The Penn State faculty senate passed a positional report this week opposing the closure of commonwealth campuses and asked the university administration to pause the decision until an impact assessment can be conducted.
Faculty senators have not shied away from expressing their concerns about closing campuses and how even before it was confirmed, the possibility of it happening impacted morale among employees. But Tuesday’s meeting was the first time they’ve passed anything regarding the closures.
The report outlined that it has not been made clear how closures will benefit student success, the process has moved too quickly and impacts on Penn State and the communities it serves have not been fully assessed.
“We’re also concerned that other options were not adequately considered, nor was there time for faculty senate committees to discuss and propose alternatives to closing campuses,” Douglas Edmonds, an assistant professor at Penn State Hazleton, said.
The faculty senate passed the positional report, 97-62, but it doesn’t hold any power over the actual decision, which lies with the administration. Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi is expected to give the board of trustees a recommendation on which campuses should close during a special meeting in mid-May, after graduation.
Penn State did not respond to an inquiry seeking comment.
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Elisa Beshero-Bondar, a professor at Penn State Behrend, highlighted some parts of the report during the meeting and said closing small campuses removes access to higher education for economically disadvantaged students. Closing the campuses would also contradict Penn State’s land grant mission, the report states.
“The closure of a campus can lead to a loss of hundreds of jobs, both directly and indirectly, and can devastate local economies already struggling with population decline and industrial transformation,” Beshero-Bondar said. “In many cases, the campus is one of the region’s largest employers. Closing these institutions undermines the stability and future of entire communities and accelerates economic inequality between urban and rural regions.”
The report also touched on the lack of financial justification for closing campuses and asks the question, “If we’re not doing this to save the university significant amounts of money, then why are we doing it?”
The report provides recommendations proposed to the university, which include:
• Pausing closure plans until an impact analysis assessment can be conducted, including community input, student data and financial analysis
• Reinvesting in small campuses by restoring budgetary support and exploring innovative models for academic delivery
• Engaging in authentic shared governance by involving faculty senate, local campus leadership and community stakeholders in all strategic planning decisions
• Reaffirming Penn State’s land grant mission by committing to maintain a physical and academic presence in underserved and rural regions
• Auditing the decision making process that led to the current closure proposals
“The closure of small Penn State campuses is not a solution; it is surrender. It abandons our most vulnerable students, harms entire communities, and betrays the University’s foundational values. If Penn State is to remain a leader in public higher education, it must prioritize access, equity and community impact over short-term cost-cutting and administration convenience,” the report states.
Daniel Perkins, a professor in the college of agricultural sciences, said while he shared the concerns, Penn State is facing budgetary constraints that the state legislature has ignored for decades and there are consequences to that.
“I’m just not convinced that we do not have to consider the need to close some campuses,” Perkins said. “It is not the land grant mission that every land grant has, quote, unquote, satellite campuses. The land grant mission is that the land grant university must extend the knowledge of the university out into the communities.”
Others said the point of the report is to call for pausing the decision to close, rather than to completely oppose closing campuses, and say that the faculty senate is not convinced there is enough evidence to support closing them now.
Kofi Adu, an assistant professor at Penn State Altoona, compared the commonwealth campus system to the athletics programs at the university.
“We are always told that it is football that supports all the sports programs. We never hear anyone saying that, because basketball cannot sustain itself, we should close the basketball program, or we should close, say, the wrestling program,” Adu said. “It is the sports as a whole that makes our sports program the best. If we translate that into academics, I think we all know that it’s not all units that are going to be financially solvent. However, all those units come together to make our institution the best that it can be.”
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During the April 1 faculty senate meeting, Bendapudi said the closure decision is not driven by financial savings but rather student success, experience and other factors. Robin Bower, an associate professor at Penn State Beaver, said Tuesday that students receive a robust student experience at commonwealth campuses with close student and faculty collaboration.
Some faculty senators have felt like they’ve been given mixed messages about the reasoning behind the closures. Stephen Snyder, an assistant teaching professor at Penn State Berks, said when there’s a mixed message, it’s safe to say that the data do not support the conclusions. Angela Pettitt, an associate teaching professor at Penn State Shenango, said it’s hard to describe how disorienting this has been.
“It’s hard to describe to people who aren’t at some of the campuses how disorienting the whiplash has been as we’ve been told that budgetary concerns were the primary motivator then to find out they’re not the primary motivator,” she said. “To have our budgets cut and to lose faculty and colleagues and then find out our campuses might be closing. To find out that the university doesn’t necessarily believe we’re providing a robust experience to our students after our budgets have been cut, and we therefore aren’t able to provide as much to our students. It has been exhausting. It’s been stressful.”