Audit: PSU needs to improve on tuition, in-state access, safety

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The state’s auditor general scolded Penn State University on Thursday for “whopping” tuition increases, accepting out-of-state students on its main campus at rates eclipsing those for Pennsylvanians, and for insufficient screening of employees working with youth.

Eugene DePasquale, releasing results of the first-ever performance audit of the state’s largest university, said Penn State has made progress on reforms since the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal rocked the campus in 2011.

Nevertheless, he said the university must further improve governance practices and standards for transparency and safety. He said the General Assembly needs to reduce Penn State’s 38-member trustees board — and those of Pennsylvania’s other state-related universities — and bring Penn State under the state’s Right-to-Know Law, from which it now is largely exempt.

Penn State receives tens of millions of taxpayer dollars annually, and as such, has an obligation to avoid pricing middle-class Pennsylvanians out of classroom seats, Mr DePasquale said. He also said Pennsylvanians should be the top priority in filling those seats.

But that’s not what is happening, he said, at the priciest public research university among Big Ten schools, one of the costliest in the nation for in-state students.

“Over the past 30 years, Penn State’s in-state tuition — at $19,347 for the 2016-17 academic year — has increased by a whopping 535