Dive Brief:
- Penn State University plans to close some of its 19 smaller commonwealth campuses in the coming years as it faces financial and demographic pressures, university President Neeli Bendapudi said Tuesday.
- Bendapudi tasked three Penn State officials with leading a group that will make a final recommendation in the coming weeks on which of 12 campuses under review should close.
- Excluded from the review are Penn State’s seven largest Commonwealth campuses — in Abington, Altoona, Behrend, Berks, Brandywine, Harrisburg and Lehigh Valley. Those locations account for 75% of Penn State’s commonwealth enrollment and 67% of faculty and staff, Bendapudi said.
Dive Insight:
Bendapudi attributed the decision to cut the university's Commonwealth footprint to changing demographics, noting that populations of many of the commonwealth campuses’ home counties are expected to decline over the next three decades.
“Historically, our smaller campuses draw most of their students from their local area, and there is no realistic way to recruit nationally or internationally to maintain enrollment at these locations,” Bendapudi said.
At a townhall last fall, Margo DelliCarpini, Penn State’s vice president for commonwealth campuses, further detailed the issues facing the university’s satellite campuses. She highlighted a “trend away from regional comprehensive campuses towards flagship and land-grant institutions.”
Demographic declines on top of students opting to attend larger public institutions are all the more challenging in a competitive state for colleges. “Pennsylvania is also an incredibly crowded landscape for higher education,” DelliCarpini said then. “There's more competition for fewer students.”
Enrollment in the commonwealth system has taken a hit. Between 2020 and 2024, fall headcounts across commonwealth campuses declined 11.8% to 22,724 students. At some of those campuses, the drop has been steeper. At Penn State’s Fayette campus, for example, fall enrollment plunged nearly 30% during the same period.
“Given these realities, we must make hard decisions now to ensure Penn State’s future remains strong,” Bendapudi said Tuesday. “It has become clear that we cannot sustain a viable Commonwealth Campus ecosystem without closing some campuses.”
Bendapudi didn’t say how many campuses could close in total. “While it is clear that not all 12 campuses can continue, it is equally clear that a number of them will,” she said.
Those that close will stay open at least through the end of the 2026-27 academic year, the president said. They will also take new students in fall 2025, while students attending any campus that closes will be able to attend another location in the Penn State system or online.
Penn State overall is relatively healthy financially, posting a surplus and increases in total revenue and assets for fiscal 2024.
But enrollment issues at the commonwealth campuses have proved financially challenging in recent years, according to administrators. In January 2024, the university said it needed to cut nearly $100 million from its fiscal 2026 budget, with the majority of reductions coming from the commonwealth campuses and administrative and student support units.
In 2024, Penn State offered voluntary buyouts to faculty and staff at its commonwealth campuses to ease budget pressures. According to the university’s latest financials, 383 employees took the offer, representing about 21% of those eligible. It also restructured leadership, putting 11 commonwealth campuses under four chancellors.
Bendapudi’s announcement of future closures came just days after she pressed Pennsylvania lawmakers for more funds. State lawmakers have kept the university’s general funding flat for years. Penn State also receives a relatively smaller share of its revenue from public funds compared with many other of its peers nationwide, according to an outside analysis from 2021.
Penn State receives about $5,789 per in-state graduate, much less than other public institutions in Pennsylvania. Bringing it up to parity levels would mean an added $156 million in state funding, Bendapudi noted.
