Chancellor Dan Greenstein, who conducted a virtual public forum at IUP this week, has offered his thoughts again on future of the State System of Higher Education. In a post on the System website, Greenstein says a wide range of potential trajectories for the State System have been discussed, but that his comments at a Senate Appropriations Committee budget hearing last month “left an impression, for some, that dissolving the State System was a preferred course of action,” but that “nothing could be further from the truth.”
The chancellor told Senator Joe Pittman at the hearing that if the financial situation does not turn around he would be back at next year’s budget hearing with a request that legislation be crafted to dissolve the System.
In his new posting, he says dismantling the System and leaving the 14 state-owned universities to fend for themselves would be a disaster, but at the same time, doing nothing would be an even greater disaster. He believes the State System Redesign will preserve the affordable, high-quality education each school offers.
Greenstein says the System is “at a serious inflection point that has been years in the making.”
While Governor Wolf’s budget request holds the line at last year’s funding level, the State System has asked the legislature for an additional $100 million per year over the next five years to pay for the Redesign.
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