(The Center Square) – The top official at Pennsylvania’s State System of Higher Education on Wednesday expressed disappointment in Gov. Josh Shapiro’s proposal to flat-fund the massive system in 2026-27, but he said it was too early to predict a tuition increase for next school year.

Chancellor Christopher M. Fiorentino spoke at a budget hearing held in the Capitol on Shapiro’s proposal to give the 83,000-student system the same funding of about $626 million that it received for 2025-26.

Leaders of the system originally asked for a 5% increase.

“We felt that 5% would put us in a position to hold tuition level. We still have that position,” Fiorentino told the House Appropriations Committee. “We feel that an investment in the State System of Higher Education is an investment in the future of the Commonwealth.”

The 14-campus system has faced strong headwinds in recent years, including significant enrollment declines. In 2022, several schools merged to create PennWest, and state Rep. Charity Krupa of Fayette County asked Fiorentino about the status of the merger.

Fiorentino said carrying out the merger was “uncharted territory” for the system and it was doing as well as it could.

“We made assumptions around how much we thought we could save in terms of administrative overhead,” he said. “Unfortunately, I think some of the projections were overestimates of what the potential savings were.”

The system, he said, is working to adjust the allocation formula it uses to distribute the state money it receives.

Community colleges around the state are also flat-funded at about $277 million in the governor’s budget proposal. Tuesday Stanley, president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Commission for Community Colleges, said they had been looking for 6%.

Shapiro’s budget proposal is just that – a proposal – and it is certain to change as his administration negotiates with lawmakers ahead of the June 30 budget deadline. Stanley said the 15 community colleges were flat-funded this year, and if it happens again, more cuts will be necessary.

“We do not want to impact student success, or access,” she said.

The online undergraduate market is “huge and getting bigger,” Fiorentino said in response to a question from Lackawanna County Democratic Rep. Kyle Mullins. While 18- to 22-year-olds who live on campus have been the “longtime bread and butter” for the system, Fiorentino said, it is making a big effort to cater to online students.

Cambria County Republican Rep. Jim Rigby, a former police chief, asked for specifics on the proposed spending of $10 million for first-responder training at community colleges. Stanley said those training programs are “very expensive” and carried out at a loss, and particularly the ones that focus on fire training.

Megan Coval, president of Butler County Community College, said her school runs a public safety program at a loss of about $500,000 a year, and the state money would be “tremendously helpful.”

Leaders of Pennsylvania’s four “state-related” universities testified at a separate budget hearing earlier in the day. Those four schools – Penn State, Temple, Pitt, and Lincoln universities – operate independently but receive streams of funding that must be approved in the Legislature by a vote of two-thirds of a chamber, rather than a simple majority.

Shapiro proposed level funding for three of the schools and for Lincoln, the smallest, a 5% increase in funding. That excludes a new dollop of $30 million in “performance funding” that would be tied to performance metrics.

The infusion of state money lowers costs at these schools significantly for Pennsylvanians.

For instance, University of Pittsburgh Chancellor Joan Gabel told lawmakers the average in-state undergraduate at Pitt is paying $21,000 a year less than out-of-state counterparts because of the state help.