Tuition rates may rise if state legislators do not provide funding to Penn State within the next week and a half, university officials said.
Appropriations to Pennsylvania's four state-related universities -- Penn State, University of Pittsburgh, Temple University and Lincoln University -- continue to remain in limbo while legislators debate the legalization of gambling in Pennsylvania's casinos.
"Whatever the appropriation doesn't cover, the tuition will have to," Penn State spokeswoman Annemarie Mountz said. She couldn't give a specific figure
as to how much tuition may increase.
Penn State President Graham Spanier -- along with the presidents of Temple and Lincoln and the chancellor of Pitt -- co-signed a letter to Pennsylvania House Speaker Keith McCall, D-Carbon, urging him and other legislators to provide the universities' expected appropriations. The appropriations for the four schools are expected to total almost $680 million, said Gary Tuma, press secretary for Gov. Ed Rendell.
The letter said the universities plan to begin mailing spring semester bills on Nov. 13, giving legislators only eight more days to allow table games like poker and blackjack in casinos.
"To get the bills out and have them paid in time for the spring semester, it's a pretty tight timeline," Mountz said.
State appropriations provide more than 20 percent of the income in Penn State's 2008-2009 general funds budget, according to the University Budget Office. The letter emphasized the importance of the state appropriations to keep tuition down for the more than 158,000 students attending state-related universities.
"In order to maintain the low tuition increases at our universities, there needs to be assurance that the funding levels in our pending appropriation bills will be enacted soon," the letter from the university leaders read.
The letter never mentioned table games, which legislators said are necessary before the appropriations can be made. The letter urged legislators to provide the appropriations with money the state already has.
Tuma said that even if the necessary funds do exist, passing the table game legislation must come first in order to give Pennsylvania a balanced budget.
"The governor believes it would be irresponsible to release that money without having the mechanism in place to fulfill the agreement to balance the budget for two years," Tuma said. "We are just two or three months away from having to present the next year's budget."
The state's main spending bill passed Oct. 9, providing state universities and community colleges with their necessary funding. Because Penn State is a state-related school, its appropriations must be passed separately and are called "non-preferred."
