Budget Recap: Tracking admin’s budget pessimism

The administration’s budget pessimism needs leavening. First, PSU has accumulated resources that can and should be used to plug holes in the university’s revenue streams that have opened up during the pandemic. Second, federal financial help is coming. PSU is receiving two infusions from the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund: $31 million from funds approved in December and an estimated $54 million from funds approved last week (Budget Town Hall, slide 16). Finally, most of the instruments used to predict fall enrollment are broken – remember that 30% plunge in freshman applications? it’s now in the single digits – and it is unwise to integrate such predictions into the longer-term enrollment forecasts driving retrenchment.