To the members of the Temple family:

I write to you today asking for your help for our great students. Temple students from Pennsylvania could be hit with a tuition increase if the state legislature does not approve the university’s appropriation.

Currently, Temple receives an annual appropriation of about $150 million from the state. These funds are vitally needed to help keep tuition as low as possible for Pennsylvania students. At Temple, nearly 22,000 undergraduate students now get a discount of almost $12,000 a year, which totals $48,000 over four years.

Without our state appropriation, this in-state discount — which Pennsylvania families have depended on for decades — will not be able to continue, thereby affecting the price of tuition for students who are Pennsylvania residents.

I'm asking you to take immediate action. Legislators return to Harrisburg today. We need everyone — students, faculty, staff, parents and alumni — in Pennsylvania who has a stake in Temple's tuition or that of any other state-related school to call their elected officials in the state House and Senate today.

We need you to say, "I support the students of Temple University and want immediate passage of legislation for Temple’s appropriation (currently Senate Bill 328)." Please use our Temple Advocates Legislative Outreach Network (TALON) site to get your elected officials’ names and phone numbers and call them today.

Thank you for helping us maintain our students’ tuition discount, and keeping the “public” in Philadelphia's public university.

For more information, read my op-ed in last week’s Philadelphia Inquirer.

Sincerely,
Richard M. Englert
President