HARRISBURG (TNS) — Pennsylvania’s state university system next year is hoping to build on the historic investment it received this year from the commonwealth while also asking for direct student aid to produce graduates in high-demand areas.

The State System of Higher Education’s governing board on Thursday voted unanimously to approve a request for the state to invest $21 million more, a 3.8% increase, to support its operating budget. That would bring its total appropriation request to $573.5 million.

System Chancellor Dan Greenstein said an appropriation of that size would allow for it to freeze on tuition at the state level at $7,716 for the in-state undergraduates for a fifth consecutive year. Each university, however, does have the option of setting a different rate with the system board’s approval.

Keeping the increase within a three-year average of annual changes in inflation also would hold true to a commitment made to the General Assembly last spring that if the system received the historic $75 million increase to support its operating budget that it received, it would only ask for an inflationary increase in the future.

Additionally, during the meeting held at the PennWest California campus, the board approved asking the state to provide $112 million for the system’s 10 universities to enroll and support students pursuing degrees in areas where significant labor shortages exist in this state. Specifically, system officials identified those areas as in the fields of healthcare, education, engineering, social work and computer science.

Some $99 million of that amount would be used to provide financial aid to students to help pay for their college costs.

The rest would go toward paying for additional supports needed to offer those high-cost degree programs as well as provide students with supplemental instruction, career advising and mentoring to ensure they complete their education in those fields.

In an earlier interview, Greenstein pointed out that targeted request is rooted in what the state’s employers require more so than what the system needs.

“You don’t need to get it from the State System but you got to get them from somewhere,” he said. “Where are you going to get the teachers from? Where are you going to get the computer scientists? Remember Amazon didn’t come to Philadelphia because there weren’t enough [of workers with those skills] and universities across the state couldn’t produce enough.”

The chancellor said having the state-owned universities that offer programs in those high-need areas be part of the solution makes sense.

Using a tool the system created to examine numbers of graduates needed to address the state’s workforce gap, Greenstein said it figures its universities would need to annually produce about 1,500 more teachers, 1,400 in business areas and 700 more nurses and physician’s assistants each year to do its part.

“What’s stopping us from delivering those students?” Greenstein said to the board. “The biggest thing stopping us from growing where we need to grow in those credentialing areas is – even though we’re the most affordable higher education option available in the state — it’s still too expensive for so many students.”

System board Chairman Cynthia Shapira commended system officials for crafting an appropriation request “that just makes total sense.”

No other board member commented about that request during the meeting that was interrupted for about a half an hour when an Office of the Chancellor employee in attendance experienced a health emergency.

Other highlights of the meeting include:

• System-wide offerings: Shapira offered an update on the student information system, saying it is on track to make it easier for students at its 10 universities to access courses and programs offered at other schools in the system by 2025.

This initiative began at PennWest, the university formed last summer from the consolidation of California, Clarion and Edinboro universities, where it is already in use. She said the student information system will go live at Commonwealth University, the consolidated university formed by Bloomsburg, Lock Haven and Mansfield universities, later this month.

“This in my mind is huge,” Shapira said. “And just one example of amazing innovation that’s going to yield benefits for all of our students and really for all of Pennsylvania far into the future.”

• Campus climate: Results of a campus climate survey are now publicly available on the State System’s website that Greenstein said will be used to initiate conversations at universities about way to address areas where improvement is needed.

Based on the responses from more than 13,000 respondents including students, faculty, staff and management, campus safety ranked as the area that received the most positive responses while employee engagement and politics were areas where work is needed.

Faculty liaison to the board, Amanda Morris from Kutztown University, urged the board to take serious the poor showing of the results for employee engagement in the survey as it relates to faculty.

“We are the who make our students feel comfortable, who feel committed to the campus. They are connected. You can’t disconnect us,” Morris said. “We’re in the trenches every day. We’re working with our students. We’re working with staff and faculty. This is a serious problem.”

• Next redesign phase: The system also announced it is embarking on the third phase of its redesign that seeks to draw in non-traditional students to help meet the state’s workforce needs. Greenstein pointed out that is necessary given that the number of high school graduates is projected to decline from 130,000 in 2026 to about 113,000 in 2037.

He said the system isn’t going to abandon serving those “traditional” students but it needs to expand its reach to students from low-income communities, first-generation students, those who chose not to enroll in college immediately after high school, and those looking for a credential but not a degree to get a better job.

“We have to be able to think about expanding into those areas as well,” Greenstein said.

Along with schools that make up PennWest and Commonwealth universities, the State System universities, which enroll about 85,000 degree-seeking students, also includes Cheyney, East Stroudsburg, Indiana, Kutztown, Millersville, Shippensburg, Slippery Rock and West Chester universities.