Dear Commons Community,

 Penn State will close a number of  Commonwealth Campuses, President Neeli Bendapudi announced yesterday in a message to the university.

The university will look into shutting down several of 12 Commonwealth Campuses, and Bendpaudi charged Margo DelliCarpini, vice president for Commonwealth Campuses, Tracy Langekilde, interim provost, and Michael Smith, senior vice president and chief of staff, with recommending which campuses to close.

Bendapudi guaranteed that Abington, Altoona, Behrend, Berks, Brandywine, Harrisburg, and Lehigh Valley will remain open, along with the graduate student-focused Great Valley campus. Penn State Dickinson Law, the College of Medicine, and the Pennsylvania College of Technology will also remain open.

The campuses that could be closed are Beaver, DuBois, Greater Allegheny, Fayette, Hazleton, Mont Alto, New Kensington, Schuykill, Shenango, Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, and York.

Of the 12 campuses that could possibly close, Bendapudi promised that at least some would remain open. No campus slated to close will do so before the end of the 2026-27 academic year. This allows associate degree students enrolling in fall 2025 time to complete their degrees and for two-plus-two students to complete the first half of their bachelor’s degrees before transferring to another campus.

Penn State will allow any student at a campus set to close down the opportunity to finish their degree at another Penn State campus.

“We have exhausted reasonable alternatives to maintain the current number of campuses,” Bendapudi said. “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.”

Bendapudi promised a recommendation on which campuses to close by the end of the spring 2025 semester.

Penn State’s Commonwealth Campuses have seen steadily declining enrollment over several years and have been pointed to as the source of a Penn State budget deficit.

“We have made enhancements in enrollment management, fought for parity in state funding, and sought new ways to expand access,” Bendapudi said. “Yet, despite these efforts, enrollment at many of our Commonwealth Campuses continues to decline, and many of the counties that host these campuses are expected to decrease in population for the next 30 years. Given these realities, we must make hard decisions now to ensure Penn State’s future remains strong. It has become clear that we cannot sustain a viable Commonwealth Campus ecosystem without closing some campuses.”

My colleague, Tanya Joosten at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee,  alerted me to this development.

Tony