
14 back. Let’s assume that’s the case for this question.
15 You’re either assuming that this integration model that
16 you’re still developing will either solidify your program
17 in a way that will allow stabilization and growth, or there
18 has to be some calculation that in the integration program
19 there’s a chance that you will never again be able to serve
20 the amount of Pennsylvanians that you have in the past, and
21 your scope may narrow because you are not able to grow
22 again by the changes that you have in place. Is that not
23 part of -
24 MR. GREENSTEIN: I think the former is true, I
25 think the latter not so. Obviously, one wants to look at 66
1 integration plans very carefully and pressure-test them in
2 all sorts of ways. You know, we already talked about
3 unintended consequences financially. There are obviously
4 unintended consequences for communities, for students, et
5 cetera. And I hope we will pressure-test them in those
6 ways. I don’t believe that integration will narrow a path
7 to growth. I don’t.
8 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Would you rather have
9 this plan or your 28 percent of money that would take out
10 the financial stabilization question?
11 MR. GREENSTEIN: So I think of myself as the CEO
12 of this institution, of this great institution. I am in
13 effect in employment by the board and the General Assembly,
14 and I am dealing the hand that I have been dealt.
15 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: You’re happy with your
16 hand?
17 MR. GREENSTEIN: I ’m here to serve.
18 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Thank you.
19 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR: Well, I
20 will interject here. One of the problems and the reason
21 we ’re here today is simply because this system has been
22 mismanaged for so many years. Twenty years this
23 organization has been mismanaged. We finally have a
24 Chancellor who is willing to address it and make the
25 changes that need to be made. This doesn’t have anything 67
1 to do with money because the student population has gone
2 down, and the rate of inflation over our PASSHE system has
3 gone far and above the rate of inflation. It is not
4 serving the students of low-income families and middle-
5 class families anymore, and if private institutions can do
6 that and our State system cannot, blaming it on money is
7 not the issue here. It is the way our system was run for
8 the last 20 years.
9 So I give the Chancellor a great deal of credit
10 for the job he’s doing. I actually told him when he was
11 appointed he has the toughest job, I believe, of any
12 Chancellor in our Nation. And I congratulate him on the
13 work he’s done. This is not about money in the past. It’s
14 about mismanagement that has taken place in our system.
15 And as a product of IUP, I am proud to finally see this
16 system moving forward in a direction that’s responsible and
17 not looking to the past. It needs to serve the people of
18 Pennsylvania who are funding it.
19 So with that, I will move to Representative
20 Lawrence.
21 REPRESENTATIVE LAWRENCE: Thank you, Mr.
22 Chairman. And thank you, Chancellor, for being here today.
23 I appreciate your work and I appreciate the fact that
24 you’re willing to come before the General Assembly for a
25 grilling, so thank you. I appreciate you being here today. 68
1 Could you speak to me a little bit about -- you
2 know, with all these changes going on with the State System
3 of Higher Education, you know, the biggest stakeholders
4 here are the students. So how are you involving them in
5 the decisions that are being made and the conversations
6 around, you know, consolidation? What conversations are
7 you having with, you know, either student government
8 leaders or, you know, focus groups of students or, you
9 know, these days via Zoom? What conversations are you
10 having with them?
11 MR. GREENSTEIN: So, again, I mean, in the
12 financial review narrow technical piece of work, so high
13 level of engagement with student government presidents, the
14 board of student government presidents, so it was a
15 statewide level. As we move forward, the planning process
16 will now shift from the Chancellor’s office into the
17 regions, and there will be direct consultation with
18 students.
19 I would add to that that I have had the pleasure
20 of -- I visit our universities every year, every term,
21 twice a year. I did this term by Zoom. I ’ve done 12 of
22 the 14. I always meet with students on these visits. And
23 when we talk about integration, they’re excited, and
24 they’re excited because they see expanded opportunity,
25 right? They see expanded opportunity not just in the 69
1 academic programming but in the student life, in the
2 student supports, in the ability to engage with others from
3 other universities. You know, it's actually one of the
4 most inspiring things I get to do is to see it through
5 their eyes. So, you know, that's at a personal level, and
6 we'll obviously be stepping to a more formal level when we
7 go forward.
8 REPRESENTATIVE LAWRENCE: Very good. I
9 appreciate that input.
10 And, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity.
11 Thank you.
12 APPROPRIATIONS MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SAYLOR:
13 Chancellor, I have to head off to another meeting. I again
14 want to thank you for your time today. I'm going to turn
15 it over to our Education Chairman Curt Sonney. Again,
16 thank you for your testimony.
17 MR. GREENSTEIN: Thank you, Chairman.
18 EDUCATION MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SONNEY:
19 Representative Patty Kim.
20 REPRESENTATIVE KIM: Good morning. Thank you,
21 Chairman. And good morning, Chancellor.
22 We have legislation to allow PASSHE to sell Dixon
23 University in Harrisburg. How much savings do you project
24 in this sale once the bill is passed?
