One in 10 employees at Penn State’s commonwealth campuses will leave the university this year, opting for a buyout offered as one solution to a universitywide deficit and heightened financial challenges at the branch campuses.
School officials said on Tuesday that 383 employees — or 21% of those eligible — took the voluntary separation incentive package introduced in May.
It is estimated that these departures will add up to $43 million in savings for the university, though actual savings won’t be known until later in the year.
Over three-fourths of the departing employees are staff. Those eligible included tenure-line faculty, full-time staff and administrators.
“We must find ways to be more efficient in using the university’s limited resources while continuing to deliver on our land-grant mission to create new knowledge and lift up students from across the commonwealth and beyond through higher education,” Tracy Langkilde, Penn State’s interim executive vice president and provost, said in a news release.
“The VSIP helped us do that, and it has presented an opportunity to reconfigure our operations across our campuses to make each Penn State campus stronger and more viable.”
The separation package gave employees the choice to retire or pursue other jobs in exchange for payment equal to a year of their base salaries.
Penn State leaders previously said they didn’t have a target number of employees that they hoped would voluntarily leave. The 20 commonwealth campuses currently employ more than 1,600 full-time faculty members and over 1,800 full-time staff and administrators.
Buyouts came as Penn State grapples with a multi-million-dollar deficit that school officials hope to resolve by 2025.
The branch campuses are slated to bear the brunt of anticipated cuts as many of these institutions face enrollment and financial concerns. School leaders said in January that they intend to ax $54 million in funding — or 14% — from those campuses in 2026.
Margo DelliCarpini, Penn State’s vice president for commonwealth campuses and executive chancellor, told the Post-Gazette in a previous interview that buyouts were one way the university hoped to manage its budget.
But some professors have expressed concerns that the buyouts will put a strain on faculty and staff who remain at the campuses and diminish the number of tenured professors at these campuses.
It’s still unknown whether layoffs or campus closures could eventually hit the branch campuses.
Of employees who took the separation package, over half will leave the university on June 28. The remaining employees will depart by Dec. 31.
In southwestern Pennsylvania, branch campus locations include those at Beaver, Fayette, Greater Allegheny, New Kensington and Shenango.
First Published: June 11, 2024, 8:06 p.m.
Updated: June 12, 2024, 10:14 a.m.