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Feb 26, 2025 By Staff and wire reports 4 min read

Declining enrollments, demographic shifts and financial pressures will require Penn State to close some of its 19 branch campuses, the school’s president Neeli Bendapudi said Tuesday.

In a message posted to Penn State’s website, Bendapudi said the university’s seven largest branch campuses — Abington, Altoona, Behrend, Berks, Brandywine, Harrisburg, and Lehigh Valley — will remain open.

But the other 12 – including Penn State Fayette, The Eberly Campus – will be scrutinized for closure by an internal team that will deliver a recommendation to Bendapudi for a decision she said she’ll deliver by spring commencement.

Bendapudi said Penn State has tried to save the campuses, but enrollments are declining at most schools and populations in nearby areas are projected to continue declining.

“Given these realities, we must make hard decisions now to ensure Penn State’s future remains strong,” Bendapudi said. “It has become clear that we cannot sustain a viable Commonwealth Campus ecosystem without closing some campuses.”

Historically, the smaller campuses draw most of their students from their local area, and it’s not realistic to recruit elsewhere to maintain those enrollments, she said. About 6,000 students were enrolled at those 12 schools last fall, out of about 23,000 total at the branch campuses, according to Penn State’s data.

Penn State Fayette’s website listed a current enrollment of around 500 students.

Muriel J. Nuttall, executive director of the Fayette Chamber of Commerce, said closing the local campus would be devastating for the community.

“Penn State is more than just a college campus in Fayette County. It’s a hub of activities for students, businesses and the community. I can’t imagine Fayette County without Penn State,” she said.

Nuttall said the chamber and the campus work together on initiatives like the Fayette Business Education Partnership, which brings together members of the education community and business community to help prepare students for the workforce.

And while Fayette County has other “excellent” post-secondary options, the Penn State campus has provided a myriad of opportunities for both students and local businesses that may be hard to replace, Nuttall said.

“Fayette County right now is in a situation where we are very much focused on growth, we’re very much focused on building our community and providing opportunities for our community. The last thing we want to see is something like to happen, as we’re really poised to move forward and do really good things,” she said.

County Commissioner Scott Dunn echoed Nuttall’s sentiments.

“(W)e need higher education in place to help keep our college bound kids close to home and help with building and readying our workforce,” Dunn said.

The commissioner said he hopes there is a way for the campus to stay open, suggesting a change in offerings may bring an uptick in enrollment.

“I would like to see what potential changes could be made to the campus, like potential STEM or technical trades that could keep it open,” Dunn said.

State Rep. Charity Grimm Krupa, R-Smithfield, started her first classes at the Fayette campus when she was 15, thanks to a grant from the Eberly Foundation. And her daughter now studies there as a third-year nursing student.

“The idea of closing this campus is unacceptable,” she said in a statement Tuesday. “Penn State is our land-grant university, founded to provide education to all Pennsylvanians — not just those near State College or in wealthier, urban areas. Fayette Campus is a lifeline for students who can’t afford to uproot their lives to get a degree. Without it, too many of them will have no path forward.”

Krupa also praised the branch’s staff and its role in boosting the local economy and strengthening the workforce. She also criticized what she saw as the lack of transparency from Penn State leadership about the deliberations, saying the university’s chancellor had been “vague and evasive” when speaking at a recent legislative hearing.

“Penn State cannot turn its back on rural Pennsylvania,” she said. “I am calling on university leadership to uphold their responsibility as a land-grant institution and keep Fayette Campus open. I urge my colleagues in the legislature and the people of this community to join me in demanding accountability and fighting for the future of our students.”

Bendapudi said the school’s graduate education-focused campus at Great Valley, Penn State Dickinson Law, the College of Medicine and the Pennsylvania College of Technology will remain open.

No campus will close before the end of the 2026-27 academic year, Bendapudi said.