Penn State’s Board of Trustees on Thursday approved the closure of seven Commonwealth Campuses, a move university leaders say was brought on by years of financial, enrollment and structural difficulties but that opponents argue was rushed and failed to consider all options.
Trustees voted 25-8 to approve the university administration’s proposal to shutter the DuBois, Fayette, Mont Alto, New Kensington, Shenango, Wilkes-Barre and York campuses following the spring 2027 semester.
“Two years ago, the Board of Trustees charged President [Neeli] Bendapudi and her team with conducting an analysis of the Commonwealth Campus ecosystem, and the evolving needs of the commonwealth,” board Chair David Kleppinger said. “Her willingness to confront longstanding challenges with clarity, compassion and resolve has brought renewed focus to the essential role these campuses play in fulfilling Penn State’s access mission. By aligning this vital part of our university ecosystem with the demographic realities we face today, she has set in motion a transformation that our institution has needed to prioritize for decades.”
Ted Brown, Donald Cairns, Lynn Dietrich, Barry Fenchak, Chris Hoffman, Anthony Lubrano, Jay Paterno and Nicholas Rowland voted no at the conclusion of the 105-minute meeting held via Zoom. State Secretary of Education Carrie Rowe, Secretary of Agriculture Russell Redding and Secretary of Conservation and Natural Resources Cindy Adams Dunn did not participate because they “determined that the state’s regulatory responsibilities over Commonwealth campus closures conflicted them from voting on the matter before the board,” Kleppinger said.
Trustees who opposed the plan said more time was needed to consider it and felt that not all options had been fully explored.
After months of speculation, Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi in February issued a message to the university community that she had tasked a workgroup overseen by three vice presidents to evaluate 12 Commonwealth Campuses for possible closure.
While putting seven forward for closure, the other five — Beaver, Greater Allegheny, Hazleton, Schuylkill and Scranton — are “recommended to remain open and receive focused investment to support their long-term success,” according to the 143-page recommendation report that was released by the university last week after it was leaked to the media. Penn State’s seven largest Commonwealth Campuses — Abington, Altoona, Behrend (Erie), Berks, Brandywine, Harrisburg and Lehigh Valley — and the graduate studies-focused Great Valley, as well as special-mission campuses, were not considered.
Bendapudi and several trustees who spoke in support of the closure plan characterized it as a difficult but necessary decision for the long-term health and growth of the university. Declining enrollments, demographic shifts and financial pressures — issues not unique to Penn State — made maintaining the status quo impossible, Bendapudi said.
“These campuses have changed lives. They’ve fueled businesses and they’ve brought Penn State into their communities. That pride is earned and the fear of losing it is real,” Bendapudi said. “But that passion does not change the reality that we must contend with. Maintaining the status quo is not sustainable. Many are understandably hoping for a way to have it all, but honestly, the numbers tell a different story.”
The university will immediately begin work on collaborative planning for repurposing the campuses, led by Renata Engel, interim vice president for Commonwealth Campuses, and Mike Steffan, vice president for government and community relations, Bendapudi said.
“They plan to bring together local, state, elected officials, business and community leaders, donors and alumni in every community to chart a new future, one that meets local needs, workforce needs, economic development needs that reflect local opportunity,” Bendapudi said. “That future may or may not involve Penn State directly, depending on what the opportunity is, but we are committed to help shaping it.”
What will become of the campuses was among the unanswered questions that Lubrano and Hoffman said compelled them to vote no.
“I think it’s the cart before the horse for us to decide that we’re going to close them and then have the administration come back to us and tell us what they intend to do,” Lubrano said. “But, you know, we’re going to vote tonight and it will be the most impactful vote we will ever make on this board. It will impact this university long beyond our years. And it will impact human beings, much greater than we can ever imagine.”
Paterno said during a discussion on Zoom after the meeting that it will now be the board’s “responsibility to hold this administration accountable to do the things that were promised on this call.”
The campuses to be closed “face overlapping challenges, including enrollment and financial decline, low housing occupancy and significant maintenance backlog,” according to the recommendation report. Some of those challenges, such as the “demographic cliff” — a projected decades-long decline in traditional-age students entering college — are being faced faced by universities nationwide.
“The projected low enrollments pose challenges for creating the kind of robust on-campus student experience that is consistent with the Penn State brand,” the workgroup wrote. “Keeping them open would require an estimated $19 million in annual financial support, $21 million in annual overhead expense, and more than $200 million in future facilities investment—resources that could be redirected to enhance and strengthen the campuses that remain.”
