Penn State plans to close some Commonwealth campuses

Pennsylvania State University on Tuesday announced plans to close some of its 20 Commonwealth campuses as enrollment there continues to fall.

“It has become clear that we cannot sustain a viable Commonwealth Campus ecosystem without closing some campuses,” President Neeli Bendapudi said in a statement to the campus community Tuesday.

Just how many campuses is uncertain, but none will close before the end of the 2026-27 year, she said. That will allow students on the path to an associate’s degree to finish, and those going for a bachelor’s will be able to complete their first two years in time to transition to another campus, she said.

“Every student who begins a Penn State degree will have the opportunity to complete it at Penn State,” she said.

The three Commonwealth campuses in the Philadelphia region ― Brandywine and Abington and the graduate education-focused campus at Great Valley ― will not be considered for closure. They are among the system’s largest. The others that also are among the largest and are safe from closure are: Altoona, Behrend, Berks, Harrisburg, and Lehigh Valley, Bendapudi said.

“These campuses comprise nearly 75% of total Commonwealth Campus enrollments and 67% of campus faculty and staff,” Bendapudi said.

The other 12 campuses ― Beaver, DuBois, Fayette, Greater Allegheny, Hazleton, Mont Alto, New Kensington, Schuylkill, Shenango, Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, and York ― will be evaluated by a team led by several top administrators appointed by Bendapudi. She expects to have a recommendation from the evaluation team no later than the end of this semester and to make a final decision before commencement, she said.

Penn State is not alone in facing campus closures. The move comes as the number of high school students has dropped nationally, with another precipitous decline expected to begin in 2026 and as the competition for students becomes more fierce.

In recent years, several area colleges have closed or merged, most recently in June, with the University of the Arts and Cabrini University. Others include Salus University, which merged into Drexel, and the University of the Sciences, which merged into St. Joseph’s University. Peirce College in Philadelphia plans to merge into Lackawanna College.

Additionally, six Pennsylvania state universities were merged into two entities in 2022.

“We have exhausted reasonable alternatives to maintain the current number of campuses,” Bendapudi said, adding that reports dating back decades have recommended action on the Commonwealth campuses. “We now must move forward with a structure that is sustainable, one that allows our strongest campuses — where we can provide our students with the best opportunities for success and engagement — to thrive, while we make difficult but necessary decisions about others.”

Rumors have been circulating for months about the potential closure of some campuses. At a House Appropriations Committee hearing last week, Bendapudi declined to provide specifics on the university’s plan, saying only that all options were on the table.

It also came up at a faculty senate meeting last month and again on Tuesday where some faculty frustrated by Bendapudi’s decision launched a failed attempt to pass a vote of no confidence in her, but it was tabled.

“I believe this is a premature motion in difficult times,” said associate professor Daniel Foster, in making the motion to table.

Faculty questioned whether students who attend Commonwealth campuses so they can live at home and save money would lose out on a Penn State experience. They also expressed concern that Bendapudi said she intended to make the decision on which campuses to close rather than rely on the university’s shared governance system.

“What is happening now is not” shared governance, said Josh Wede, faculty senate chair and teaching professor of psychology.

He asserted that the decision to close campuses might be the most important one in decades at the university.

“While I respect and value the role of shared governance, this particular decision …is an administrative one that I will make,” Bendapudi said in her announcement. She said faculty and staff would be involved in planning for the transition.

Some faculty and students worried about the impact of Bendapudi’s announcement.

“A lot of my faculty are now texting me and messaging me and saying students are stopping class because they are freaking out about this,” said Paul Frisch, an assistant teaching professor in history at Penn State Scranton.

Angela Pettit, an associate teaching professor at the Shenango campus in western Pennsylvania, said faculty are concerned about their job prospects.

“These campus closures are going to leave a fair number of faculty unemployed in one of the toughest job markets in higher education,” he said. “Not all will be able to relocate.”

Bendapudi said the university would try to help faculty and staff find positions elsewhere within the system.

Others said they appreciated Bendapudi’s willingness to sit through the “grilling” and her sharing of information about potential closures, noting that it was much different from what happened at UArts, which closed with only one week’s notice.

Enrollment has been declining steadily at the Commonwealth campuses. It stood at roughly 24,000 last June, down about 30% since 2010. This fall, overall enrollment at those campuses fell about 2%, but the decline in first-year enrollment was more steep: 8.4%, or 578 students.

The university said last June that all but two campuses — Lehigh Valley and Harrisburg — had lost enrollment, ranging from 16% to 50% over the last 10 years.

Bendapudi said Tuesday that the university has an obligation to provide a quality experience for its learners and that some campuses have become too small. Four of the campuses had fewer than 400 students in fall 2024, with Shenango the smallest at 309.

“It’s not appropriate for them to be in a class of two students,” she said.

More than 380 employees at the Commonwealth campuses — about 21% of those eligible — took a buyout last year. Also at that time, the university said it was consolidating the leadership of some of the campuses and reducing the number of chancellors.

Meanwhile, the main campus has grown to more than 42,000 students; last fall, enrollment increased by 365 students, or less than 1%.

» READ MORE: Penn State aims to grow University Park enrollment as population at other campuses wanes

The university in December announced plans to grow the first-year student body at University Park, its main campus, over the next few years. Nearly 9,200 freshmen attended the main campus in the fall. Eventually, the school would like to reach 10,000.

Across all campuses, Penn State’s overall enrollment last fall stood at just under 88,000.

The university has been aiming to close a deficit, which stood at $191 million in 2022, by this summer. The university is on track to finish this fiscal year with a balanced budget, a university spokesperson said in December.

Jay Paterno, a member of Penn State’s board of trustees, said he was concerned about the impact closures would have on the communities where they are based.

“At the end of the day, we have a land-grant mission to this Commonwealth, and the Commonwealth campuses have always been a part of that land-grant mission,” he said. “I’d like to see us look for solutions to keep everything open.”

Bendapudi, however, said the board of trustees has charged her to deal with the Commonwealth campuses.

The team evaluating the situation — led by Vice President for Commonwealth Campuses and Executive Chancellor Margo DelliCarpini, Interim Executive Vice President and Provost Tracy Langkilde, and Senior Vice President and Chief of Staff Michael Wade Smith — will look at enrollment and population trends, programs, and other factors in determining which campuses will close, she said.

“Our demographic trends do not support the number of campuses we have,” she said. “We will do it with as much care and humanity as we can, but we have to do something.”