The new state board for higher education is getting started as colleges face challenges and scrutiny

Pennsylvania’s new board overseeing higher education will hold a public hearing Thursday in Philadelphia to gather ideas on developing a strategic plan to improve performance and coordination among colleges, as the sector faces perhaps its greatest challenges in decades.

Both private and public universities have been losing enrollment as the number of high school graduates falls — with another dip beginning next year and a 12% decline expected in Pennsylvania by 2037. Public trust in colleges has faltered, while concerns about cost and student debt have mounted.

Add to that increasing scrutiny by the federal government under President Donald Trump, whose administration has paused and terminated some research and grant funding and imposed new rules such as restrictions on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Meanwhile, projections show in 2023 Pennsylvania was short more than 60,000 workers who require a postsecondary credential in essential areas, such as healthcare, teaching, and advanced manufacturing. If nothing is done, that gap will grow to more than 200,000 within eight years, and the gap is most pronounced in Southeastern Pennsylvania, said Kate Shaw, executive director of the Pennsylvania State Board of Higher Education.

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“Pennsylvania’s higher education is among the most decentralized in the nation,” Shaw said. “It’s been very difficult to ensure that there’s strong coordination and a single vision for where the sector should be going. And so the state board was created as a coordinating council whose mission is to set a strong, clear course for higher education in the commonwealth.”

The 21-member board, created during the last state budget cycle with representation from public and private college sectors, as well as labor, business, elected officials, and students, has already held two public hearings on developing its strategic plan.

A third will be Thursday at 11 a.m. at St. Joseph’s University, where president Cheryl McConnell is a member of the board. Three more hearings will be held before the board puts forth a plan by Sept. 1.

Shaw talked with The Inquirer about the board, its work, and what lies ahead.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

It started operating in September of 2024 and it meets monthly, and we also have four ad hoc committees. … They are a bylaws committee; a data committee to put forward recommendations regarding the kinds of data that the board will need; a transfer of authority committee to provide recommendations to the full board, which will then in turn provide recommendations to the General Assembly and to the governor, regarding what existing higher education authority should be transferred to the state board of higher education; and the strategic planning committee to ensure that we have deep stakeholder engagement across the commonwealth regarding strategies we need to employ to meet critical goals.

We have very intentionally invited a broad swath of stakeholder groups to provide us with input … business and employment leaders, labor leaders, students, elected officials, as well as higher education leaders.

Expanding access to college by strengthening access to broadband in rural and urban areas, making better use of dual enrollment in high school to give students a head start on career prep, helping students with some college to complete their credentials. … We have 1.1 million adults in Pennsylvania who started but did not complete a college credential, and then things like creating materials to effectively communicate linkages between the types of postsecondary credentials that people might get and their careers and wages.

We had a high school counselor at our hearing at Penn State who had really, really excellent and concrete recommendations regarding how best to communicate with students and families about what their options might be and what the true cost of college is and maybe the return on investment.

By the end of the St. Joe’s hearing, we will have had more than 400 people attend these hearings. We also have a statewide survey. We’re also meeting with smaller groups, like … community college presidents, to make sure I understand their concerns and strategies. I’m meeting with the Lancaster Chamber [of Commerce] to get their perspective on how to better align higher education to their needs.

We’re seeing that there’s a little bit of rebound in the past year or two, but overall we’ve seen a pretty dramatic drop in enrollment in each sector. The only sector that looks like it hasn’t had a significant drop would be the state-related universities overall, but if you disaggregate that data and you show the branch campuses vs. the main campuses, you see dramatic drops on the branch campuses.

The board doesn’t have a formal role in the process by which Penn State is going to close campuses. But I think the opportunity that the state board of higher education has is to be a thought partner with Penn State and to think about what happens when Penn State closes those campuses.

» READ MORE: Penn State plans to close some Commonwealth campuses

How can we partner with Penn State and people in those communities to make sure those communities still have a robust opportunity to pursue postsecondary education? There may be an opportunity for the State Board of Higher Education to provide some analysis or to convene some key stakeholders in those regions and to think together about how we might strengthen the higher education ecosystem in that area.

Our job as a State Board of Higher Education is to minimize any negative impact of those closures and … to try to figure out some creative ways to actually strengthen higher education in the areas where these campuses might close.

There’s a number of higher education institutions that are actively determining how to navigate in a really challenging situation.

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The State Board of Higher Education is charged with developing resources and tools for institutions that would seek assistance to navigate financial instability. … We haven’t started working on those materials yet, although we’ve started to collect examples from other states regarding what they do.

The only formal role the State Board of Higher Education has had in the performance-based funding council is to establish it. I am watching what they are doing and listening with a lot of interest.

The board is discussing and considering how it can best support institutions as they move through this. At this point, we do not have a definitive concrete global response to what’s happening,

There’s never been a more important time for an entity like this to look across the sectors, think about what’s best for the commonwealth, think about how higher education can best support the long-term economic prosperity of the commonwealth, and then provide support and guidance to bring our sectors together to work to meet those goals.