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Piccola Offers Alternative Plan for PA Higher Ed

State Sen. Jeff Piccola has a new proposal to offer additional grants directly to Pennsylvania students for higher education, and tie this funding to both schools’ holding tuition costs down and to student maintained adequate academic performance. Here is the news release from Piccola’s office and a story on the Patriot News website.

This proposal mirrors some of the reforms outlined in our Policy Brief on Pennsylvania higher education.  Our five reforms were:

  1. Immediately halting all state higher education subsidies and making any increase contingent upon freezes in tuition costs and greater spending transparency for taxpayers.
  2. Replacing direct state subsidies to universities with scholarship grants to students.
  3. Holding students, colleges, and universities accountable for the taxpayer support they receive.
  4. Re-focusing all state institutions on teaching, rather than research.
  5. Considering a re-organization of state higher education, including the possibility of severing the taxpayers’ financial support to state, state-related, and state-aided universities. 

You can find our news release on the Piccola proposal here, and you should list to a recent program of The BOX on higher education reform.