25 MR. GREENSTEIN: So I'm told that the building 70
1 could sell for between $4-6 million but don’t expect to
2 sell it quickly. And obviously, if that happened, there’s
3 also a building reserve fund, you know, which we use in
4 case the roof falls in, which would then no longer be
5 necessary. Those are one-time -- I mean, both would be
6 one-time dollars.
7 REPRESENTATIVE KIM: Okay. Are you looking at
8 any other properties, PASSHE properties to sell off in the
9 future?
10 MR. GREENSTEIN: So some of our universities are
11 looking at sale of properties. I ’m aware, for example, of
12 the Porreco because the board just did an action giving
13 Edinboro the opportunity to sell the Porreco campus if that
14 opportunity emerged. There may be others that I ’m just not
15 calling to mind. But the only ones that the Chancellor’s
16 office is responsible for is the Dixon Center.
17 REPRESENTATIVE KIM: Okay. I know we passed Act
18 50 and we need to discuss the outline now with very few
19 details. But when your personnel is 75 percent of the
20 budget, we know that we have a good idea where things may
21 go.
22 I don’t know if you’re surprised, but I read your
23 Chancellor’s blog.
24 MR. GREENSTEIN: Thank you.
25 REPRESENTATIVE KIM: Yes, you’re welcome. I know 71
1 there are a lot of people reading that. You were talking
2 about shifting faculty from maybe one department to
3 another, that faculty members are very talented and that
4 you could shift them. Can you expound on that? And if
5 faculty members are listening now, how could they prepare
6 for that change?
7 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes, so I ’m not sure w e ’re
8 talking about shifting faculty members from one department
9 to another. W e ’re obviously talking about pretty
10 significant restructuring, reorganization. We saw that
11 last week. It was already mentioned President Driscoll I
12 think came up with a very innovative plan for IUP which
13 looks at integrating schools, and other universities are
14 doing the same. And, going forward, I ’ll expect that to
15 continue to happen.
16 Obviously, you know, we value all of our faculty
17 and our staff. They are, you know, critical to the
18 mission. They’re critical to our students. They have long
19 years of dedicated service. They’re talented people. You
20 know, our student success relies not just on faculty but on
21 the staff that we have there, our most precious gift. So,
22 you know, obviously w e ’ve talked about consultation. W e ’ve
23 talked about, you know, analytically trying to work through
24 the various approaches that w e ’ll be taking and
25 understanding their consequences. I look forward to 72
1 working together with all stakeholders, including faculty
2 and staff, in addressing exactly those issues.
3 Also in your blog I got a sense from you that,
4 you know, we were at a pivotal moment in time and have the
5 ability to change the trajectory of our State system
6 schools. I believe that, too. And we can call this plan a
7 different name like integration, but really, w e ’re just
8 keeping PASSHE on life support and then putting the system
9 in the hospice of three years, which I hope is not the
10 case. Or we can make a real investment in these schools
11 and take our universities to long-term sustainability and
12 equip our kids for today’s workforce.
13 If w e ’re talking about your students and giving
14 them the affordable, high-quality education that we want
15 for them, let’s do it. You have a really difficult job
16 obviously, and I don’t envy you, but what would be your
17 wish list? And it’s very convenient that the Chairman left
18 because I disagree with him because you and your answer
19 with Representative Miller was if we had fully funded the
20 PASSHE school system, we may be in a different place. We
21 cannot say we want this for our students and give them the
22 bare minimum and hope that will work. We brought you in
23 here because of our lack of responsibility. If you didn’t
24 have the parameters that you have right now, what would be
25 your wish list, Chancellor? 73
1 MR. GREENSTEIN: So, Representative Kim, you’re
2 going to steer me into an unguarded moment and my staff are
3 going to be horrified but it’s only because you are the
4 Representative from my district and I appreciate your
5 service.
6 You’re both right. You are both right, the
7 Chairman and yourself. This is a partnership. The public
8 higher education is a partnership. It requires appropriate
9 level of support from the State, and it requires the State
10 system to manage itself effectively. Both of those things
11 need to happen. In my view, we have a lot to do on our
12 side, and I said that at the Appropriations Committee
13 hearings, and that was in advance of the pandemic. The
14 pandemic only accelerated the path that we’re on. We have
15 a great deal to do to become more responsive to the needs
16 of the students of this State and to the needs of our
17 employers in our communities. We cannot simply continue as
18 we are staring into the rearview mirror and executing
19 against a strategy of hope.
20 Our leadership in my view has been focused on the
21 future for several years now. They’re beginning to
22 demonstrate results in terms of enrollment, in terms of
23 retention, in terms of new programming, in terms of helping
24 their students achieve viable pathways, you know, into
25 sustaining careers and great community lives. And I ’m 74
1 proud of what we have accomplished. We have a great deal
2 more to do.
3 But -- and this is my ask of you -- it is going
4 to require those two very different views, those almost
5 polar opposite views to come together and acknowledge the
6 fact that both are correct. We will need support from this
7 body to get ourselves through to the future that this
8 Commonwealth needs, and we will need support from this body
9 to enable us to engage in the very difficult and essential
10 and necessary restructuring and refocusing. Neither of
11 those things are sufficient to achieve our objectives by
12 themselves. They are necessary but not sufficient
13 conditions. We need you -- I need you -- to somehow find a
14 path to integrating those two views and holding them
15 together in your collective heads so that we can do what is
16 really a very difficult -- we have this. I am convinced
17 that the management of these institutions that we have what
18 it takes to get this job done, but as we've heard today,
19 there are any number of obstacles which can and probably
20 will trip us up. And that is where we need your help
21 together.
