Higher Education Funding Commission holds inaugural meeting

The 19-member Higher Education Funding Commission recently held its inaugural and organizational meeting and began working on reviewing and making recommendations on higher education funding, affordability and effectiveness, and administration and operations.

The commission was established in Act 70 of 2019 and will work to identify factors that can be used to determine the distribution of funding among the public institutions of higher education and will develop a higher education funding formula.

The commission’s findings and recommendations will be presented as a report to Gov. Tom Wolf and General Assembly.

“While Pennsylvania works toward meeting its postsecondary attainment goal – approved by the State Board of Education in 2018 – examining and addressing college affordability could provide students with more options for pursuing programs at the Commonwealth’s public institutions of higher education,” Noe Ortega, Pennsylvania Department of Education deputy secretary for postsecondary and higher education, said.

According to Act 70, public institutions of higher education are defined as community colleges, rural regional colleges, state-owned institutions, and state-related institutions. They also include Penn College of Technology and Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology.

When the commission proposes a funding formula, it will not go into effect until approved by an act of the General Assembly and enacted into law.