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Key Takeaways
- Penn State University's trustees approved the closure of seven campuses earlier this year and then gave President Neeli Bendapudi a 47 percent raise.
- The Board of Trustees justified the raise by citing Bendapudi's leadership in balancing the budget and securing significant donations.
- However, student Democrat and Republican leaders both criticized the trustees' decisions, saying they will hurt rural and low-income students.
- Penn State also plans to increase tuition and shut down its public broadcasting service due to financial constraints.
Penn State University, which received $242 million in state tax dollars for the current school year, is facing criticism from a former trustee, as well as Democrat and Republican students on campus after its board voted to close seven campuses and give the president a nearly 50 percent raise.
“While the University makes claims of poverty and financial emergency with regard to items like raising tuition and minimal increases to faculty and staff compensation, compensation levels for most higher-level executives, and the most highly-compensated people within the Penn State system, continue to grow exponentially,” Barry Fenchak, a former trustee, told The College Fix in a recent interview.
In September, the public university’s Board of Trustees approved a substantial raise for President Neeli Bendapudi, boosting her total annual compensation by about $1 million, according to StateCollege.com.
This amounts to a raise of about 47 percent, PennLive reports.
Bendapudi’s base salary is now $1.4 million, and her salary will increase 3.5 percent annually through the next seven years, according to a term sheet published online by the board.
The trustees also voted to increase her annual retention bonus by $225,000 and her supplemental retirement plan by $100,000.
The pay bump comes after the board voted in May to close seven of the university’s 20 campuses due, in part, to financial problems. The branch campuses are scheduled to close after the end of the 2026-2027 academic year.
The board’s full recommendation of closures report states that numerous Commonwealth campuses, including the seven about to close and five others that were chosen to remain open, lose tens of millions of dollars a year and are in need of over $300 million in maintenance work.
In July, the trustees also voted to increase tuition for the 2026-2027 school year for both in- and out-of-state students by 2 percent and 4 percent respectively.
Similarly, Penn State’s public broadcasting service WPSU, a PBS and NPR member station, is shutting down in 2026 after the board voted in September against transferring ownership of the station. Again, the board cited financial difficulties as its reason for the decision.
Both Penn State College Republicans and College Democrats criticized the trustees for what they consider to be irresponsibility regarding their recent fiscal decisions.
Tristin Kilgore, president of Penn State’s College Republicans, told The Colllege Fix that rural Pennsylvanians will be the ones hit hardest by the campus closures.
“With a majority of these closures in rural areas, it is disappointing to see that rural residents or those who cannot afford to move to other campuses lose these community hubs that provide them with a career path and a future,” Kilgore said in a recent email.
President of PSU’s College Democrats Madeline Shanafelt also criticized the trustees’ recent votes.
“President Bendapudi is now the second-highest-paid public university president. All the while, our tuition is going up without many reasons for why,” Shanafelt told The Fix via email.
Neither the Board of Trustees nor board Secretary Shannon Harvey responded to two requests for comment via email within the past two weeks. The university’s media relations office also did not respond to an email requesting comment this week.
The trustees defended their decision to raise Bendapudi’s salary in a statement after the September vote, noting her leadership in balancing the university’s budget and bringing in “more than $560 million through philanthropic commitments.”
“Overseeing such a vast academic, research, health and athletics enterprise through these changes has been no easy task — particularly with all of the challenges facing higher education as a whole — but her leadership is instrumental in positioning Penn State for future success and growth,” Board Chair David Kleppinger stated.
However, Fenchak remains critical. A former trustee, he sued the university last year for allegedly failing to disclose certain financial records about its $5 billion endowment.
“Penn State’s primary mission is to provide a quality, affordable education. Regarding this mission, Penn State is failing badly,” Fenchak told The Fix in a recent email.
He additionally mentioned Penn State placing very low on the U.S. News and World Report’s Best Value Schools list, and provided The Fix with a comparison document he created showing the university has the highest tuition and lowest financial aid of all Big Ten schools.
“Not only is our tuition grotesquely out of line with our peers … but when combined with its worst-in-class levels of financial aid (both for merit-based and need-based aid) a Penn State degree is completely out of reach for low and moderate income students,” he said.
In June, the trustees voted to remove Fenchak from the board, allegedly for making an offensive comment to a female staff member, according to the Centre Daily Times.
Earlier this year, Fenchak sued the board, alleging it “changed its bylaws to target and permanently remove him”; however, a judge dismissed the case in August, the Centre Daily Times reports.
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