22 REPRESENTATIVE KIM: I appreciate your answer.
23 Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
24 EDUCATION MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SONNEY: Thank you.
25 Representative Brown. 75
1 REPRESENTATIVE BROWN: Thank you, Chancellor.
2 Good morning.
3 MR. GREENSTEIN: Good morning.
4 REPRESENTATIVE BROWN: I came in a little bit
5 later this morning, so I hope that I didn’t miss in some of
6 your testimony, but as the questions have come up about the
7 quality of education and the cost of education for our
8 students across Pennsylvania, with the integration program,
9 because w e ’ve dealt with COVID as well and w e ’ve seen
10 obviously the online education dramatically increasing
11 because of the COVID crisis, with the integration model,
12 with the COVID experience, I ’ve spoken to many students,
13 many families. You know, the online, some are okay with it
14 and some feel the value of that is not the same value
15 obviously as being in person.
16 With the integration model and that knowledge
17 base of what w e ’ve been through, what do you think the
18 plans are further for the online piece of it, improving
19 that, building on that, the opportunities that will make it
20 different from what it is right now, what students are
21 experiencing and what families feel is not really worth it?
22 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
23 REPRESENTATIVE BROWN: Where do you see that
24 going? And I think where do you see that going, too, as
25 far as the cost, an online course credit value versus an 76
1 in-person cost value?
2 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes. So a couple things, and
3 I’m going to speak for the industry and maybe find a way
4 into the Pennsylvania State system. So interest in online
5 and hybrid forms of education has been growing for well
6 over a decade, just south of 10 percent a year I think but
7 I want to check that. Interest in the kind of
8 residentially based comprehensive university that we offer,
9 the traditional stuff that we offer has been declining,
10 again, for over a decade. Those are sectoral trends. They
11 represent consumer choice. They just do.
12 And then we have choices as an institution about
13 how we evolve to meet those demands. Obviously, we can
14 continue to offer the traditional form of on-ground
15 residentially focused education that we do, and w e ’ll just
16 get smaller and that’s okay. That’s a reasonable choice to
17 make. It does mean that we will not be able to sustain in
18 my view 14, you know, wholly independent universities.
19 I think interestingly -- so thing one. Thing two
20 is that the kind of remote learning that w e ’ve resorted to
21 during the pandemic -- and this is true, again, cross
22 higher education -- it is remote but it’s not necessarily
23 the best in online learning, you know? Our universities -
24 and this is true across the country -- we moved in ways
25 which nobody like me would ever have expected. I mean, we 77
1 just turned the earth upside down and still made it work,
2 and it was, you know, pretty remarkable. And our students
3 have been resilient and great and, you know, they have some
4 pretty significant challenges in terms of engagement.
5 We ’ve also learned a thing or two. So my
6 expectation is going forward the interest in remote and
7 hybrid forms of education, which has already been growing
8 for over a decade, will continue to grow probably an
9 accelerated rate not just in postsecondary but also in
10 secondary education. And we as educators need to prepare
11 for and engage with that future as opposed to looking in
12 the rearview mirror and wishing that, gosh, it should have
13 been this way all -- you know, we should go back.
14 REPRESENTATIVE BROWN: Right.
15 MR. GREENSTEIN: That’s where our students are
16 going.
17 REPRESENTATIVE BROWN: Yes. And I agree. And I
18 think it’s just something that’s in the back of my head as
19 far as the quality, the costs, and also from the
20 professors’ standpoint. What do you feel the feedback is
21 from the professors’ standpoint on utilizing that in more
22 advanced ways as we move forward?
23 MR. GREENSTEIN: You know, I think, you know, we
24 have seen the best of our faculty and the best of our
25 students over the past several months in so many different 78
1 ways. And again, these are choices that I think w e ’re
2 going to have to make. There are so many people who need
3 us, who need some access to post-secondary education who
4 cannot or don’t want to or can’t afford to have all of the
5 trappings of a residentially based program. There are
6 those who do need that and want that, and that’s great and
7 we should always be there for them. But as a public
8 institution, we cannot simply deny the demand of the rest.
9 They are still our Pennsylvanians. They need us now.
10 REPRESENTATIVE BROWN: Thank you so much. I look
11 forward to more on that as we move forward. Thank you, Mr.
12 Chairman.
13 EDUCATION MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SONNEY:
14 Representative Schweyer.
15 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: Thank you, Chairman. I
16 appreciate it.
17 Chancellor, thank you for being here today.
18 Thank you for the report. Thank you for engaging in this
19 process. Thank you for engaging with my colleagues.
