Mar 22, 2025 2 min read

Lawmakers need to support more funding for Penn State Fayette

Penn State University recently announced the possible closure of several campuses including Penn State Fayette, The Eberly Campus. Many factors have combined to produce this peril for the Fayette campus, including declining enrollment.

One little-reported factor is the persistently low and declining public funding of higher education in Pennsylvania.

After World War II, the commonwealth promised the youth of Pennsylvania that they could go to college even if they could not pay for it themselves.

That promise is dying if not dead.

One sign of its demise was the removal of the word “state” from the names of our state colleges, such as California, Slippery Rock, etc. The idea was that people would forget that these are state institutions that the state has an obligation to fund.

The commonwealth could not remove “state” from “Penn State,” of course. So they removed the money instead. Adjusted for inflation, the annual legislative appropriation for Penn State fell by over 30% between 2003 and 2023. And Penn State receives less state funding per in-state student than the other state universities in Pennsylvania. As a whole, our commonwealth now ranks 49th out of the 50 states in public funding per college student.

The best thing our state representatives can do is to support better funding for Penn State.

For the Fayette campus, I hope it’s not too late.

Michael Comiskey

Retired associate professor of political science, Penn State Fayette

Connellsville