An Open Letter to the Penn State Board of Trustees
21 April 2025
Dear Penn State Board of Trustees,
We write to acknowledge and thank Trustees Jay Paterno and Ted Brown, along with their coauthors of the April 18th op-ed piece entitled "'Abandoning Our Soul Should Not Be an Option.' Closing Campuses Isn't the Only Answer to Meeting Penn State's Challenges," for speaking out in defense of Penn State's land-grant mission and the campuses that embody it.
We ask the rest of your group to consider their primary question: when it comes to the fate of the Commonwealth campuses, "Have all the viable alternative options and innovations been explored?" We believe, as they do, that the answer is a resounding no.
Institutions put their resources into what they value, and while there is often talk about the value of campus students, staff, and faculty members for the larger University, those who work and learn at the twelve campuses that have been designated as disposable have come to understand exactly what the Board and the President value. By taking the path that "requires the least thought and inflicts pain elsewhere," rather than doing the actual work of supporting campuses so that they can flourish and aligning campus programming with emerging needs, the University, with the support of most of your members, shows its hand.
If, as Trustees Paterno and Brown and their coauthors uphold, the cost of maintaining access to a Penn State education is less than one percent of the annual budget, and if that access is not worthy of the investment, then that is a clear message to decades of students and alumni who are proud of their educations and experiences at all campuses across Pennsylvania. They have been and are still now worth your "investment in the soul of Penn State and the heart of our land-grant mission."
Several recent responses to the many calls for consideration of Penn State's land-grant mission suggest that campuses are no longer a necessary part of that mission because students now have access to public higher education through other institutions. This callous response does not recognize, however, what the authors of the op-ed clearly understand: "We are an educational institution charged with fulfilling a mission and promise made in the mid-19th century." The Morrill Act makes clear that it is not the duty of those other institutions to provide this access, but that the duty belongs to Penn State. The sale of land that was under the stewardship of indigenous tribes made Penn State possible, and the proceeds came with an expectation that the citizens of the state who desire an access to a Penn State education should have that access. To continue to cite the recent op-ed, we have "a chance to transform people's lives in accordance with the mission of land grant universities."
Because, as you should know from the many letters, public comments, and articles that have detailed the data, the Commonwealth campuses, far more than the campus in State College, serve the students who were meant to be the beneficiaries of the Morrill Act. Campuses collectively serve the preponderance of in-state students, first-generation students, low-income and Pell-eligible students, adult learners and veteran students, and students from historically underrepresented racial and ethnic groups (World Campus notwithstanding). At some locations, even with the cost of a Penn State education, the number of Pell recipients can reach 50%; at University Park, that number is below 15%. Students who can least afford one are not deterred from earning a degree from Penn State. What the elimination of up to twelve campuses across the Commonwealth will mean for the majority of our students is that the chance to earn a Penn State degree will be foreclosed. The opportunities that we tout when recruiting students will now simply be unavailable—by the choice of the Board and of President Bendapudi—to the majority of Pennsylvanians. With a focus on the budget and the augmentation of services for students at University Park, you forget that those budgetary "line items reflect the life destiny of our students." To delete those line items and columns from your spreadsheets is tantamount to erasure of the same opportunities for those who most need community-based access to this university.
Paterno et al. suggest ways to combat budget issues and enrollment decline with targeted investment in programs that serve regional needs, such as "creating programs to meet that need in areas where there are large numbers of healthcare jobs." In fact, such programs already exist but are threatened by the coming shutdown of campuses. A well-subscribed program in radiological sciences exists only at two locations, New Kensington and Schuylkill. Without our graduates, communities that rely on Penn State for quality providers will not be able to staff their imaging services. Penn State New Kensington is also home to the only program at Penn State in biomedical engineering technology, and most hospitals in the Pittsburgh region run smoothly because of program graduates, many more of whom are needed. Second-degree nursing programs and RN-BSN programs once had footholds in multiple regions, but without the will to invest in strategic partnerships with healthcare systems, Penn State lost that traffic. Programs like biobehavioral health, health policy administration, and rehabilitation and human services, as a group offered at nearly all of the endangered campuses, will no longer help Penn State to have a professional healthcare presence in much of its current footprint.
Also suggested in the op-ed is something that has been a problem at Penn State for decades: "Getting the deans of colleges at University Park engaged to expand the reach of their programs." Approximately twenty-five years ago, when the campuses suffered because they had been constructed as locations only for students in 2+2 pathways and two-year degree programs, the result of growth challenges was to invest in these locations, to offer four-year degree programs to enable a wider range of students to participate in a Penn State experience. Investment paid off, such that total enrollment across the 19 undergraduate campuses in 2011 included over 25,000 students seeking baccalaureate degrees, two-thirds of whom had selected their home campus as their first choice for admission.
After the Core Council Report of 2011, though, Penn State adopted the stance of curricular integrity, which limits the proliferation of multiple degrees that bear the same name. And though we still have not solved that proliferation problem, there has not since that time been a reasonable opportunity to develop novel programs within the University College. Smaller campuses have had to rely on the goodwill of the few deans who opened up their portfolios to make available high-demand majors at locations other than University Park. We have known for a very long time that our own policies and processes have hindered the growth at Commonwealth campuses, and yet no academic leadership has taken a stand to address these structural barriers. Members of the Board of Trustees are now poised to let the full weight of this inaction fall upon those students who most need access to what the University can offer them.
The op-ed raises the significant point that a "decision to close campuses will likely result in reputational harm," and indeed, it already has. Though President Bendapudi has created a lot of fanfare around seeking additional state funding for the University—much needed, given the historical rate of funding for our students—she is currently burning many bridges, particularly in districts where the only reason for support of Penn State is because of our campus locations. Representatives and political leaders in regions that are home to campuses like Fayette, Scranton, and New Kensington have drafted legislation, held townhalls, and reached out to the President—they know what the loss of a campus will do to the economic stability of their communities and to the infrastructure of the state as a whole. It's highly possible that the bad faith with which these decisions have been made, announced, and delayed will not be forgotten anytime soon.
Finally, we encourage the Board to consider that the actual goal of campus closures has not been clearly defined. On Feb 25th, in her announcement of impending campus closures, President Bendapudi wrote, "The challenges we face...are not unique to Penn State, but they require us to make difficult choices." When later asked, however, "What are the projected savings to the University for closing these campuses. What's the number? How was it determined?" President Bendapudi responded, "Please know this is not driven by the savings that we will have for this process." She has made similar public statements to the University Faculty Senate and under oath to the Appropriations Committee of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. The President's narrative has shifted abruptly and appears disingenuous. Because there are no clear criteria guiding these decisions, and because the scope of the potential campus closures will be wide and has been determined without concrete plans for implementation, there are many reasons to consider now what "viable alternative options" can be found.
We urge the rest of the Board of Trustees to stand with your colleagues who see campus closures as a last resort that we should not yet be facing.
Respectfully submitted,
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