20 I think, if I may, I want to kind of take a step
21 back and look at this a little bit more from a broader
22 perspective because unlike many of my colleagues here
23 today, I don’t have a PASSHE campus in Lehigh County. I
24 have parts of a satellite campus affiliated with a branch
25 campus of a community college in my district, right? But 79
1 what it seems to me that I'm hearing from my colleagues and
2 speaking with Chairman Bradford ahead of time, there seems
3 to be sort of three or four really major areas of concern
4 from our side of the aisle. Number one, how many academic
5 programs or support services are going to be lost
6 throughout this process, which leads into the question of
7 how many jobs are going to be lost that are both PASSHE
8 employees but also, as we learned today, its impact on the
9 communities. How many of those small mom-and-pop vendors,
10 how many of the restaurants, how many of the folks who have
11 built their economy and their economic livelihood around
12 the particular institution, how are they going to be
13 impacted, and how are they going to be engaged in this
14 process? Those are concerns of folks who have a large
15 presence of PASSHE in their district.
16 Again, I don't have -- what I have is sort of the
17 third question, which is how are we going to be able to
18 protect and expand enrollment in PASSHE schools when we are
19 talking about potentially cutting programs, reducing
20 support staff, those sorts of things? We've talked about
21 that a bunch. I've heard that from a number of our
22 colleagues on both sides of the aisle.
23 The fourth group of folks that we're not
24 considering, however, are the potential future PASSHE
25 students. We've talked about engaging current students in 80
1 this, what does it look like for folks who are sophomores
2 and juniors now if their senior year is going to be so
3 vastly changed? Representative Mullery talked about
4 student athletes and those sorts of things.
5 In places like Allentown and the greater Lehigh
6 Valley that don't have direct access to PASSHE schools,
7 they are not a neighborhood school I should say -- they
8 certainly have direct access, but they're not a
9 neighborhood school -- their decision on whether or not to
10 go to Kutztown, Bloomsburg, East Stroudsburg, which are the
11 three closest to the greater Lehigh Valley versus going to
12 somewhere like Penn State is going to be directly tied to
13 PASSHE’s ability to deliver a product that they feel is
14 meaningful and appropriate at a reasonable cost.
15 When w e ’re hearing things like -- you know,
16 earlier today we heard a comment that six universities are
17 going to become two begs the question for those parents,
18 which four campuses are getting closed, and when are they
19 closing? Because that’s what I heard. And if I ’m a parent
20 thinking about sending my kid to, say, Cal, why wouldn’t I
21 just choose a branch campus of Pitt or a branch campus of
22 Penn State?
23 So I guess my two overall questions are going to
24 be, number one, do we have a decision on how many campuses
25 are going to be closed, how many universities are going to 81
1 be closed? And if the answer is no, you’re not prepared to
2 answer that, I already know because the guardrails you
3 mentioned before you’re not going to answer that question.
4 But that is really the question that is being asked in
5 homes across -
6 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
7 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: — the Commonwealth of
8 Pennsylvania.
9 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
10 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: It’s a question of how
11 many -- and everywhere.
12 And the other question is how are we really truly
13 going to compete? How is PASSHE really going to truly
14 compete if this is what’s going to happen?
15 MR. GREENSTEIN: Those are great -- let me try to
16 take them in some order. So w e ’re not closing anything.
17 The authority to close a campus, a university resides with
18 this body, does not reside to the board. It was not
19 distributed to the board -
20 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: Right.
21 MR. GREENSTEIN: -- as a consequence of Act 50.
22 Act 50 specifically forbids closure, so that’s not
23 happening. The thrust of integration is to ensure that
24 viable instructional activity continues at all of our
25 universities and that we curtail the devastating economic 82
1 impacts that would result if we are unable somehow to solve
2 this problem. So I think that’s the second thing.
3 The third thing is -- and again, I ’ll reference
4 the students that I ’ve had the honor, privilege of speaking
5 with over the last couple of months, is this is about
6 preserving programs, not eliminating them. Let me
7 elaborate and let me elaborate in the context of my
8 favorite program, Celtic poetry. I ’m pretty sure Celtic
9 poetry is not something which is taught anywhere, so I can
10 talk about it without anybody getting really panicked.
11 It’s a great subject area, and obviously what happens at a
12 university, as enrollments decline, they cannot afford to
13 offer the full range of programs and they find themselves
14 in their department of Celtic poetry graduating a couple
15 students a year. And inevitably at some point those
16 programs, because they’re not any longer viable
17 economically become under some kind of question. By
18 clubbing together, by working together we can ensure that
19 the best Celtic poetry program exists for any student
20 anywhere in the State who wishes to take it from whatever
21 university they attend.
22 And that is true across the board. This is not
23 about eliminating programs; this is about saving them.
24 This is about saving programs across the full range of
25 academic knowledge which are critical to the future of our 83
1 State.
2 So in some ways there has never been a better
3 time to come to one of the Pennsylvania State system
4 universities because you can go with the confidence that
5 the program I began will not only continue, it will be
6 continuing at some level of scale that wasn't already
7 available. The opportunities through integration on the
8 programmatic side are profoundly important.
