The Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education will ask Gov. Ed Rendell to approve $483 million for the 14 state-owned universities for 2010-11, a spokesman said Tuesday.
Spokesman Kenn Marshall said the state system's board of governors approved the appropriation request that represents an increase of $17.8 million, or 3.8 percent, over this year's.
The request will become one of many that state agencies send the governor, Marshall said.
"It'll become part of the general fund," Marshall said. "The governor will take this request and put it together with his budget proposal in February.
The system will receive about $38.2 million in federal money this year, and officials expect to receive that amount next year -- to offset a $54 million reduction in state money that occurred since the beginning of the 2008-09 fiscal year. But federal funding will vanish in 2011.
"The federal stimulus funding will help us this year and next," said board chair Kenneth M. Jarin in a statement. "We hope that over the next two years, the economy will recover sufficiently and the state's revenues will rebound."
Marshall said state-system tuition would not increase this year, beyond a 3.7 percent hike the board approved in July.
The board approved a tuition raise of $196 for this academic year that made the price for full-time, resident undergraduate students $5,554.
The state appropriation combined with anticipated federal funds would help support the system's proposed 2010-11 operating budget of nearly $1.5 billion. The proposed budget represents an increase of about $61.9 million, or 4.4 percent over this year's spending total.
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