HARRISBURG, Pa. — After six years of flat state funding, President John Fry testified for two possible increases in his first appearance in Harrisburg at the Pennsylvania House of Representatives’ budget hearings Thursday.
In the hearing, members of the state House questioned Pennsylvania’s four state-related universities — the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania State University, Lincoln University and Temple. In October 2024, former President Richard Englert proposed an additional $25.3 million in addition to the $158.2 million Temple has usually received. Penn State requested $30 million and Pitt asked for $9 million in additional funding.
Fry also advocated for a share of the $60 million in performance-based funding that Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro included in his budget address earlier this month.
“Despite some of the questions being hard ones and pointed, it was also a very cordial thing and I appreciate that it was very simple,” Fry said in an interview with The Temple News. “I’m really grateful for what the Commonwealth has done for us, and if they can do more, that would be great.”
Some of the biggest takeaways in Fry’s testimony include a new recruitment program for middle-to-high school students, economic development around the North Broad Corridor, growing enrollment to 35,000 students, Name, Image and Likeness for student athletes and tuition affordability.
Fry also repeatedly stated that developing the area around Temple’s Main Campus would be the most effective way at decreasing crime.
After Temple’s Board of Trustees voted to raise tuition for in-state students this year by $444, Fry told lawmakers that he would freeze tuition if given the funding the university requested in their budget. Temple has raised tuition in the last couple of years due to the flat funding from the state.
“I think all resources are tight across the state,” said Jaison Kurichi, the associate vice president for budget. “I think all our state-related peers are in the same kind of situation from a finance standpoint. Flat funding hasn’t helped any of us from that standpoint. Ultimately, if we’re flat-funded again, it just means we have to make other changes in our operations that unfortunately will hurt students, faculty and staff.”
Fry introduced an initiative called Temple Future Scholars, engaging students from grades 7 through 12 in college preparation and additional resources. The program will be available to students in the School District of Philadelphia. It was officially unveiled by the university Friday morning.
“Given how challenging it is in terms of demographics and how competitive it is in higher ed, getting to students early, starting to help them build capacity — many of them, hopefully, will choose Temple,” Fry said.
Fry also outlined his enrollment strategy, as he proposes enrolling around 35,000 students again on campus. While Temple has grown its student body since a recent enrollment decline, it has not had an enrollment of this size since 2019. Sixty-two percent of Temple students are from in-state, and Fry plans to attract more students from the “power counties” surrounding Philadelphia — Delaware, Montgomery, Chester and Bucks.
Temple, Penn State and Pitt also addressed what Fry called an “arms race” that NIL has become for student athletes and their colleges. They discussed an ongoing settlement that ex-collegiate athletes filed against the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which “may change the entire student athlete experience,” according to the other colleges.
Former Michigan football players, which then extended to many more student-athletes, filed a lawsuit against the NCAA in September 2024 which negotiated for about $2.5 billion to eligible student-athletes, including back pay from 2016. If the NCAA opts into the settlement, then institutions like Temple can compensate their own student-athletes.
“I really worry about the impact on our student athletes, and I think the sort of pressure that comes from things like NIL, the use of the transfer portal, I think this creates a very disruptive experience for them academically,” Fry said. “Most of them are not going to go on to become professional athletes and make their living.”
Fry also outlined plans to develop North Broad between the Main Campus and the Health Sciences campus, as well as the newly acquired Terra Hall in Center City. This initiative would be done through public-private partnership, which would mostly prioritize commercialization of the area.
In the rest of the hearing, the three universities in the performance-based funding discussed the metrics and creation of the council. None of them had a role in determining what formula the council will use when they decide on how to allocate the $60 million that Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro included in his budget proposal.
“Are you going to stay with the same eight, nine, 10 [metrics] or are you going to be able to change them?” Kurichi said. “How does it impact one school over another? Is one school going to benefit a lot? How do you kind of normalize that from that perspective? We’ll see how it unfolds over the next six, seven months.”
In 2022, former President Jason Wingard proposed a 3% increase to the university’s appropriations, around $4.6 million, The Temple News reported. The next year, Wingard proposed a 16% increase but received the same flat funding, $158.2 million.
Pennsylvania typically rests extremely low in funding per student for state appropriations in comparison to other states.
House Republicans have blocked state-related funding for universities in prior years for a multitude of reasons, including Temple’s refusal to commit to a tuition freeze and requiring more publicly available information on spending and proposals.
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