A plan to overhaul Pa.’s higher education landscape is a long time coming, but questions remain.

In his budget address last year, Gov. Josh Shapiro made clear that Pennsylvania’s system of higher education wasn’t working, with “colleges competing with one another for a limited dollar — duplicating degree programs, driving up costs, and actually reducing access.”

He vowed by the following year to “present a comprehensive and meaningful reform plan for higher education.”

On Tuesday, Shapiro will deliver that plan during his budget address, promising more details on a blueprint he rolled out Jan. 26 that called for combining Pennsylvania’s state universities with its community colleges under a new governing structure, reducing tuition at state-owned colleges to $1,000 for families making the median income of $70,000 or less, and instituting a performance-based funding system for public colleges.

» READ MORE: Gov. Josh Shapiro proposes sweeping reform of Pa. state-funded higher education

And the new funding plan, he said, would include a component that for the first time in Pennsylvania would award colleges money for keeping their graduates in the state — addressing a long-standing “brain drain” concern that too many leave for jobs elsewhere.

“So if a college or university knows they are going to get measured by how many students stay in Pennsylvania, they are going to be more eager to connect them with internships and employers here in the commonwealth,” Shapiro said.

» READ MORE: Temple aid to help make tuition free for low-income Philadelphia families

Many questions about the overhaul proposal remain. And whether Shapiro can muster bipartisan political support he needs to get more funding remains to be seen.

But a couple things are clear: The governor’s multipronged effort would put Pennsylvania at the forefront nationally among states trying to improve their higher education systems. Experts say the state demands it, considering the precipitous decline in enrollment at both its state universities and community colleges. The 10 universities in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE), enrolling 82,688, have lost more than 30% of enrollment since 2010, and community colleges are down 37%.

Second, many are pleased that a governor is finally trying.

“The fact that he has even surfaced higher education as a major policy issue is quite an accomplishment in this state, which has been reluctant to do anything,” said Joni E. Finney, retired director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Research on Higher Education.

» READ MORE: Penn State expanded its branch campuses decades ago. Now, some say that’s one reason state universities are struggling.

But she pointed out that it doesn’t deal with Pennsylvania State University’s Commonwealth campuses, some of which are in the same or neighboring counties as PASSHE schools — and act as competitors.

“It’s a saturated market out there and we have fewer and fewer students,” Finney said. “That’s the most difficult thing to address, and not surprisingly, it wasn’t addressed: How does Penn State and this new system work together?”

Here are the plan’s key points.

PASSHE’s universities and the state’s 15 community colleges would operate under a new governance structure, aimed at streamlining pathways between schools to improve offerings for students. Some other states, the nearest being New York, have such a structure.

Asked whether closures or mergers were being considered — PASSHE merged six schools into two in 2022 — Shapiro said in an interview: “I want to keep them open. I want to add resources so we can strengthen these schools.”

Whether the current PASSHE board of governors would survive is uncertain. But the governor has been clear that community colleges — which do not have an overarching governing board — would not be absorbed by PASSHE, but remain equals.

“The devil is in the details,” said Donald Guy Generals, president of Community College of Philadelphia. “None of us agrees with giving up local control.”

He thought that was a challenge when he previously headed a community college in the State University of New York, where community colleges and four-year universities are part of the same system.

“Just about everything had to go through Albany,” he said.

But he said he favors developing a strategy that meets Shapiro’s goals.

“The governor’s vision is something we should all embrace and get behind,” he said.

Dan Greenstein, PASSHE’s chancellor, agreed, noting that Pennsylvania ranks 49th in state funding for higher education and not much better in affordability.

“Sure, it doesn’t include everything that maybe some people want, and it includes some things that some people don’t want, but if that becomes an impediment, we see that gap growing between our workforce needs and our ability to fill them and we see ourselves falling further and further behind other states.”

Performance-based funding — which awards colleges money based on their performance in certain criteria, such as graduation and retention rates — isn’t new. About 30 states have some form, and they have received mixed reviews, noted Dustin Weeden, associate vice president of the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, based in Colorado.

A 2016 article for the Century Foundation outlined some criticism: “States employing performance-based funding either decreased their degree productivity or they simply do not outperform other states. In some cases, colleges responded to performance-based funding by enrolling fewer low-income students while spending more on non-needy students.”

The programs that perform best limit the number of metrics so that the money has an impact, and there has to be enough money set aside to make a difference, Finney said.

“If the state sets clear priorities like Shapiro is trying to do on this with affordability and cost-effectiveness, we may be able to get somewhere,” she said.

It’s also important to differentiate among schools, such as community colleges and state-related colleges, that serve different populations and have different admission standards, said Greenstein, who previously worked at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which invested in performance-based funding.

PASSHE recently instituted a program for its schools but found it was using too many measures. Now, it has honed the list, looking mainly at enrollment, but also mission, and it’s working better, he said.

“You get a certain amount for every student in the door, and you get premiums for low-income students, underrepresented minority students, and students who are retained beyond the second year,” he said.

Penn State president Neeli Bendapudi has long championed performance-based funding, and in an October op-ed that appeared in PennLive, called for lawmakers, the governor, universities and other constituents to develop a system.

“I have worked in states that distribute funds to public universities in this way, and it ensures that universities and states are working together on shared goals for workforce and economic development,” she wrote.

Shapiro said a bipartisan group will develop criteria. In addition to awarding money for keeping graduates in-state, he said, there also will be incentives for producing graduates in such shortage areas as nursing and enrolling first-generation students.

A lot of questions remain about Shapiro’s proposal to reduce tuition to $1,000 a semester for low-income families. If it’s a so-called last-dollar scholarship, which means students’ other aid would be applied first, it’s questionable how much impact it would have.

Students from those families likely already qualify for a federal Pell grant, which at most is $7,395, and a state grant, which at most is $5,750. Annual tuition at PASSHE universities is $7,716, and even after adding fees, it would not rise above the federal and state aid students already receive.

At community colleges, the tuition is even less.

“For the $1,000-a-semester thing to be meaningful, we have to know that it is not what we call last-dollar,” said Sara Goldrick-Rab, an expert on college affordability. “Most community college and PASSHE students at those income levels have their tuition covered.”

But if it is a “first-dollar” scholarship, then students could reserve their federal and state aid to cover room and board, which is more expensive than tuition.

When asked whether it would be a last-dollar scholarship, Shapiro said: “That will be something that is worked out through our higher education working group.”

Shapiro’s plan proposes to increase by $1,000 state grants to students attending state-related and private universities, which could have greater impact, considering their higher tuition rates. Temple University, one of Pennsylvania’s four state-related schools, announced Thursday a last-dollar scholarship that would help make tuition free for Philadelphia students who come from families earning $65,000 or less.

While Shapiro’s plan doesn’t address what should happen with Penn State’s Commonwealth campuses, the university is already discussing cuts.

Bendapudi last month proposed that the university cut $54 million, or 14.1%, from its 2025-26 budget for the 19 Commonwealth campuses, which have lost nearly 30% of enrollment since 2010. Some campuses enroll only a few hundred, she said.

She has not indicated whether the university will consider campus closures. In an interview Friday, she said: “We are actually nowhere near making any such decision.”

Shapiro said the state-related universities have been “wonderful participants” in the process of working toward his blueprint, along with PASSHE and community colleges. Many of the presidents, including Bendapudi, sit on the group that has helped to shape Shapiro’s plan.

“What is clear from the hard work they put in over the last eight or nine months is that they don’t want to be in competition with one another,” Shapiro said. “They don’t want to harm one another.”