9 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: I ’m not going to
10 certainly make any criticism of anybody who wants to study
11 Celtic poetry, nor were you, Chancellor. But going back to
12 the closing, there is a question of closing versus closing,
13 right? As a public policy perspective, this is not a
14 PASSHE question per se, but legislatures across the United
15 States, our own U.S. Congress, the courts, what they will
16 do is there’s a creep. There is a general eroding of
17 something that is happening in any particular public
18 policy, whereas I won’t get into any of the policies that
19 are pretty obvious because I don’t want to turn this into a
20 national political debate here. That’s not what I ’m
21 talking about.
22 But you can effectively impact or reduce the
23 quality of a campus or a school by eliminating a whole
24 bunch of programs even if they are going regional. Even if
25 they are going to be, you know, taught from -- a student at 84
1 Cal is going to be able to learn from a professor in
2 Edinboro, there’s still the impact on Cal if we start
3 reducing a whole bunch of those academic programs onsite.
4 In effect, you’re not closing that campus but what you’re
5 doing is -- and not you, I apologize. I ’m not trying to
6 make this you. But we as a collective -- because this is
7 all of us together, our ability to appropriate dollars for
8 you and your ability to manage those appropriately, if we
9 collectively start reducing the number of programs on a
10 campus, whereas you might effectively not close it, we
11 really are dramatically impacting it. You’re reducing jobs
12 in the community. You’re impacting that local community.
13 If you were to, for example, close -- or because
14 of our inability to fund it or some derivative thereof, if
15 you were to reduce the number of academic programs in one
16 particular campus, whereas that campus may actually be
17 open, it will look dramatically different. And we have to
18 be honest about that. We have to be able to say if we are
19 eliminating, for example, a sizable number of academic
20 programs, even if those programs are smaller, we are in
21 fact closing big parts of that campus. Is that a fair
22 statement?
23 MR. GREENSTEIN: So I think we have a choice, all
24 of us individually. We can go forward with a sense of fear
25 and loathing or a sense of opportunity and growth. I 85
1 prefer a sense of opportunity and growth. I encourage
2 people to think about imagine if. And let me give you a
3 couple of concrete examples of why I see opportunity and
4 growth.
5 We're looking at the schools in the northeast,
6 Bloom, Lock Haven, and Mansfield, of which Bloomsburg has
7 an ASBE-accredited business school, highest level of
8 accreditation you can achieve for a business school.
9 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: Right.
10 MR. GREENSTEIN: All the sudden students at
11 Mansfield and Lock Haven have access to a program that
12 could not possibly -- and that Mansfield and Lock Haven
13 could not reasonably expect to ever develop, to achieve
14 that level of accreditation. It’s possible but pretty
15 decent stretch.
16 Let me go another example again from the same
17 group of three. Lock Haven has a strong program in
18 physical assistance and has great relations with UPMC.
19 Bloomsburg has great programs in health professions with
20 great relations with Geisinger. Imagine the opportunity to
21 bring those two together and to now serve the health
22 professions of the region across a range of disciplines
23 working with two of the several largest providers in the
24 State, right?
25 Another conversation on the west I was talking to 86
1 a faculty member who teaches I think mechatronics, which is
2 a form of engineering. It is only available at that
3 particular school. All the sudden potentially that is now
4 available to all the students at the universities in that
5 triad. It’s the sense of opportunity and enrollment growth
6 is palpable.
7 So I think I would look at it in those terms, in
8 terms of impact on the community. If we get this right, we
9 are growing jobs. If we continue the way we are, we are
10 losing them.
11 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: My oldest daughter is
12 13 years old. She is taking her first college class as an
13 eighth grader in a dual enrollment with our community
14 college right now.
15 MR. GREENSTEIN: That’s fantastic.
16 Congratulations.
17 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: She’s on a college
18 track. She is smarter than me, and she’s going to go have
19 a lot of opportunities when she graduates from high school
20 in four and a half years. I would be very hard-pressed to
21 tell her that if you go to Mansfield, you’re going to be
22 able to take classes at Bloomsburg or at Lock Haven. So
23 I ’m going to have to invest in a car for you to be able to
24 travel several hundred miles if you’re going to all three
25 campuses to get the various classes. What does that look 87
1 like? How can I as a parent -
2 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
3 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: — actually say, you
4 know, again, if my daughter is able to, she can go to a
5 college that has all these opportunities at once or now
6 you’re going to be traveling across, let’s be perfectly
7 candid, some rural roads to be able to get -
8 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
9 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: — from one area to
10 another in wintertime.
11 MR. GREENSTEIN: I will be in touch with her.
12 Mansfield is a wonderful place. It’s a destination -
13 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: I ’m not suggesting
14 otherwise.
15 MR. GREENSTEIN: It’s a destination location. It
16 grew its enrollment. It’s 8 percent this year. It’s the
17 only university in our midst that grew its enrollment
18 anything like 8 percent, demonstrating that it is perceived
19 as being a destination location. People want to go there.
20 To be able to have access from that site to a full range of
21 opportunities that simply could not be available not
22 because Mansfield is bad or the people are bad, just
23 because the enrollment base doesn’t justify the extent of
24 academic -
25 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: I ’m not arguing the 88
1 wonderful section of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in
2 the north central part of the State that is Mansfield. I ’m
3 not arguing that any of the campus itself isn’t beautiful.
