During the final year of her bachelor’s program in social work at the University of Pittsburgh, LaShesia Holliday worried she wouldn’t be able to graduate because of an unpaid balance. Though she’d taken steps to lower her cost of attendance, including securing several scholarships, there was still a gap.
She completed her degree in May, thanks in part to a need-based university grant designed to get students across the finish line. Walking at graduation “just felt right,” she said, and it signaled to her three children that “they can do anything they put their mind to.”
Holliday isn’t finished yet. In the fall, she’ll return to Pitt to pursue a master’s in social work — a move that would open up job options, increase her salary and put her family in a better position. But a combination of new caps on federal loans for graduate students and a 2% tuition increase approved by Pitt’s Board of Trustees last month has reignited her worries about affording school.
At the same time that Holliday starts graduate school in Pittsburgh, many students at the university’s four branch campuses in Bradford, Greensburg, Johnstown and Titusville will begin benefiting from a new tuition-free program. The Pitt Regional Campus Tuition Pledge, announced ahead of graduation season earlier this year, will apply to in-state residents with a household income of $75,000 or less.
It functions as a last-dollar program, which covers any leftover tuition for current and incoming students after all financial aid (state, federal and institutional) has been applied.
Pitt hikes by the numbers
- 3% tuition increase for in-state undergraduate students
- 2% tuition increase for in-state graduate students
- 4% tuition increase for all out-of-state students
- 1% tuition increase at all branch campuses
- 22% student fees increase
- 5% housing rate increase
- 4% meal plan rate increase
Pitt’s announcement made it the first public university in Pennsylvania to offer a tuition-free program. The move has been lauded by state officials for making higher education more accessible, but some Pitt students question why the program brings no relief to their costly tuition at the university’s main campus, which, with more than 30,000 students, is by far its largest. No regional campus has over 2,000 students.
“It’s a hard thing for us to hear when we don’t hear much about increasing scholarship rates, or even the possibility of just maintaining our current tuition rates, which are already exceptionally high as it is,” said Student Government Board Member Kylie Baker.
Jared Stonesifer, Pitt’s spokesperson, told Public Source there aren’t any plans to offer the tuition-free program at the Oakland campus, but “issues of access and affordability are critically important to Pitt and are embedded in its strategic plan.”
He declined to comment on why the main campus was excluded from the program.
Stonesifer said the university is committed to providing students financial aid, pointing to the development of grants like the one Holliday used to graduate. He also noted that money allocated for financial aid in the school’s annual budget has increased by nearly 40% since 2020.
“We are also advocating at the state and federal levels for resources to ensure a Pitt education remains accessible and affordable to anyone, as we continue to propel the economic and workforce vitality of the commonwealth,” Stonesifer said.
State funding not the only factor
Since Public Source first analyzed Pitt tuition data in 2023, the university has remained one of the country’s priciest public institutions for in-state students to attend. Tuition has steadily increased over six years, which administrators attribute to inflation and flat state funding.
Pennsylvania’s state-related universities — Pitt, Penn State, Lincoln and Temple — receive funding every year from the state budget for what’s called general appropriations. This money supports tuition discounts for in-state students, and hasn’t increased since 2019 for every school except Lincoln.
“The math is relatively clear that when you hold appropriations flat in an inflationary environment, expenses continue to go up, and we have to figure that out somehow, and so that has resulted in tuition increases,” Pitt Chancellor Joan Gabel told state lawmakers in March.
Experts say that more factors go into a college’s decision to raise costs.
There is a “kernel of truth” in the idea that robust state funding would lead to fewer tuition increases, but it wouldn’t eliminate them, according to Jeremy Wright-Kim, an assistant education professor at the University of Michigan.
He said states should give universities more money if they can afford to, but if they can’t, the affordability conversation shouldn’t stop there.
“I’m wary to say it’s the bad state policymakers that are not giving these colleges enough money, so then they have to increase tuition and make it less affordable for students.”
This is because there are “lots of other financial mechanisms at play,” such as endowments and federal funding that impact prices, Wright-Kim said. These sometimes conflicting pieces make it difficult to balance both student need and the institution’s bottom line, and that tension in higher ed rarely makes for “the most efficient, equitable landscape.”
Students see chancellor’s raise
Public Source spoke to four current Pitt students and one recent graduate about their thoughts on the university’s tuition. Two out-of-state students said they had to take out private loans, which come with high interest rates and are notoriously difficult to repay. None of the students said they agreed with tuition increases.
Andrew Elliott, who graduated in May with a biochemistry degree, said it’s concerning to see tuition increase while the salaries of university administrators increase too.
Pitt’s board of trustees approved a 30% raise for Chancellor Gabel in December, bringing her salary to $1.25 million. The board explained the substantial increase by saying Gabel’s compensation became “misaligned” due to “market conditions and significant turnover” affecting higher ed leaders.
Still, Elliott questions the decision. “[Gabel] also gave interviews to the student paper talking about how we’re going to need to tighten our belts. That’s where you can look at tuition and say, ‘Were these changes justified?’”
