Voters may have turned Gov. Tom Corbett out of office last November, but his higher education funding legacy remains.

The State System of Higher Education board, which governs Pennsylvania’s 14 state universities, voted last week to boost tuition by 3 percent. Tuition, fees room and board at the schools in the system, which does not include Penn State and the University of Pittsburgh, will increase to about $18,500, up from about $18,000 the last school year.

The board defied Gov. Tom Wolf’s call for a tuition freeze by increasing tuition to help close a projected $58 million deficit in the system’s budget for the fiscal year.

It also ordered schools to find $30 million in cuts to balance the budget. The universities must decide where to make the reductions, which could lead to elimination of jobs and programs. Some of the schools already face financial difficulty and declining enrollment.

The system is expected to receive $412.7 million from the state under the Legislature’s appropriation awaiting Wolf’s action. The amount has been the same since 2011-12 and is $90 million less than 2010-11.

Wolf in March proposed a double-digit increase in state aid for the system in his budget to make up for almost an almost 20 percent reduction under Corbett, but the Republican-dominated Legislature ignored the request.

Current state aid to the system is the same as in 1997-98 and students and their families have had to make up for the funding shortfall through repeated tuition increases.

The Legislature’s aversion to more funding for the system penalizes the schools, state students and their families and undermines the competitive tuition rates that helps keep more Pennsylvania students in the state

— The (Shamokin) News Item