4 And I ’m not saying that the academic rigors there aren’t
5 good. What I ’m saying is if my daughter is a student out
6 at Mansfield and I ’m going to tell her that she has to
7 commute to Bloomsburg to be able to get that business
8 degree, why would I do that? Because in effect what w e ’re
9 seeing in the western part of the State is Cal and the
10 Monday Valley, it’s pretty far away from Edinboro, right?
11 That’s basically the entire north/south distance of the
12 Commonwealth of Pennsylvania or pretty close to it.
13 Austin’s not here. He would be able to correct me if I ’m
14 wrong.
15 But if you’re going from the Mon Valley and Cal
16 and you’re going up to Edinboro and Erie County and my
17 daughter is saying I ’m really interested in going to Cal
18 but half of her classes are going to be in Edinboro, how is
19 that going to work?
20 MR. GREENSTEIN: Again, that’s the next part.
21 What we deliver, where, and how is the next part of the
22 planning process. I wouldn’t necessarily jump to
23 conclusions that people are driving around a lot or taking
24 everything online.
25 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: Sure, and I understand 89
1 that, but those are the questions that we -- and by your
2 own admission we don’t have answers to. But if the next
3 phase is scheduled to be released in April, clearly, people
4 are giving this thought already. I mean, these are 14 very
5 well-managed organizations. You and your staff do a very
6 solid job and a credible job of looking at all these
7 questions. You’ve been strategically planning. You
8 thought about this, I ’m sure, in your interview process -
9 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
10 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: — when you came in
11 here.
12 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
13 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: So clearly, there is
14 thought being given -
15 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
16 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: — to what this is
17 going to look like.
18 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes. And the students that I
19 speak to, as I said before, are genuinely excited about the
20 opportunities that are available to them through this
21 process.
22 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: Sure. And I understand
23 that and I ’m certainly not questioning your communication
24 with students.
25 My last point and, Mr. Chairman, thank you for 90
1 the time. My last point is one of the major success
2 stories that we've had in the greater Lehigh Valley -- you
3 know we've talked about this directly -- has been the
4 increased integration -- and that's a buzzword I'll say.
5 The relationship is growing between our urban core students
6 and our urban core districts and our PASSHE schools.
7 Bloomsburg and now Kutztown have excellent agreements with
8 the Allentown School District. Ninety percent of my
9 students are students of color, 90 percent poverty, and so
10 that's been a very, very good thing.
11 I understand I think Millersville has a similar
12 relationship with the Reading School District, and I
13 imagine that these are growing and there are instances that
14 I simply don't know about. How in this process -- let me
15 rephrase. I'm not going to ask the question. I'm going to
16 ask for a promise. Part of the phase 2 that you're
17 engaging right now has to include our ability to build and
18 maintain those relationships with our most at-risk
19 students -
20 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
21 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: — with our poorest
22 communities and our communities that are, quite frankly,
23 underrepresented and not seen nearly as much -
24 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
25 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: — in all of our 91
1 colleges and universities, but for the case of today’s
2 conversation, for our PASSHE schools.
3 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
4 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: So it needs to be and
5 it has to be part of those conversations that those
6 articulation agreements, those deals, those plans remain in
7 place and are in fact expanded as part of this.
8 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes, that’s right. No, that’s
9 exactly right. And that’s why I urge the Higher Education
10 Funding Commission, as you know, to think about funding
11 pathways and not sectors because we build these -
12 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: Right.
13 MR. GREENSTEIN: -- frictionful, frictionful
14 boundaries -
15 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: Right.
16 MR. GREENSTEIN: -- for students that are very
17 difficult, especially for our at-risk students to overcome.
18 But if we think about how to fund pathways and not sectors,
19 we may be able to help those students in ways which
20 currently are very difficult to.
21 REPRESENTATIVE SCHWEYER: Agreed. Thank you.
22 Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
23 EDUCATION MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SONNEY: Thank you.
24 The final question will be from Representative Schroeder,
25 who I believe is online. Representative? 92
1 REPRESENTATIVE SCHROEDER: Hi. Yes. Thank you.
2 Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, Chancellor, for being
3 here.
4 I just had a quick question. Regarding -- I
5 guess for me -- I went to Millersville. I ’m a Millersville
6 grad, very prideful, and I talked to a couple students, you
7 know, in the community lately, and they’re concerned about
8 class sizes. I know lecture halls, like some of our gen
9 eds that we offer in PASSHE like, you know, our sciences
10 and art and different things are in a giant lecture hall
11 like 300 students, but things that -- like I went to school
12 for, you know, international studies as my minor, I was
13 able to be in a very unique, small, individual class which
14 was very attractive to me and why I went to Millersville
15 for my education, that I knew I would have that one-on-one
16 with my faculty and, you know, a smaller class size to
17 really have that extra attention and allows for, you know,
18 a different, unique kind of opportunity in the classroom.