The greatest challenges varied by by campus, and included projected plummeting regional populations in relatively crowded markets for institutions of higher education, narrow program offerings, low graduation rates and prohibitive costs to deliver “services and experiences expected of a Penn State education.” Ten-year enrollment declines range from 35% at Mont Alto and New Kensington to 43% at Fayette and Shenango.
Penn State administrators say the university allocated $327 million to the 12 campuses over a 10-year period and for nearly three years “has explored many ways to stabilize and strengthen the Commonwealth Campus ecosystem, but despite these efforts, it has become evident that the University cannot sustain a viable Commonwealth Campus ecosystem without closing some campuses.”
Trustee Mary Lee Schneider said the campuses have been an issue of concern since she joined the board in 2015, but “we lacked the financial visibility and, frankly, the stomach to really acknowledge and address the situation.” The university, she added, “can’t ignore these trends anymore.”
“The only challenge I have is I think we should go deeper on the closures, as I fear we will be back here discussing the same facts and circumstances in a few years,” Schneider said.
Collectively, the seven campuses currently enroll more than 3,100 students and 500 employees — 3.6% of all Penn State students, 3.4% of its faculty and 2.2% of its staff.
Penn State will admit new and transfer students to those campuses for the fall 2025 semester, but not beyond and “every student who begins a degree at a closing campus will have the opportunity to complete their degree at Penn State,” according to a university news release. Students at those campuses are receiving “personalized guidance and advising” to ensure they understand their options.
The university also says it will will honor tenure and non-tenure-line contracts. Tenure-line faculty will be offered “need-driven reassignments to remaining campuses,” and non-tenure-line and staff employees will be given “priority hiring consideration” if they apply for open roles across the university.
Plan Met With Criticisms
Opponents of the closure have raised a multitude of concerns and criticisms. The University Faculty Senate adopted a positional report that criticized the closed-door nature of the process and argued for any decision to be put on hold until a comprehensive public assessment could be conducted.
“Such actions, taken without clear evidence and open dialogue, threaten the integrity, mission and public trust of the university,” the report stated.
Senate members also questioned what they described as mixed messaging on the need for closures after Bendapudi said at a senate meeeting that the decision was not being driven by financial savings but rather student success and experience.
“And if that is the case, I can think of no more robust student experience than the one that we offer at the campuses, with very, very, very close collaboration between students and faculty and the kind of student and faculty interactions the small campus affords to students who are to some extent, finding it necessary to have a transitional kind of experience between high school and college,” Robin Bower, an associate professor at Penn State Beaver, said. ”So the campuses indeed allow for and support the robust student experience that President Bendapudi is now putting forward as the reason for these closures.”
In an op-ed published on StateCollege.com, two current and two former trustees and a former Alumni Association Council member wrote that the Commonwealth Campuses account for a tiny portion of Penn State’s $10 billion budget, and that they should be viewed for the good they provide to the commonwealth, not in terms of profit and loss. They called for the university to take more time to consider “to look for innovative solutions.”
One of that op-ed’s authors, Jay Paterno, said on Thursday that a choice between doing nothing or closing campuses wasn’t much of a choice at all, and that he felt trustees had not been presented with complete information.
“If we’re committed to doing what is best for this university, we’d be better off having more information, having more options and having got input from people who have their proverbial hands in the dirt on these campuses every day,” Paterno said. “Simply saying the numbers are the numbers or saying we’ll have to do something now because it’s been long enough is hardly a rallying cry for Penn Staters.
“We should think beyond the people on this call. Think and ask yourself, what is the harm of this university if we allow our best and brightest to come up with new innovative solutions, giving them a little more time? What is the harm if we engage business and community leaders and political leaders, and faculty and students and administrators at these campuses and give them a little bit more time to forge ahead, to reimagine, repurpose and reinvigorate these campuses that are the lifeblood of our educational mission?”
Nicholas Rowland, a Penn State Altoona professor and the board’s academic trustee, wrote in a separate op-ed that the campuses are an integral part of Penn State that should not be abandoned during tough times, and that discussions about their future should have been taking place over decades. Former trustee Ben Novak wrote that Penn State leaders “are bringing great shame” on the university by conducting the process behind closed-doors and keeping those affected in the dark.
“I simply cannot believe that closure is the only, let alone the best, path forward,” Rowland said on Thursday. “In my estimation of these things, we have only just begun to ask the hard questions that in my opinion these campuses have long deserved and questions that we as a board frankly have left so long overdue. I think that closing them now preempts precisely that kind of revitalization.”
Administrators say the proposal came only after years of efforts to reverse decline and was built on extensive data.
