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 head counts 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.

Layoffs?

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.

Some programs doing well

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, 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.