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Penn State plans to cut $54 million from its Commonwealth Campuses' budget for the next school year, a 14% decrease with consequences for Penn State Altoona -- although the specifics of those consequences aren't known yet, according to information shared by the university this week.
Over the next several months, the vice president in charge of the 19 Commonwealth Campuses and the campus chancellors will hash out customized plans for each, based on a new and sustainable "business model" the university hopes will solve problems created by declining enrollments, rising costs and stagnant state support, according to a pair of university news releases this week and a letter sent to branch campus staffers by that vice president, Margo DelliCarpini.
Under the new business model, the university will enforce balanced budgeting, allocating money from tuition, state appropriations and research funds based on student headcounts and "student credit hour production," without across-the-board cuts, but not without "addressing personnel, including through attrition and retirement," DelliCarpini stated in the letter.
It's too soon to say whether there will be layoffs, stated Penn State Altoona Chancellor Ron Darbeau in a response to questions submitted by the Mirror, echoing DelliCarpini.
Chancellors, their leadership teams, faculty, other staff and also students will try to find "operational efficiencies and other ways to reduce the human impact as much as possible," Darbeau stated.
"We have the next 18 months to work through plans and strategies," he added.
The work involved for each campus will be "a unique exercise," DelliCarpini wrote in one of the news releases. "Different units will have different impacts."
The analyses will consider campus enrollments, facility costs, physical infrastructure, programs, personnel and community engagement, DelliCarpini wrote.
It will include a review of academic programs -- except for professional ones like law and medicine -- taking account of performance, competition from other colleges and alignment with student needs and interests and with the needs of the local community and employers at the local, state and national levels, according to DelliCarpini.
"This process will help us determine whether we are making appropriate investments in high-demand programs and fields, and where resources may need to shift, based on need, demand and viability," DelliCarpini stated. "We want to ensure that Penn State offers the right mix of residential, online and blended programs to best meet our mission."
That sort of evaluation seems to bode well for at least some of Penn State's offerings, according to Darbeau.
Academic programs added at the local campus in recent years "are doing well and have exhibited consistent growth since their inception," he wrote. Additionally, some older programs, including engineering and nursing, continue to be popular, Darbeau wrote.
The faculty senates in each campus will be involved in the exercise, according to DelliCarpini.
Collectively, enrollment at the Commonwealth Campuses has declined 20% since 2016 and 30% since 2010, according to one of the news releases.
Penn State Altoona has gone from the Commonwealth Campus with the highest enrollment to fourth place -- declining from a maximum of 4,000-plus to the current 2,400, Chancellor Ron Darbeau told City Council in September.
That has resulted in expenses exceeding revenues, which isn't sustainable, Darbeau wrote Friday.
Darbeau has already been attacking the problem since taking over last year by "strategically expanding our academic profile, by selectively increasing athletic opportunities, by boosting the number of international students, by working on retention efforts, and by creating 'pipelines through academic summer camps and dual enrollment,'" he stated.
The university hopes to stem enrollment decline by attracting more nonresident, international, adult, online and transfer students by doing a better job of matching financial aid with "enrollment priorities" to make school more affordable and by bolstering "high demand academic programs that align with the state's workforce needs," according to Matt Melvin, vice president for enrollment management, cited in a news release Monday.
The recruitment efforts will involve reaching students and families earlier in their search for colleges, along with "articulation" agreements with community colleges to create "seamless pathways" to Penn State, according to Melvin.
There will also be a test-optional admission policy that will stress "retention-relevant" criteria for admissions, expansion of an existing program to attract out-of-state students and creation of "discipline-based hubs of excellence" at selected campuses, according to Melvin.
As it deals with the required changes, Penn State Altoona will "absolutely" not abandon its downtown campus, Darbeau wrote, noting that it recently purchased the Aaron building on 12th Avenue and has plans to expand some programs that are taught on that section of campus.
The need for changes at the Commonwealth Campuses is unsurprising, according to Penn State Altoona Professor of Communication Arts & Sciences William White, who responded by email to a request for comment, speaking only on his own account.
"Penn State as a whole is not immune from the larger social, economic and political pressures on higher education," White wrote.
The changes that the university is demanding will likely create "winners and losers as numbers tighten," White wrote.
Given that the university intends to invest in its "growth campuses," it will be incumbent on Penn State Altoona to "articulate a clear and compelling vision" of the role it can play, according to White.
"Such a vision will have to speak to the aspirations of students and their families, for whom college represents an increasingly high-stakes chunk of resources, and be achievable given the resources that the administration will make available to us," White wrote. "We probably need to make the case that Penn State Altoona does something different and better than is done elsewhere at Penn State, and be permitted to make that case as strongly as we can to the different constituencies that need to hear it."
He would be "suspicious of any effort that didn't put academics front and center as the core of what students are paying for," White stated.
It's a bit worrisome that the vision for the Commonwealth Campuses will emphasize the "teaching mission" to the apparent diminishment of research and other scholarly work, White wrote.
"Having knowledge production and knowledge dissemination in close proximity to each other makes them both better," he wrote.
A final Commonwealth Campus budget will be presented to the university's Board of Trustees in July, according to DelliCarpini.
DelliCarpini appealed to the campuses' staff for help: "Your impact and feedback are essential," she wrote.
"The months ahead will require us to engage in difficult discussions and make hard decisions," DelliCarpini wrote.
Still, there are no plans for "mass layoffs or closing colleges or campuses," and budget cuts within "units" will be limited to 4% per year, according to one of the news releases.
The cuts to the Commonwealth Campuses are much steeper than for the main campus at University Park, whose budget will be reduced by 1.4%, or $11 million, for the 2025-26 fiscal year, starting July 1, 2025.
Penn State as a whole is struggling to adjust amid "a perfect storm for higher education," according to Darbeau.
Elements of that storm include the state of Pennsylvania being second to last in the nation in its level of per-student funding for higher education, along with rising tuition costs, rising operational, insurance and health care costs; changing student demographics and the "ill-informed and uniquely American question of the value of a college education as if doctors, nurses, scientists, business leaders, engineers, teachers, lawyers, meteorologists, etc., can be trained to serve communities without the enterprise of Higher Ed," Darbeau wrote.
Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.