Philadelphia, PA - Auditor General Eugene DePasquale today announced he will conduct a performance audit of Temple University.I want to make sure that middle-class Pennsylvania families can afford to send their kids to college,“I want to make sure that middle-class Pennsylvania families can afford to send their kids to college,” DePasquale said. “Temple, and other state-related universities, receive hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds each year to help make college affordable.
“This audit will, among other things, examine Temple’s efforts to control costs and hold the line on tuition increases. This is an important issue because Pennsylvania students currently have the highest college debt level in the nation.”
Specifically, the audit will cover July 2016 through the end of the audit, focusing on the following objectives:
Tuition rates
- Capital improvements,
- Accuracy of academic statistics,
- Background clearances for employees or others who interact with students, and
- Effectiveness of sexual harassment prevention policy.
“College affordability has always been a concern for middle-class families,” DePasquale said. “If a university — especially a state-related university — is not properly using state money then-current and future students are forced to pay higher tuition or forgo a college education altogether.
“I firmly believe that we cannot allow a single student to skip college because they could not afford tuition.”
Temple University is the next in DePasquale’s audits of state-related colleges and universities. He completed audits of Penn State in 2017 and the University of Pittsburgh in 2015. Previous audits of Temple and Lincoln University were completed by the Department of the Auditor General in 2011 and 2012, respectively.
