PennWest merger undershot estimated tuition revenue by $53M, enrollment by 4,800 students

Spokesman says merger of Cal, Clarion, Edinboro couldn’t reverse decadelong enrollment declines.

By KELLEN STEPLER
TribLive

While the 2022 merger of California, Clarion and Edinboro universities realized savings in personnel and operations, enrollment projections for Pennsylvania Western University were short 4,800 students and $53 million in tuition revenue last school year.

“While we’ve generated significant savings, it’s not as significant as had been originally projected, and it’s not happening as quickly as it had been originally projected,” said Christopher Fiorentino, chancellor of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, in a TribLive interview.

“That’s a work in progress. It doesn’t mean that we can’t continue to evolve, continue to make adjustments and strengthen the institutions at the same time.”

This fall will bring another set of changes to the stateowned university as it continues to find its footing amid a tumultuous, nationwide higher education landscape.

By the end of May, PennWest will finalize an academic program array that cuts dozens of programs and realigns others in an effort to improve students’ educations and adapt to the region’s workforce needs, university officials say.

“What PASSHE tried to do was save money without closing campuses, and that’s really hard to do,” said Julie Wollman, who served as president of Edinboro University, part of PASSHE, from 2012 to 2016.

“It was sort of a, ‘not likely to succeed in saving money’ from the start,” said Wollman, who was president of Widener University, a private school outside of Philadelphia, and now teaches at University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education.

Grass isn’t greener

PASSHE’s initial projections, created in 2021, estimated tuition revenue at PennWest at $154 million in the 2024-25 school year, based on projected enrollment of 14,425 students.

But enrollment at PennWest that year was 9,625 students, with tuition revenue at approximately $91 million. “That early estimate was developed during a period of significant uncertainty in the higher education sector,” said Kevin Hensil, spokesman for the State System of Higher Education. “Over time, projections for enrollment, tuition revenue, and associated expenditures were refined to more closely match what the university was experiencing.”

Before PennWest was formed, enrollment significantly decreased among its colleges. From 2010 to 2020, Edinboro’s enrollment declined by 50%, Clairon’s by 39% and California’s by 27%.

Combining those campuses couldn’t be expected to reverse a decade-long trend, Hensil said.

“Instead, it was designed to enable PennWest to better manage the impact of lower enrollment by preserving academic programs, maintaining access for students and strengthening institutional stability,” he said.

Nationwide, the pool of high school graduates pursuing college is shrinking. College enrollment among 18- to 24-year-olds is down about 1.2 million from its peak in 2011.

Total enrollment among state-owned universities decreased by more than 32,000 students, about 28% since the 2012-13 school year. All but Slippery Rock and West Chester have fewer students today than it did then.

The challenges are not exclusive to the state system. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Temple University lost an average of $200 million annually as enrollment slides. Seven Penn State campuses, including New Kensington and Fayette, will close in one year because of enrollment declines, finances and limited potential for growth. And Gannon University in Erie and Ursuline College near Cleveland will merge in December.

“None of these things go perfectly as planned,” Fiorentino said. “There’s a lot of uncertainty when you do it, but you weigh the pros and cons, you get expert opinions, and then you make a decision, and you execute the decision.

“We continue to believe that we’re seeing improvements as a result of the consolidations.”

Program review

Part of a college’s longterm sustainability includes offering academic programs that fit campus locations and workforce trends.

“In order for us to be able to support the critical programs, to have the technology we need, to have the highly skilled faculty we need, we need to make sure that we’re putting our resources where they’re needed most,” Fiorentino said.

PennWest’s academic programming proposal reduces the number of bachelor’s degree majors from 47 to 43. The number of minors goes from 74 to 40. But undergraduate certificates will increase to 37 from 19.

University officials said the proposal comes from a review of workforce and enrollment trends, and considered feedback from students and faculty.

The plan’s opponents say it would harm student life and worsen student enrollment, thus hurting PennWest’s long-term sustainability.

Fisher said students in a discontinued program will be able to finish their degree on time. University officials have reached out to prospective students interested in those programs.

“We say, ‘We’re happy you’re coming to our university, but this is a program we’re considering for a moratorium, so let’s have a conversation,’ ” Fisher said. “It’s a process of discernment and we want to make them feel comfortable.”

Fisher said PennWest officials “feel good with where we’re at” on fall enrollment targets. Spokeswoman Wendy Mackall said the university doesn’t share enrollment data at this point in the recruitment cycle.

Wollman, the retired university president, notes that strengthening a program array is a good place to start but doesn’t solve the longstanding issues of population declines and an overbuilt number of colleges in the state. More downsizing may be needed, she said. Moves like closing campuses aren’t popular, harm a college’s standings politically and hurt people’s livelihoods, but can sometimes be the fiscally responsible thing to do.

“It’s really hard and ugly decisions,” she said. “The system has gone with the best trade off possible. … It was an attempt to balance everything, and the problem is, you can’t. Everything you get is struggling along and nothing’s working well because of all the tradeoffs.”

‘Trending in the right direction’

At the time of planning, PennWest projected annual personnel savings of about $8 million. By the 202425 fiscal year, the university achieved $22 million in compensation savings. It also sold property in Phillipsburg and Venango County, further reducing debt, said Hensil, the state system spokesman.

“We continue to see successes associated with the mergers, we continue to have challenges,” Fiorentino said. “In some cases, the savings that were predicted haven’t been as significant as what was predicted. That was an estimate, and we’re definitely seeing savings.”

This fall, PennWest plans a “first year seminar” course for freshmen in an effort to build retention. The course was offered as an elective for the past two years. Students who took the class had a 91% retention rate from fall to spring, compared to 83% among those that did not.

“That’s an industrywide best practice,” Fisher said. “We’re teaching college knowledge and helping them navigate the first semester.”

Last fall, university enrollment declined 2.64%, the smallest enrollment reduction figure at the university or at any of its three legacy campuses in the past 15 years.

Online enrollment increased by more than 8% last fall, transfer enrollment grew by 2.5% and the university also reported growth among adult learners.

PennWest has made “quite an effort” to establish a single brand, Fisher said. Current middle school students only know the university as PennWest as opposed to its individual predecessors. The college also worked to keep each campus’ environment, for example, each campus maintains its own NCAA sports teams.

“Everything we’re seeing now, we’re trending in the right direction and the public perception of us,” Fisher said.