Penn State board of trustees plans public meeting to determine future of campuses
The Penn State board of trustees has a public meeting scheduled next week to take action on closing some commonwealth campuses.
The board plans to meet virtually at 5 p.m. May 22, according to a news release, and will consider the recommendation to close seven campuses. The meeting will be livestreamed; information on how to access the link can be found at trustees.psu.edu/thursday-may-22-2025.
A public meeting was originally scheduled for this week but was changed to an executive session to give board members more time to review the recommendation, according to university spokesman Wyatt DuBois.
Earlier this week, Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi publicly released a recommendation report on commonwealth campus closures earlier than intended, following the news leaking. The campuses recommended to close are DuBois, Fayette, Mont Alto, New Kensington, Shenango, Wilkes-Barre and York.
Bendapudi shared the recommendation report with the board late last month, a release from the university states, adding that it was not previously shared publicly because nothing is final until the board takes action.
The reasons for recommended closures vary from campus to campus, but recurring issues include declining enrollment, poor financials and minimal room for growth. The latter could be a result of competition from other schools, redundancy (e.g. close to another PSU campus), lack of on-campus housing and aging home county populations.
No campuses would close before the end of the 2026-27 academic year and Penn State will continue to extend offers and admit new students for Fall 2025 at commonwealth campuses.
