Corbett's Budget and education cuts - Merged threads (Penn Hills, Wilkinsburg: chapel, credit)

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by Rtom45

Anybody care to guess what the Penn State graduate population is in the Washington DC area?

As a recent transplant from NoVA/DC I can safely say that I bumped into DOZENS of fellow PA transplants who moved there for work after being unable to locate suitable employment in PA commensurate with their degrees. I moved to Pittsburgh by choice, but I'm severely underemployed now.

[TimGyves]

I'm listening to my old university President, still at Penn State a decade later, talk about how the proposed Corbett budget cuts Penn State's appropriation in half - likely the largest de-funding of public higher education in the country's history.

I trust our many other Pittsburgh schools received similar funding cuts - From higher ed on down to troubled Pittsburgh city schools, everything is potentially in flux. As BrianTH points out, I hope that this is a political document that will change dramatically as public pressure mounts.

[SlurmsMcKenzie]

Consolidation is neccessary but it really worries me. How can it be done fairly? On the positive side, imagine the impact it would have on growth in some of these towns (McKees Rocks, Wilkinsburg) that are in prime locations for growth but largely held back by their school districts.

[sp2007]

Originally Posted by blauskies

I was born, raised and educated up through college in PA, when I graduated I had to leave PA because I could not find a good job in my field. This was a while ago and it has never changed.

Just wanted to say ditto. Well except the born part.

But still, how can PA keep subsidizing schools it can't afford?

I do agree, lets tax those shale gas companies more to make up the difference. At least we will have a fallback when the gas companies leave and we have to fix all the environmental damage.

[pman]

Originally Posted by Duderino

Fair enough, although I do not understand why the source would not have explained that notable caveat. I do not claim to be a tax expert, but aren't you still hinting at the fact that some companies do try to evade the CNI tax (which, from what I gather, would be lower than the PI tax)? If so, that really doesn't contradict my point.

not sure what you're point is unless it's that the tax is too high. if you're point was that companies don't pay their "fair share," no, it doesn't support that point. there are tradeoffs, it's much easier to raise capital for large corporations as a C corp than other forms of incorporation. the cni is a weight around the state's neck, as is the capital stock tax.

[squarian]

Originally Posted by trlstreet

How can it be done fairly?

It always seemed to me that the existence of the 29 Intermediate Units is tantamount to an admission that the structure of public education in PA is broken. That is, if the 500 PA school districts were genuinely viable and self-sustaining, the IUs wouldn't be necessary.

AFAICT, the main reason the IUs were created in 1971 was that district consolidation, which had moved steadily forward from the late 1950s, had run out of steam by the time the last legislation passed in '68. But since consolidation hadn't gone far enough to make the remaining 500 units self-sustaining, the IUs had to be created three years later to fill the gaps.

So, assuming the wildly unlikely event that PA manages a new consolidation - why not make a clean sweep and turn the IUs into the main level of public education administration in PA? Instead of a patchwork of 500 ill-assorted districts, 29 coherent regional education authorities.

The usual publicly-avowed objection to school consolidation in PA is that tiny little suburban districts allow their inhabitants to control their schools. The unstated but universally-understood corollary is that elites want to preserve their luxury districts while the rest get stuffed.

Assuming the 29 new regional education authorities are given power to issue charters and/or all public school placed under charter-style local boards, local control ceases to be a concern. The new authorities would provide administrative and development support, much of which the IUs do now anyway. The much larger regional tax base eliminates the zipcode-lottery inequalities in education funding which is such an obvious feature in PA presently.

Of course, it isn't going to happen. In a parliamentary system like, say, Ontario, a party might adopt a reform package as part of its election manifesto, the general election would be fought in effect as a referendum on the reform proposal, and if the party won a majority the legislation would be laid out in the throne speech, passed in the first session, and made law within a year.

Here, the structure of politics makes any significant reform in any area, education or otherwise, impossible until catastrophe strikes. So expect school district consolidation when the cities are burning and rioters battle soldiers in the streets, but not before then.

[pcity]

Originally Posted by Rtom45

Anybody care to guess what the Penn State graduate population is in the Washington DC area?

Extremely high. I am a PSU grad around DC and I run into other PSU grads all the time. I would say I see more PSU license plates and bumper stickers than any other college except for Virginia Tech.

I had a similar issue- looked for work near Philadelphia, couldn't find it, got a job near DC.

[mufc1878]

Originally Posted by sp2007

Just wanted to say ditto. Well except the born part.

But still, how can PA keep subsidizing schools it can't afford?

I do agree, lets tax those shale gas companies more to make up the difference. At least we will have a fallback when the gas companies leave and we have to fix all the environmental damage.

PA, while not the wealthiest state around, is still decently wealthy. The issue is priorities and demographics. PSU has always had worse funding (even in good economic times) compared to its peer public institutions or superior publics which it tries to compete with.

Unfortunately, PA has an extremely high percentage of aging population and funds need to be diverted to go their needs.

Lastly, I also blame older PSU alums. We have the largest (numerically) alumni base in the country (if not the world) but our endowment is embarrassingly low. The last time I checked, it had an endowment of 1.3 billion system wide. Now compare this to Swarthmore College (which opened around the same time as psu, and is 90 times smaller in student body). Swat has endowment of 1.2 billion.

Even if you don't want to compare public vs. private (which isn't all that fair, i admit), the cal system, UVA, utexas, umich, unc, all fall surpass psu in endowment (which gives them some financial flexibility).

For being 'passionate' about psu, its alumni base does not give back much to the college. Admittedly it doesn't help when we haven't had many (if any) ridiculously successful people who can drop 200+ million on a donation like other public schools perhaps.

[Gettingouttahere]

Originally Posted by sp2007

I do agree, lets tax those shale gas companies more to make up the difference. At least we will have a fallback when the gas companies leave and we have to fix all the environmental damage.

More? Whaddya mean, more? Pa. is the only state in the country that has no severance tax on the billions of dollars worth of natural gas they're sucking out of the ground. Even freaking Texas, hardly a liberal state, taxes its gas industry.

Pa. finally has a booming industry to replace the coal industry and they're letting it romp around like a kid in a candy store. It's criminal!!!

[pit2atl]

Corbett is just um "no good" we need to get him out of office