Responding to criticisms from some quarters that the closures ran counter to the university’s land-grant mission, Bendapudi noted that Penn State will still have the largest campus system in the country. It also extends its reach throughout the commonwealth through Extension, the LaunchBox and Invent Penn State entrepreneurial and economic development programs, the Digital Foundry and programs like the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.
“We will still be in more counties. We will still be serving more communities. We will still be touching more lives than any other institution of our kind,” Bendapudi said. “But with this plan, now we can plan for the future, and for our future, with clarity, with the commitment to excellence and with the ability to invest in what works. We have not had the ability to invest as much as we need to. Believe me, I know this is difficult. But I also know it’s the right moment for courageous leadership, not to retreat, but to reposition us for the next century of excellence.”
Critics such as the Penn State Faculty Alliance, a group working to form a faculty union, said the decisions in private at “a reckless pace,” while failing to fully analyze the impact on students, faculty, staff and the campus communities.
Employees face uncertainty about future employment, and many students at the campuses come from lower-income backgrounds or are otherwise not easily able to transition to another campus further from home, the alliance wrote in a petition delivered to Bendapudi’s office on Wednesday.
“There has been no analysis of this plan’s financial, educational, or community impact, raising many questions about the legitimacy of the administration’s ‘data-driven’ decisions,” the petition states. “Furthermore, there is no transparent or reasonable plan for how impacted faculty, staff, and students will be treated, leaving a door open for further unethical decisions to be made reactively. Closures will impact hundreds of Penn State workers, including those at campuses that remain open—employees from other locations may be relocated in ways that displace those at ‘safe’ locations.”
Bendapudi on Thursday pointed to the measures being put in place for affected students, faculty and staff
“This is a strategic, considerate and, we believe, a humane plan to allow for orderly transitions, and to maximize opportunities elsewhere. Through this all, supporting our people is my top priority,” she said. “We intend to use this two-year wind down to avoid unnecessary disruption. This is not a cliff, it’s a ramp with support at every step.”
The American Association of University Professors and its Penn State chapter also pushed back, writing that the closures coming at a time when the university says its finances are strong and without involvement of faculty who could provide insight into the role of in-person instruction, mentoring and research was “dismaying.”
Lawmakers have voiced objections as well. U.S. Rep. Glenn Thompson, R-Howard Township, said the university has “lost sight of its mission” and urged it to keep open the DuBois campus in Clearfield County, which is located in his district and which is also facing possible closure of the Department of Corrections’ Quehanna Boot Camp.
“Penn State abandoned its mission to provide educational opportunities to the people of the Commonwealth by shuttering the DuBois campus,” Thompson said in a statement after the vote. “This shortsighted decision will have lasting consequences and I remain disappointed by the University’s lack of vision. We should be working to expand educational opportunities and reimagine what is possible at the DuBois campus.”
Several state legislators have opposed the closures as well. State Sen. Wayne Langerholc Jr. and Rep. Michael Armanini, Republicans who represent the DuBois area, issued statements condemning the decision immediately after the vote.
“I am deeply dismayed that all of the advocacy and education of the significant benefit of Penn State DuBois have fallen on deaf ears,” Langerholc said. “For multiple years, this institution embraced the mantra and model of Penn State and produced students who contribute to the local workforce, drive economic activity, and make our region and Commonwealth stronger. Today that relationship was broken.
“I am committed to working with my colleagues in the House to identify an entity that appreciates our rural area and will take the broken baton to repair and strengthen our community. Our resilience, dedication and strong work ethic will win in the long run. We will meet the challenges in the face of change.”
Added Armanini, “Not only does this decision impact the students of Penn State DuBois, it impacts our communities. The campus provides jobs to residents of DuBois and the surrounding community, income for local businesses who rely on the student body and faculty, and the local industry which benefits from the research of the school and has a talented pool of students to employ after graduation. These closures disenfranchise young students, moving the accessibility of a great educational institution from their backyard to communities much farther away and make the cost of education for them more expensive and difficult.”
Schneider said during her remarks that stagnant state funding support over the last decade is among the external pressures Penn State faces as it makes the decisions about campuses.
“Think about this: If we had just kept pace with the cost of living since our dramatic cut in 2011 we’d have a $150 million, 40% more available in funding today,” Schneider said. “Adding insult to injury performance-based funding formulas are being adjusted, and I’ll say that in a kind way, in such a way that will not fix the imbalance between what Penn State receives per student and what other state related entities will receive.”
Paterno said the closure plan will have to be submitted to Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration for approval by July 1.
