Penn State will request a 12% increase in state aid after several years of flat funding

Pennsylvania State University plans to request a $30 million, or 12%, increase in state funding for the 2025-26 fiscal year.

That would raise the school’s general appropriation to $272 million and would follow several years of flat funding. The appropriation has remained the same since the 2019-20 academic year.

“Despite our statewide footprint that contributes more than $12.1 billion annually to Pennsylvania’s economy, Penn State’s funding per in-state student ranks far below the national average and last among the Commonwealth’s public universities — a disparity that has placed significant pressure on our tuition rates and budget,” Penn State president Neeli Bendapudi said.

“I need your help communicating with everybody how desperately we need fair funding for Penn State.”

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The request, which was approved at the board of trustees meeting Friday, comes as a new state council established under the previous budget cycle is expected to work on performance-based criteria that will be used to help determine funding for Penn State and two of the other four state-related universities, the University of Pittsburgh and Temple.

Penn State uses its state appropriation to help offset tuition increases for its 42,000 in-state undergraduates. Penn State said it also would use the money for need-based grants, deferred maintenance, academic programs that foster workforce priorities and salary increases for faculty and staff.

Also at the board meeting, Bendapudi noted that more than 18,500 new students joined Penn State this year, though numbers are preliminary; an official snapshot is expected in October. They come from more than 900 public high schools across Pennsylvania, every U.S. state and more than 100 countries, Bendapudi said. The university did not provide a racial breakdown of students, as some schools have, following the U.S. Supreme Court decision last year to ban the use of race in admissions decisions.

The new students, whom Bendapudi called “a competitive group,” have an average high school GPA of 3.68 across Penn State’s system, including the Commonwealth campuses.

At University Park alone, the average GPA is 3.96, Bendapudi said.

“That is unbelievable,” she said.