“If you build it, they will come” was not the way to go about higher education in Pennsylvania, experts say.
Declining birth rates and rising tuition costs are combining with other economic factors to make it harder — especially for smaller campuses — to fight enrollment declines and survive.
“It’s not a new problem — it’s an accelerating problem,” said Julie Wollman, professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education.
The contraction of Pennsylvania colleges in just the past few years is obvious:
• In 2021, the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education merged six state-owned universities into two. Clarion, California and Edinboro universities became Pennsylvania Western University (PennWest), while Bloomsburg, Lockhaven and Mansfield universities became Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania. With those moves, the number of state-owned universities went from 14 to 10.
• This year, Penn State University, one of the nation’s largest universities, announced it will shrink its Commonwealth Campus system, saying the current 19-campus system no longer is viable.
Only seven branch campuses are not at risk of closing, the university said. None of those is in Southwestern Pennsylvania. That leaves vulnerable Penn State New Kensington in Upper Burrell; Penn State Greater Allegheny in McKeesport; Penn State Beaver in Monaca, Beaver County; and Penn State Fayette, the Eberly Campus, in North Union, Fayette County.
• Even private universities are not immune. The Philadelphia area saw three recent mergers: Philadelphia University merged with Thomas Jefferson University in 2017; the University of the Sciences merged with St. Joseph’s University in 2022; and Drexel and Salus universities agreed to merge in 2023. All were longstanding private schools.
• Four colleges or universities closed outright last year: Cabrini University near King of Prussia (the campus now is owned by Villanova University), Clarks Summit University in Lackawanna County, Pittsburgh Technical College in Oakdale, and the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
“Higher education is so overbuilt in Pennsylvania,” Wollman said. “We have far more schools than needed. They’re all good schools, but there’s a lot of them.”
It appears there was no coordination among the State System of Higher Education, Penn State and the University of Pittsburgh when they built their campuses because they are targeting much of the same, limited population, Wollman said.
And they’re not the only ones.
Consider the number of colleges in Southwestern Pennsylvania alone.
There are Penn State’s four campuses, the PennWest campuses, Slippery Rock and Indiana universities of Pennsylvania, and Pitt’s branch campuses outside Greensburg and Johnstown. And Allegheny, Beaver, Butler and Westmoreland counties each has a community college, some with multiple campuses.
Allegheny County alone is home to another 13 colleges and universities, including Pitt’s main campus in Pittsburgh’s Oakland section.
The nine-county statistical area around Pittsburgh, meanwhile, has seen almost no population growth, remaining at about 2.4 million since 2010, according to Statistica.com.
More concerning for colleges that rely heavily on students from Pennsylvania is the state’s declining youth population, those 20 and younger. That sector has shrunk by almost 26% since 1960, according to state population data.
Combined with workplace changes that have seen companies dropping degree requirements, and high school graduates increasingly able to enter the workforce via the study of skilled trades, colleges are facing an almost perfect storm of potential student declines.
“They are going to have to find ways to adapt,” said Doug Zander, associate vice president of enrollment management and dean of admissions at Millersville University in Lancaster County. “There are a lot of colleges in Pennsylvania, and they’re all competing for the same market. There isn’t enough traditional student population for all of us. Something’s got to give.”
Student demographics
While national college enrollment is up modestly, the numbers aren’t all good news for traditional colleges.
2024 saw an overall 4.5% increase in enrollment from the previous year, but was up just 1% from 2019 levels, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, and much of that increase was attributed to community colleges and other undergraduate certificate programs.
Featured Local Businesses
While freshman enrollment was up last fall by 130,000 students nationwide, almost half of that, 48%, was attributed to community colleges.
Projections indicate that Pennsylvania will face a 17% decline, or 24,000 students, in high school graduates from 2023 to 2041, according to data from the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. The commission largely bases its projections on birth rates.
Penn State had 87,995 students enrolled across its campuses last fall, making it one of the largest public universities in the nation. Last fall, the university welcomed its second-largest incoming class with more than 9,000 first-year students.
But those gains are not being enjoyed by many of its branch campuses.
Across Penn State’s commonwealth campuses, there was an overall 2% decrease in enrollment last year, continuing a 10-year trend that has seen branch campus enrollment fall by about 24%, according to the university.