19 So, I guess, as w e ’re doing this and w e ’re
20 talking about, you know, what w e ’re going to do to
21 different majors and how w e ’re going to interact with
22 saving budgets and different things, I just want us to also
23 be very mindful of the student experience through that and
24 learning because I know we had comparative Asian studies
25 for one of our courses, and it was something that they did 93
1 as a pilot program. And because I was a student and I was
2 in my third and fourth year of the university, I was able
3 to participate in that. So I really don’t want those types
4 of programs ever being inhibited by us, you know, cutting
5 anything or doing anything because it really did help me
6 see things that I wasn’t actually getting or interacting
7 with without doing that.
8 So I just want to say if we are going to go
9 forward with changing courses that are available and
10 different things, what’s so attractive about our
11 universities in our State system is that smaller classroom,
12 that intimate setting where you can ask questions, do
13 different types of projects, so I just wanted to see if you
14 have any thoughts on that, too, or if you’ve heard that
15 complaint from the student bodies at all from our PASSHE
16 schools?
17 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes, no, great question.
18 Obviously, preserving the quality and richness of
19 experience, expanding the quality and richness of
20 experience, expanding the range of opportunities that are
21 available to our students, that is really what this is
22 about. And again, I ’ll say what I said in my introductory
23 remarks. If we keep our eyes focused there, then, you
24 know, the financial advantages will follow. So that’s, I
25 guess, thing one. 94
1 Thing two is I have also heard the narrative
2 around, you know, bloated class sizes. I don’t understand
3 it. The data don’t suggest it. The changes w e ’re looking
4 at, you know, would on average mean the difference of a
5 couple students per class, I mean, two, three, four. I
6 mean, just put yourself in a class and, you know, in your
7 mind’s eye there’s 20 students, and now there’s 23, 24. I
8 mean, is my experience really diminished in some way,
9 shape, or form? There’s no evidence in the research record
10 that I ’m aware of that draws a solid line. In
11 postsecondary education you can do this in K-12 between
12 class size and student outcomes particularly around these
13 kind of small marginal differences.
14 So, you know, I guess the other point I ’d make is
15 that -- you know, and I really appreciate, this is super
16 helpful, especially now because as we go into the next
17 process, the next part of the process generates a range of
18 really important areas that we need to be concerned about,
19 and I appreciate that.
20 But I just would ask the Members -- and I ’ll be
21 back, so you have some time to think about this. You know,
22 we can’t save everything w e ’re doing in the current
23 environment. Our students’ needs are changing. Our
24 employers’ needs are changing. Our communities’ needs are
25 changing. The world in which we live is changing. The 95
1 funding environment which we are presented with is
2 challenging. So I ’ll remind us that we are here where we
3 are today because these choices were left unaddressed.
4 They have accumulated. They are really challenging. And
5 we can push this train over the track at any point on any
6 one of these issues, because w e ’re not satisfying alumni,
7 because w e ’re not satisfying athletes, because w e ’re not
8 satisfying communities, and any number of constituency
9 groups are going to be impacted by this change hopefully in
10 a positive way.
11 But I would urge us to think as we go through
12 these appropriations requests about where we are and what
13 our options are. They are very narrow. We can have all of
14 these things. I can cost out that for you, right? But
15 this is the challenge to me of higher education public
16 policy. It’s about identifying what we really need and
17 must accomplish for the people of this State in some
18 priority order and then lining up the strategies and the
19 funding models and support that. I will help you, but
20 ultimately, I ’m here to help you. And in fact those bigger
21 questions are yours to answer. So I look forward to
22 working with you, and probably not a closing statement,
23 Representative Sonney, so please continue with your
24 questions.
25 EDUCATION MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SONNEY: 96
1 Representative Schroeder?
2 REPRESENTATIVE SCHROEDER: No, that was good.
3 Yes, thank you Chairman.
4 No, I was just going to say I know this is no
5 easy feat to accomplish, and I thank you for all the hard
6 work that you and your staff have put into this and being
7 involved in it. And I just want to let you know that, you
8 know, I think anytime there’s communications that are
9 happening, that’s great with, you know, all stakeholders,
10 and I really appreciate you really doing what you said and
11 coming through on doing this and taking it right on by the
12 horns. So -
13 MR. GREENSTEIN: Thank you, Representative.
14 REPRESENTATIVE SCHROEDER: — thank you,
15 Chairman, and thank you, Chancellor.
16 MR. GREENSTEIN: Thank you.
17 EDUCATION MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SONNEY: Thank you.
18 I ’d just like to remind the Members that we must be done by
19 11:00, so I ’m going to allow one final follow-up from
20 Representative Brown.
21 REPRESENTATIVE BROWN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
22 I will be quick.
23 Chancellor, again, thank you for your hard work.
24 And as someone who represents parts of Monroe County and
25 Pike County, East Stroudsburg University obviously is very 97
1 large in my community. One question I did want to ask
2 before is there have been a lot of questions coming towards
3 us both at the university and to myself as well in regards
4 to the connection East Stroudsburg University and Kutztown
5 University in future conversations of an integration model.
6 And -- I know. So I ’m going to just put you on the spot
7 here for a moment just to get your feedback on that just so
8 that we can throw that out there because of the questions
9 being asked.
