Penn State is considering closing its Dubois, Fayette, Mont Alto, New Kensington, Shenango, Wilkes-Barre, and York campuses.
Penn State trustees are scheduled to vote Thursday on a plan to close seven of its Commonwealth campuses.
They are: Dubois, Fayette, Mont Alto, New Kensington, Shenango, Wilkes-Barre, and York. Five more were also studied for closure but are not part of the current closure proposal: Hazleton, Schuylkill, Beaver, Greater Allegheny, and Scranton.
Penn State administrators said the campuses were picked for closure based on a holistic look at various factors, including enrollment declines, population projections, housing occupancy, student performance, other colleges in proximity, finances, and maintenance backlog.
The three Commonwealth campuses in the Philadelphia region -- Brandywine, Abington, and the graduate education-focused campus at Great Valley -- were not considered for closure.
A comparison of the 12 campuses shows:
Six of the seven recommended for closure do not offer housing. The seventh, Mont Alto, has it, but showed the lowest occupancy rate, 40%, of campuses with housing.
York, which has the largest enrollment of the 12 at 703, is slated for closure, yet Allegheny, which had the third smallest enrollment, is not.
Six of the seven with the biggest overall declines in enrollment were slated for closure. Mont Alto, with the third smallest decline, is on the list.
Five of the seven with the smallest share of students eligible for Pell grants, reserved for students from lower income families, were selected for closure. And five of the seven also had the lowest percentages of students from underrepresented groups. The university noted in its report the importance of maintaining access to students from diverse backgrounds.
" READ MORE: Penn State details its rationale for campus closures in 143-page report
Allegheny, which is recommended to remain open, "fulfills an essential role in providing access to higher education," the report said, noting about half of its students are the first in their families to attend college, nearly 42% receive Pell grants, and nearly 30% are from underrepresented groups.
Hazleton, which also is recommended to remain open, serves the highest percentage of students from underrepresented groups of all Commonwealth campuses.
The three schools with the highest six-year graduation rates were slated for closure. They are Wilkes-Barre, which graduates nearly 70% of students in six years, followed by DuBois and York.
But university administrators said the Wilkes-Barre campus lies between two other larger and "more robust" campuses, Scranton, and Hazleton. The Wilkes-Barre campus also has "no compelling academic niche or distinctive program portfolio," the report said.
Of the Fayette campus, Penn State administrators cited in their report "regional population loss, economic distress, and limited demand for in-person education" and said its "programmatic offerings are largely replicable at nearby campuses or online through Penn State World Campus."