State System schools’ enrollment has continued to decline as well, dropping from about 98,000 students in 2018-19 to 83,000 in 2023–24. However, enrollment stayed stable this fall, graduate enrollment was up 4.5% and transfer enrollment was up 2.2%, according to Kevin Hensil, spokesman for the State System of Higher Education.
At Millersville, officials see growth with people completing graduate programs and online degrees, Zander said, because they largely are convenient opportunities for working adults.
Millersville has about 7,000 students enrolled this school year, up 300 from last year. Yet Zander expects the overall downward slide of undergrads to continue.
“It’s important to think about, ‘What else can we do so we have solid futures?’ ” Zander said. “We need to think about how can we change so we can be financially stable. The worst is yet to come.”
He said colleges need to focus on marketing the value of a college education to prospective students. For example, someone with a four-year degree makes, on average, significantly more money in their career than someone with a high school diploma.
For example, the national median salary of 25- to 34-year-olds with bachelor degrees is $66,000 per year, according to the federal government’s National Center for Education Statistics. That’s 59% higher than someone with only a high school diploma at just less than $42,000 per year.
The bad news for small colleges: the wage gap is significantly less, or even reversed, when college graduates are compared with their counterparts with degrees from trade schools.
As of 2023, trade school graduates earned an average of a little more than $67,000 per year, according to Research.com. The site also reports that trade school grads are more likely to be employed full time, at 74%, than college graduates at 64%.
Traditional colleges need to be flexible enough to adapt and grow, Zander said, and work with their high-demand, high-employing local businesses to see how they can provide opportunities to contribute to a skilled workforce. Schools could look at providing certificates or two-year degree programs to strengthen the pipeline to those careers.
“The flexibility we need to have is newer to higher education,” he said. “We are all becoming more nimble, and that’s a good thing.”
The price tag
Increasing tuition costs often are blamed as a contributing factor for students turning away from traditional four-year colleges, despite a recent decrease in the national average cost for college.
Tuition, including fees for room and board, books and other college costs, at private, not-for-profit colleges has increased 8% since 2021, according to the Center for Education Statistics, hovering around $41,000 per year. That’s down from the peak of more than $43,000 for the 2020-21 school year.
Public colleges have seen relatively flat tuition and fees over the same time, with 2012-13 rates at a national average of $10,400 and currently a little less than $10,000.
Trade schools, often seen as a less-expensive alternative to college, have wildly varying tuition rates and fees, depending on the type of degree or certificate being sought. Costs can range from an average of less than $4,000 per year at public trade schools, to more than $15,000 at private two-year schools, according to job search site Indeed.com. Because most programs only last two years at trade schools, the total cost even at a top-end school still is less than the cost of four years at a traditional college.
It means those schools have to work harder to find funding sources for their students, including offering branch campuses with significantly lower tuition rates.
Featured Local Businesses
An in-state student attending Penn State’s main campus paid about $20,600 in tuition and fees this school year, compared to between $13,800 and $15,400 at a branch campus.
At Pitt, main campus tuition and mandatory fees for full-time students totaled an average of about $23,500 this year while the same costs would set a Pitt-Greensburg student back by less than $15,000, according to the school’s website.
The Pennsylvania’s state universities have kept their undergraduate tuition rate at about $7,700 per year since 2018, Hensil said. The system is seeking a 6.5% state funding increase to be able to freeze tuition for an eighth consecutive year.
“Students are saving nearly 25% in tuition costs — equal to a free year of college — due to tuition freezes compared to the rate if tuition went up with inflation since 2018,” Hensil said.
Affordability is key when marketing to students, said Millersville’s Zander.
“It’s hard to provide higher education with tight budgets, but because the state has been good to (the State System) over the past years, we’ve been able to hold the line there,” he said.
More than 70% of state school graduates earn degrees or certificates in business, education, health care, psychology, protective services and STEM programs — which Hensil noted are career fields with worker shortages and jobs in high demand.
CCAC, working with businesses, created specialized training programs for students, CCAC President Quintin Bullock said. CCAC also offers flexible learning options including online, hybrid and in-person formats.
Pitt invested $300 million in institutional financial aid in 2025, said Susan Isola, a spokesperson for University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg. While regional campuses maintained tuition rates for this school year, tuition for in-state undergraduate and graduate students at the Oakland campus increased 2%.
Penn State says it is taking steps to try to increase enrollment across the board. It is undergoing an academic review to ensure it is offering the right mix of programs at the right locations to align with student preferences and the state’s workforce needs.