10 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
11 REPRESENTATIVE BROWN: Thank you so much.
12 MR. GREENSTEIN: Thank you. So, look, just so
13 you know, I ’m focused on what’s in the deck. W e ’ve got a
14 lot to work on right now. There’s two groups of three.
15 All the range of issues that you addressed so well have to
16 be dealt with. I think that’s a lot right now, and I ’m not
17 looking any further beyond that. The model that w e ’re
18 pursuing if we ever need to extend it is extensible. W e ’ll
19 learn something so, you know, if we need to do this again
20 in some way, shape, or form, but honestly, I look to
21 tomorrow and the next couple of months. That far out is
22 for me -- and I think of myself as a kind of future guy -
23 that’s right now just not -- at least not in my horizon.
24 REPRESENTATIVE BROWN: Thank you. And I
25 appreciate that. Thanks so much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 98
1 EDUCATION MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SONNEY: Thank you.
2 And thank you, Chancellor Greenstein, for being here today.
3 We know this is the beginning, and yes, you will be back in
4 about three months.
5 MR. GREENSTEIN: I ’m super excited.
6 EDUCATION MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SONNEY: You know,
7 Act 50 requires you to report to us quarterly, I believe.
8 And so as we wrap this up this morning -- and obviously,
9 you’re free to give any type of closing remark you would
10 like, but could you just give a very brief recap of what
11 was accomplished in phase 1 -
12 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes.
13 EDUCATION MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SONNEY: — and what
14 you are looking to accomplish in phase 2?
15 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes, sure, thank you. So phase
16 1 was a financial review. It basically asks the question,
17 in my words, you know, is the juice worth the squeeze? If
18 you take these universities, you know, and we use our
19 multiyear budget projections, you know, we have a sense of
20 where they’re likely to go if we continue as we are. We
21 built a model which enables us to look at where they might
22 go if we integrate them in those ways, so that was
23 accomplished through that analysis. We transitioned from
24 looking at three groups of two to two groups of three, one
25 each in the northeast and one in the west. 99
1 We also built an outline process that you've seen
2 for the planning process for the next phase, which is the
3 detailed phase where we get to throw ourselves at the very
4 good and important questions, many of which you've asked
5 here today. That will be refined over the next, you know,
6 couple weeks as we launch that phase.
7 You know, I'm proud of what we've accomplished.
8 I have a feeling it was the easy part, so -
9 EDUCATION MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SONNEY: You're
10 really looking more at courses now in this next phase?
11 MR. GREENSTEIN: We're looking in great detail
12 about what does an integrated institution look like and how
13 do we get there.
14 EDUCATION MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SONNEY: Yes.
15 MR. GREENSTEIN: And all the questions which
16 immediately spring to people's minds, how do we, you know,
17 enable and support student pathways? What does it look
18 like with respect to view of athletics? How do we manage
19 student supports? What's taught by whom, where, and how?
20 What does leadership and governance look like? All of
21 those questions get addressed in this next phase.
22 EDUCATION MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SONNEY: And what is
23 your timeline on this phase?
24 MR. GREENSTEIN: We hope to bring a plan back to
25 the board for consideration at its meeting in mid-April, 100
1 two plans, one for each group.
2 EDUCATION MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SONNEY: So our next
3 meeting, second phase -
4 MR. GREENSTEIN: Would be —
5 EDUCATION MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SONNEY: — will not
6 be complete -
7 MR. GREENSTEIN: In the next —
8 EDUCATION MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SONNEY: — more than
9 likely?
10 MR. GREENSTEIN: — phase it would not be
11 complete. If it’s quarterly, it would be a midpoint check
12 in, so it would be a great opportunity to give an
13 indication of where I think w e ’re going, what w e ’re
14 learning, what the road bumps are and -- yes, and then
15 we ’ll have another meeting at the next quarter where those
16 plans, if w e ’re able to keep to schedule, will be available
17 for consideration.
18 EDUCATION MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SONNEY: Thank you.
19 Any other -
20 MR. GREENSTEIN: Yes, just to follow the thought.
21 So the overall timeline, I apologize for not giving it.
22 And, you know, any number of things could happen to derail
23 this, but financial review complete in October, developed
24 detailed implementation plans between October and April
25 contingent on consideration by the board. We could launch 101
1 a public review and comment period that would last for 60
2 days from April. The earliest the board could take a
3 decision to integrate universities would be July of 2021.
4 The soonest an integrated university could enroll its first
5 cohort of students would be August 2022, so this is a very
6 long journey. We are at the very, very early stage of a
7 very long journey.
8 EDUCATION MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SONNEY: Thank you.
9 MR. GREENSTEIN: Rest up.
10 EDUCATION MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SONNEY: Thank you.
11 MR. GREENSTEIN: Thank you.
12 EDUCATION MAJORITY CHAIRMAN SONNEY: I think this
13 hearing is adjourned.
14
15 (The hearing concluded at 11:00 a.m.) 102
1 I hereby certify that the foregoing proceedings
2 are a true and accurate transcription produced from audio
3 on the said proceedings and that this is a correct
4 transcript of the same.
5
6
7 Christy Snyder
8 Transcriptionist
9 Diaz Transcription Services