Grow PA becomes popular scholarship program in its first year
Soon after State Senator Scott Martin (R-Lancaster) spearheaded the creation of the Grow PA Scholarship Grant Program, it got an externally induced hiccup.
In July 2024, Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro signed the legislation for implementation the following year to aid Pennsylvania students going into in-demand fields. Yet then-President Joe Biden’s rollout of his new Free Application for Federal Student Aid suffered from data errors whose administrative consequences delayed advertising of Grow PA until around March 2025.
Martin was relieved to see the “complete [federal] disaster” had no apparent lasting effect on his brainchild’s popularity. Within three weeks of Grow PA opening, well over 5,000 qualifying students applied. When The Independencespoke with the senator last week, he said 5,737 people participate in the program. Of those, 2,048 attend four-year private colleges or universities, 1,914 attend a fully public Pennsylvania college like Millersville University or Shippensburg University, 790 attend a state-related university like Pennsylvania State, 581 attend Pennsylvania College of Technology in Williamsport or Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology in Lancaster. The remainder are other private colleges, community colleges, or trade schools.
“I think it’s indicative of the help kids want [and] their ability to be pointed in the right direction as to a high-demand job,” Martin said.
Those receiving annual grants of $5,000 maximally through Grow PA agree to choose from more than 460 eligible programs of study and to stay in Pennsylvania for at least one year post-graduation for every year they took the grant. Recipients can attend four-year or two-year colleges as well as technical schools, though the senator said those parameters could be broadened in the future.
The top five fields represented among participants are nursing, early childhood education, business administration/management, biology and biological sciences, and accounting. The program’s focal career areas also include agriculture, criminal justice, education, and mathematics.
Martin represents a district that extends from Robeson Township in Berks County southwest to Manor Township in Lancaster County and southeast to Maryland-bordering Fulton Township. In the locales he represents, he sees occupations like nursing, the trades (i.e., plumbers and pipefitters), and veterinary medicine struggling with especially tough shortages. That last category owes especially to his region’s large farming sector.
“Man, we need to get more young people into veterinary-related care,” he said. “And I’m not talking dog and cat; I mean large animal veterinarians for livestock is [in] a huge shortfall.”
Bailey Fisher, the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau’s government affairs director, also cited livestock veterinarians as a group that needs to grow in the Keystone State and other agriculture-heavy regions.
“It’s a shame to see, because we are in dire need,” she said, noting the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine is providing excellent training in that field. Still, she said, the challenge to keep the school’s graduates in Pennsylvania remains.
The broader field of agriculture, a major industry across the state, has suffered from the much-deplored “brain drain” afflicting the state’s workforce. An October 2024 report by the Pennsylvania Independent Fiscal Office projected that the state’s population will decline by 0.5 percent from 2025 to 2030. That demographic reality is hitting farming and ranching hard.
“Our ag workforce industry has definitely experienced struggles in terms of getting new folks,” she said. “And I think there’re a lot of young folks [who] come out of high school or college who are excited to go into the industry, but as you know it does take a little bit of experience in agriculture. You’re working around livestock and large equipment, so we want to make sure that these young kids who are coming in to work on the farm are responsible and experienced.”
The senator also views the aging trend as urgent.
“We were put in a position that we have to compete not just economically but demographically because we just had the smallest kindergarten class enrollment statewide since 1986 two years ago,” he said.
Fisher explained that the extent of the farm worker shortages is difficult to quantify, though they are definitely palpable in dairy farming and mushroom growing, both of which demand workers’ painstaking dedication.
“[Those farmers] don’t know what a vacation is, probably, because they’re out there year-round and their job requires a strong and reliable workforce, which some unfortunately don’t have right now,” she said.
Pennsylvania does have a relatively young farming and ranching workforce relative to other states, with an average age of 55.4 compared with 58 nationally as of 2022. But that state average did rise from 54.8 since 2017 and farm staff needs aren’t abating. Still, Fisher said, Pennsylvania’s comparatively young farming community is a major bright spot amid a concerning industrial landscape.
“That gives students an opportunity to work with young and beginning farmers,” she said. “I think that it goes to show that the agriculture industry is very much alive in PA. We wouldn’t have that statistic otherwise.”
Ultimately, she suggested, all Pennsylvanians should care about this problem because it concerns the very industry that feeds them.
“Agriculture is food security and, so, the more we have of a labor issue, the more we are risking food security,” she said. We have to make sure that we’re getting our students educated so they can go and work on these farms so our farms can produce the food, fiber, and fuel that our nation relies on.”
Whatever the commonwealth does to entice students to remain in-state after graduation to work in such key industries, free-market advocates caution against relying too much on public incentives. American Institute for Economic Research economist Thomas Savidge told The Independence that lawmakers should attack the underlying disincentives of overtaxation and overregulation to make a state like Pennsylvania a destination young people won’t want to leave.
“While these scholarships might encourage students to remain in-state temporarily (especially with the nudge of not having to pay back the money so long as the student remains in the state for an equal number of years he or she received the scholarship), labor market realities show that college graduates are mobile and willing to move across state lines to pursue a job,” he opined.
Grow PA grows
Grow PA’s legislative proponents secured $25 million for the scholarship program’s first year and got that raised to $32.5 million for the coming year, theoretically enabling it to provide scholarships to 6,500 full-time students (though many part-time students do receive the grants). The program shouldn’t have any trouble maximizing its use any time soon. Martin said roughly 11,500 applications have flowed in since Grow PA’s inception.
Amidst the high interest in this program, he sees hope that Pennsylvania can correct its population trajectory.
“I feel like it’s kind of like been turning the Titanic,” he said. “It’s been a slow trudge, but I think we’re pointed in the right direction.”
Worsening commonwealth’s unenviable demographic position is its uniquely high average yearly higher education cost (at $31,600 for four-year postsecondary students) and its preponderance of hefty student debt.
“It was no surprise to see so many of our young people easily poached to other states on out-of-state merit scholarships and things like that,” the senator observed.
Thaddeus Stevens President Pedro A. Rivera II voiced happiness with the help the grant program provides 91 of his college’s students — about six percent of them — who would otherwise pay $9,000 in tuition for one year of study.
“The Grow PA grant program is one way that supports students of all backgrounds to take a step into a bright future,” he said. “It makes a dramatic impact to the cost of higher education for those of our students who have received it.”
Pennsylvania College of Technology, Slippery Rock University, Penn State, West Chester University, and Commonwealth University are the five schools with the most Grow PA grant recipients. The program also has a tuition-waiver component intended to address this issue by attracting students from other states, letting those who meet Grow PA criteria pay in-state tuition at public colleges rather than out-of-state rates, saving the students a bundle. Over 70 individuals now avail themselves of that opportunity.
Martin believes Grow PA can serve as a model for future higher education reforms. He wants the commonwealth to disburse more education funding through similar programs rather than just handing money to colleges in exchange for a soft promise to keep in-state tuition low.
“I think that model didn’t work,” he lamented.
Bradley Vasoli is the senior editor of The Independence.
