Pennsylvania students expect to get a break on tuition at Penn State University.

But if Gov. Tom Corbett continues cutting state aid to the university, the gap between in-state and out-of-state rates will close, Penn State President Rodney Erickson said. Undergraduates from Pennsylvania pay $15,124 annually in tuition, while those outside the state pay $27,206.

Corbett has proposed a 30 percent cut for Penn State in his 2012-13 budget. At a budget hearing Wednesday, Erickson said Penn State would keep tuition increases as moderate as possible next year.

But he noted that Penn State’s aid is poised to drop to levels last seen nearly 30 years ago.

“At some point with continuing cutting, we simply can’t do business as usual year in, year out,” Erickson told the House Appropriations Committee at the hearing. “We need to know where this is heading.”

The governor also is proposing 30 percent cuts for the University of Pittsburgh and Temple University. Lincoln University’s budget is proposed to be held flat.

If Corbett’s budget is approved, state aid for Penn State, Pittsburgh and Temple would essentially be cut in half from what it was two years ago.

Pitt Chancellor Mark Nordenberg offered his thoughts on where he thinks this funding situation is leading.

“It really is not an overstatement from my perspective that in certain respects what we’re seeing is the dismantling of a long, long commitment by the commonwealth of Pennsylvania to public higher education, in particular to its public-research universities,” he told lawmakers.

Erickson and Nordenberg made several references to what some suspect might be Corbett’s motivation for the deep funding cuts for the “state-related” schools: the privatization of public higher education in Pennsylvania.

The Corbett administration dismisses that notion.

Administration officials have said the spending plan reflects tight budget times.

Moreover, Corbett press secretary Kevin Harley added, “regardless of how much in taxpayer dollars they receive from the state, Penn State and Pitt declined to live within their means, so they simply raised tuition.”

He noted that Penn State’s tuition rose by nearly 149 percent over the last 12 years, while Pitt’s rose by almost 141 percent.

Harley asked, “Why should state-related colleges be exempt from the laws of economics?”

After the budget hearing, House Appropriations Committee Chairman William Adolph, R-Delaware County, said he doesn’t want the state-related schools to become private universities.

He anticipates broad support among lawmakers to try to soften the proposed cuts.

“We have to try to find the revenue. ... There’s an awful lot of support for higher education,” Adolph said.

Leaders of the four state-related universities offered lawmakers a glimpse of some of the ripple effects of declining state aid.

They said educational programs get cut. Closing branch campuses becomes inevitable. Faculty and staff vacancies go unfilled. Layoffs occur.

Nordenberg said that if last year’s 19 percent funding cut for Pitt was covered entirely through staff cuts, his university would have eliminated 1,000 positions.

Maintenance on facilities gets pushed aside. Community services that the universities provide disappears. Faculty start to seek jobs elsewhere.

“Our faculty is complaining right now that their salaries are not competitive,” Lincoln President Robert Jennings said. “What ultimately ends up happening, you lose some of your best people.”

Students take more time to complete their degree because they have to work more hours to pay for college, Temple President Ann Weaver Hart said. Or students decide they can’t afford to go to college.

Jennings said Lincoln’s student body shrinks by 5 percent to 7 percent every time tuition there rises.

Erickson said he was encouraged by the support and empathy for the universities expressed by Republican and Democratic lawmakers. “There seems to be a recognition that we contribute a great deal to the commonwealth,” he said.

Each of the four state-related schools will make the case for more funding at a hearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday.

The House hearing was the first public meeting with lawmakers for Erickson since his November appointment as Penn State’s president in the wake of the child sex abuse scandal involving former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.

The only lawmaker to venture close to the scandal in his questioning was Rep. Jeff Pyle, R-Armstrong County. He asked Erickson to look him in the eye and assure him that no state taxpayer money will be used to fund the university’s legal bills resulting from the scandal.

Erickson provided that assurance.

“As I’ve said repeatedly, no use of state taxpayer dollars, no use of tuition money or no use of donor money,” he said.

The cuts

Gov. Tom Corbett’s proposed state aid to the four “state-related” universities: Penn State, Pittsburgh, Temple and Lincoln

-Penn State: $163.5 million, a $64.2 million decrease.

-Temple: $97.9 million, a $42 million decrease.

-Pitt: $95.3 million, a $40.8 million decrease

-Lincoln: $11.2 million, the same as this year.