Pitt Spokesperson Stonesifer said decisions on tuition, fees and other costs are difficult and “every effort is made to reduce the impact on students.” He said that while inflation plays a significant role in these decisions, Pitt has kept its in-state tuition increases below the inflation rate.
“Since the 2020 fiscal year, in-state tuition increased by an average of 2.2% annually while inflation grew by 3.7%,” Stonesifer said.
A Public Source data analysis found that Pitt’s in-state tuition has increased by an average of 2.7% since 2020, while inflation has increased by an average of 3.6%.
Some pay so others don’t have to
When setting tuition prices for students, institutions often engage in what they view as an “efficient approach, which is charge the students who can pay the highest amount that they can pay, and use that revenue to offset the cost for students who can’t pay,” said Wright-Kim at the University of Michigan.
It seems unfair that with something that should be bringing revenue for them, we’re now seeing, again, increases in tuition.
gideon Tsoutsouris
Tuition-free policies, he said, follow that same approach. In Pitt’s case, he doesn’t view the school’s new regional tuition-free program as “insanely inequitable” by excluding the Oakland campus, but he said he understands the criticism.
“There always needs to be a consideration for how do we get the biggest bang for our buck while making sure that we can continue to fund this,” he said about colleges creating tuition-free policies.
In May, Pitt Provost Joseph McCarthy said the program reflected a “mission-driven decision” rather than a “financially driven decision.” He said the goal is to bolster workforce development in the areas where the branch campuses are located.
Some Pitt students and observers have wondered whether enrollment and the potential for a state funding boost could also be driving the move.
Robert Kelchen, an education department head at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, has been compiling financial data on universities across the country to predict college closures.
Each of Pitt’s branch campuses has experienced nearly a decade of enrollment losses, according to Kelchen’s calculations. Meanwhile, Pitt’s main campus has experienced growth.
Stonesifer said the university’s enrollment data shows a modest uptick for all regionals in 2025, the first year not captured in Kelchen’s data. Stonesifer also noted that the Titusville and Bradford campuses saw small growth in prior years. Overall, enrollment at the four branch campuses has decreased nearly 30% since 2016.
Similar losses were observed at some Penn State satellite campuses before its board decided to close seven schools last year, though Kelchen said Pitt’s branch campuses are a little bigger and don’t appear to be struggling as much as the Penn State schools.
Kelchen said when tuition-free programs are created, it usually applies to an entire university system (such as Pennsylvania’s state-owned schools), or just the main campus if it has few students who would qualify. A program that applies to only branch campuses signals two needs: to boost their enrollment and take pressure off the main campus, he said.
Asked whether boosting enrollment is an aim of the new program, Stonesifer did not answer directly but said enrollment at the branch campuses is expected to grow this upcoming academic year.
Pitt has touted record enrollment numbers at its main campus for the last three freshman classes, but with that have also come concerns about overenrollment from students and long-term residents in Oakland. Last year, Pitt placed hundreds of first-year students in hotel rooms because there wasn’t enough housing on campus.
This fall will mark another large class, with an expected influx of over 5,000 first-year students. For Gideon Tsoutsouris, vice president of the College Democrats at Pitt, these numbers spur confusion rather than excitement.
“It seems unfair that with something that should be bringing revenue for them, we’re now seeing, again, increases in tuition,” he said.
Will performance-based funding lower costs?
Dollars follow students — “whether it’s their own money, their family’s money or they’re bringing their Pell grant,” said Michigan’s Wright-Kim. However, that doesn’t mean colleges base their entire enrollment strategies around revenue.
“There’s still this benefit to broadening access,” and making sure students who want to pursue their postsecondary degrees are able to, he said.
Wright-Kim thinks institutions need state and local support to ensure that growth isn’t at the expense of anyone.
In recent years, university and state leaders, including Gov. Josh Shapiro, have made efforts to increase higher ed funding. This led to the creation of a Performance-Based Funding Council to explore a supplementary funding model for three of Pennsylvania’s state-related universities, including Pitt.
The model was approved by lawmakers in November and funded for the first time in last month’s state budget. A $10 million pool was allocated, less than the $30 million Shapiro proposed.
Of the $10 million, 35% will be equally distributed among the three schools, with the remaining 65% to be doled out based on enrollment, emphasizing Pell Grant recipients, students who graduated from an underperforming high school and students who earned high-demand degrees.
Each school can also increase its share of the money by improving graduation rates by 5% each year, keeping cost of attendance low and having a high-demand degree production rate of 70%.
Pitt’s budget was crafted with the expectation of receiving $7.5 million in performance-based funds. Instead, the school will receive around $2.7 million from the pool.
Will the gap leave students with more costs to shoulder?
To that, Stonesifer said the school’s budget was crafted with “contingency plans in place … to minimize the impacts to our community,” and tuition rates will not change for the academic year.
Update (8/7/2026): This story was updated after publication to include additional perspective from Pitt on the enrollment levels at its regional campuses.
Maddy Franklin reports on higher ed for Pittsburgh’s Public Source, in partnership with Open Campus, and can be reached at madison@publicsource.org.
Ada Perlman contributed reporting.
This story was fact-checked by Ada Perlman.
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