PSU board approves closure of seven Commonwealth campuses by a 25-8 vote

Pennsylvania State University’s board of trustees on a split vote Thursday approved a plan put forth by President Neeli Bendapudi to close seven of its 20 Commonwealth campuses with precipitous enrollment declines.

The campuses, which are spread from Northeastern Pennsylvania to Western Pennsylvania, will shut following the 2026-27 school year. The plan is subject to approval by Pennsylvania’s acting education secretary Carrie Rowe and regulatory authorities.

If it stands, the move would be the largest remake of the Pennsylvania flagship university’s Commonwealth campus system in its history, a fact underscored by trustee after trustee at the nearly two-hour meeting noting it is the most important vote they’ll likely ever cast.

» READ MORE: Some Republican lawmakers are pushing back on Penn State’s plan to close campuses. Could that jeopardize its state funding?

“We can’t ignore these trends anymore,” said trustee Mary Lee Schneider. “We’ve got to do something.”

Schneider joined 24 other board members in approving the plan following the discussion on Zoom. Eight, or about a quarter, of the trustees voted against the proposal.

“I don’t believe we’ve given ... the communities themselves an opportunity to reimagine themselves,” said trustee Anthony Lubrano, asking the board to delay the decision.

Trustee Chris Hoffman, noting he is a farmer and is in touch with rural Pennsylvania where some of the campuses to be closed are based, said he has heard from people who have ideas how the campuses could be revitalized.

“I just think that this process as much as I appreciate it and as much as I appreciate all my colleagues on this board, we really have moved very, very quickly,” he said, referring to the three-month study the university undertook.

» READ MORE: Penn State board plans to vote next Thursday on Commonwealth campus closure plan

The campuses to close are Wilkes-Barre in Northeastern Pennsylvania, York, Mont Alto and DuBois in central Pennsylvania and Fayette, Shenango and New Kensington in Western Pennsylvania.

The majority of board members, underscoring their support for Bendapudi, her administration and their analysis, said they believed it was right to act now.

“Today, (Bendapudi) has set in motion a transformation that our institution has needed to prioritize for decades,” said David M. Kleppinger, board chair.

Bendapudi, who has led the nearly 88,000-student university for three years, addressed the Penn State community in an online address an hour after the vote.

» READ MORE: Penn State considered 12 campuses to close. Here’s what they examined in choosing 7 to shut down.

“Even when change is expected it can still feel deeply personal and difficult,” she said. “It is certainly one of those moments.”

Before trustees made their decision, she urged them to support the plan, while recognizing “how deeply emotional” and “consequential” the vote would be.

“The path that we recommend has been shaped by data, not just quantitative, but qualitative,” she said. “Over the past 10 years, the seven campuses recommended for closure have experienced a 43% decline in enrollment. The financial picture is also equally sobering.

“We are spreading our students, faculty, and staff so thin that we jeopardize the quality of education and the support that we can offer. We are subsidizing decline at the expense of growth.”

The public was not permitted to address the board, but submitted comments in advance of the vote, many of them impassioned pleas not to close the campuses.

Trustee Jay Paterno said the fight is not over, noting education secretary Rowe has a sway.

“The ball is now in the governor’s court,” he said.

Gov. Josh Shapiro has not weighed in on the plan. The three cabinet secretaries who serve on Penn State’s board, including Rowe, did not attend the meeting. Kleppinger said they determined that “the state’s regulatory responsibilities over Commonwealth campus closures conflicted them from voting on the matter.”

Faculty groups and some Republican lawmakers have spoken out against the plan, saying it didn’t consider faculty input or the economic impact on rural communities where the campuses are located.

Nicholas J. Rowland, a professor of sociology at Penn State Altoona and the trustee who represents faculty on the board, voted no on the plan.

“No matter how many times I come back to it, I simply cannot believe that closure is the only, let alone the best, ... path forward,” he said. “Put another way, I think we owe them more than closure.”

More than 20 trustees spoke at the meeting, some describing the difficulty they had making the decision.

“I’m struggling with it,” said trustee Kelley M. Lynch, immediate past president of the Penn State Alumni Association. “But like many others, I absolutely recognize that we cannot continue with the Commonwealth campus system as it operates currently.”

She underscored the importance for Penn State to fully support the remaining 13 campuses.

“We don’t want to be revisiting this again in a few years,” she said.

She also said any vital programs on the closing campuses, such as Mont Alto’s forestry program, must be maintained and relocated and Penn State must commit to helping to positively repurpose the campuses that are closed, even if the university itself no longer has a presence there.

“I’ve seen the frustration in many emails, the news articles, social media posts, letters to the editor expressing concern that community input was not considered during this first phase,” Lynch said. “So I need you to confirm that during this next phase, this is exactly when this repurposing happens, and this is exactly when community members, local industry, local government, alumni will be encouraged to participate.”

Bendapudi assured her that would happen.

University officials said the closures are necessary to address a precipitous decline in enrollment at the campuses since 2010 and projected population reductions. It also comes amid an increasingly challenging higher education landscape where closures and mergers of private schools and in the state university system have occurred.

By closing the campuses, the university would erase an annual net loss of nearly $20 million in direct expenses, which could be redirected toward programs and employees serving a larger proportion of the student body, university officials said.

The campuses were picked based on a holistic look at various factors, including enrollment declines, population projections, housing occupancy, student performance, other colleges in proximity, finances, and maintenance backlog. They enroll nearly 3,200 students and have experienced enrollment drops from their peaks ranging from a high of 68% at Shenango to 51% at Mont Alto.

The five campuses that were considered for closure but were spared are Hazleton, Scranton, Greater Allegheny, Beaver and Schuylkill.

The campuses in the Philadelphia region — Abington, Brandywine and the graduate education-focused campus at Great Valley — were not considered for closure.

Over the next two years, the administration plans to help students graduate or transfer and to assist faculty and staff with finding other positions. The university is committing to keeping tenured faculty and honoring contracts for nontenured faculty, administrators have said.

But the university did not rule out layoffs for some employees, though it said on a frequently asked questions portion of its website “we are committed to minimizing the impact on our people to the greatest extent possible.”

Bendapudi and trustees noted that even with the closures, Penn State has more campuses than any other land grant university in the country. Penn State’s archrival Ohio State has six, trustee Schneider noted.

“I’m a huge fan of beating Ohio State at just about anything,” she said, “but I’m just not sure that’s the right contest.”