Daniel Greenstein.  Credit – Bryan Thomas for The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education interviewed Daniel Greenstein, the outgoing Chancellor of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. His major initiative during his tenure was to consolidate six colleges into two new merged institutions. Here is the introduction.

When Daniel Greenstein took over as chancellor of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education in 2018, it was bleeding students and money, and he was an unknown quantity as a system leader. Last month he announced he would step down in October, having led for six tumultuous years that included merging six of the system’s 14 four-year public universities in an attempt to save all of them from fiscal insolvency. Whether he ultimately “saved” the system still remains to be seen, but Greenstein has shown he can marshal the forces of a large public-university system for change.

Greenstein, the former director of postsecondary success for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation began his tenure at the system, known as PASSHE, with the usual listening tour of campuses and constituencies. But he also proved more forthcoming than many past chancellors, sources say. He shared data and other information more openly and cultivated less adversarial relationships with the system’s labor organizations. The good will he bought helped when he announced a controversial plan to combine six of the system’s most troubled campuses into two new institutions, Pennsylvania Western University and Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania. That initiative has consumed most of the rest of his stint in office.

First-time enrollment rose by 3.4 percent across the system in the fall of 2023, but overall enrollment fell by 2.2 percent and is still down 31 percent from its 2011 peak of 120,000 students. Commonwealth’s second fall class in 2023 saw a more than 10-percent increase in enrollment over its first, but Penn West’s fall-2023 enrollment was down nearly 12 percent from the previous year. Enrollment figures for the fall of 2024 are not yet available.

Greenstein is leaving PASSHE for a position he says he will announce next month. He’s interested to see if the work he’s done has taken root. Back in his Gates days, he says, the foundation often invested in people who had a particular idea or drive more than in the organizations they worked for. But “at the end of the day, you always want to know what happens after the leader leaves,” he says, “because that’s inevitable.”

The entire interview is worth reading if you have any interest in the state of higher education in an era of declining enrollment.

Tony

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