PennWest interim president says new university has hit 'enrollment floor,' will rebound

PennWest University charges the same tuition and recruits heavily from the same region as fellow state-owned institutions Slippery Rock University and Indiana University of Pennsylvania, yet PennWest’s enrollment plunged again while its two peers have grown.

In an interview with the Tribune-Review, PennWest leaders, including interim President R. Lorraine “Laurie” Bernotsky, addressed the university’s 22% enrollment loss since it was created in July 2022 through the controversial merger of California, Clarion and Edinboro universities.

They acknowledged enrollment this fall has suffered, in part, because the three-campus university’s still-evolving array of academic offerings wasn’t fully rolled out and able to be shared with students until August.

And then there’s the name change to Pennsylvania Western University. “Educating the public” that three institutions with histories dating to the Civil War no longer exist hasn’t been an easy task — and many students on the respective campuses and alumni of the former schools still cling to the old identities.

The California, Clarion and Edinboro campuses still field their own sports teams, and their bookstores still carry merchandise branded with the old names. The stores also sell PennWest-branded merchandise.

“We understand the goal is a sustainable and strong PennWest,” Bernotsky said this week. “What we’re trying to do at PennWest is not going to be an overnight fix.”

She has said in recent months that the school has turned a corner in its multi-year plan and its budget modeling anticipated the sharp student decline that was announced Monday. She called it an enrollment floor.

“What we just saw happen was fully predicted by us,” Bernotsky said.

Succeed or fail, the stakes in whatever moves her university makes are enormous for college access in this region, since PennWest is the largest State System campus in Western Pennsylvania. With 11,305 students, it also is the second largest public university in the region behind the University of Pittsburgh.

PennWest and the other nine State System schools are the least costly university option in Pennsylvania. Base tuition has been frozen at $7,716 a year since 2018-19.

A year ago, PennWest shared individual enrollments for the California, Clarion and the Edinboro campuses, a decision that gave additional insight into how the new university fared. Initially this week, PennWest said it could no longer do so.

Bernotsky said Tuesday that the 2022-23 campus-specific enrollment numbers were based on an academic program array still tied, at least in part, to the three individual campuses. Those programs are now fully synthesized for delivery on multiple campuses, making comparisons impossible between last year and 2023-24, which she calls a baseline year.

Breaking out numbers by campus wouldn’t work in future years either, she said. Graduate programs that are fully online are not tied to a specific campus, academic departments now offer courses over three campuses and 55% of PennWest students take at least one course at another campus.

Other universities, including Penn State University, have long reported campus-level enrollment for students who also take courses on more than one campus.

Bernotsky said her university’s situation is different and that the merger created two new categories of PennWest students who aren’t attached to a specific campus — those who are fully online and hybrid students who take some classes in person and some online.

“I don’t know how to answer that,” she said when asked repeatedly for campus-specific enrollment. “I think the numbers you are looking for do not exist in the form you want.”

On Thursday, PennWest reversed course and provided a campus-level breakdown of its 11,305 students this fall.

Nearly 3,800 of the students (about one-third of PennWest’s enrollment) are designated as online learners who aren’t tied to a specific campus. Of that group, 1,175 are undergraduates and 2,583 are graduate students.

As for students designated as receiving face-to-face instruction, 2,981 are from the California campus, 2,532 are from the Edinboro campus and 2,034 are from the Clarion campus. The vast majority of these students are undergrads.

California, Clarion and Edinboro reported a combined enrollment of 14,477 students before the merger.

State System Chancellor Daniel Greenstein has said it was necessary to merge six of the system’s 14 universities into PennWest and Commonwealth University (Bloomsburg, Lock Haven and Mansfield) to shore up finances and rebuild enrollment.

But the integrations were controversial, with some faculty and student groups warning that the process was moving too quickly. In April, a student member of PennWest’s newly created Council of Trustees reported that students were having problems registering for classes and getting faculty advising.

One national expert on regional universities was skeptical this week when told that PennWest leaders initially couldn’t say how many students attend the individual campuses.

“If they’re unable to figure out how students are assigned to campuses within the university, that points to a very insufficient student information system,” said Andrew Koricich, executive director of the Boone, N.C.-based Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges.

In establishing its new identity, PennWest jettisoned university names with generations of history for something unknown.

“There is a name recognition that existed and is gone, and I think that the change has made the public uncertain whether PennWest will be here in four or five years when a student graduates,” he said.

Koricich added that PennWest might be getting a harsh lesson in rebranding, and it’s not clear if such a sharp break that included all new campus signage and identity made sense.

“I hope they didn’t throw all their old signs away,” he said.

Bernotsky’s hiring was announced in February after Dale-Elizabeth Pehrsson, the founding president, stepped away effective immediately. Bernotsky advanced changes including a consolidation of six academic colleges into three.

The month that consolidation was announced, Sonia Yost, an Edinboro undergraduate from Altoona and student member of the PennWest Council of Trustees, reported to the council on problems students were having with presidential turnover, advising and course registration.

“The change in president has made students just a lot more unsure about the integration, and they just feel more unstable,” she said.

“These are not my words. These are the words of other students, but they feel that Dr. Bernotsky is going to be Dr. Death and that she will bring around program cuts and retrenchments. There’s also been a lot of issues with advising and scheduling lately,” she continued.

Bernotsky said she believes those issues have been resolved and that her administration will react quickly if they reemerge, but one student said this week that the issues remain, at least for him and his friends.

Caleb Szymoniak, 22, a senior arts major at Penn West Edinboro, is getting worried because the art studio classes he needs to finish his degree overlap and he hasn’t been able to meet with his adviser to resolve the issue.

“I don’t even know if I will be able to graduate on time,” said Syzmoniak of Baden in Beaver County.

Szymoniak said he has liked his professors and his education, but bureaucratic confusion from the merger has been frustrating. He said the Degree Works Portal — described as a web-based tool to help students and advisers monitor students’ progress — hasn’t always worked when registering for online courses at other campuses.

He started college during the pandemic and finally settled into a rhythm at Edinboro, and then the merger occurred.

“The whole point of the merger was to make classes more available for students. It feels like it’s been a hindrance. The administration is all over the map,” he said. “I don’t understand why they are not hiring teachers and making sure students have academic advisers.”

On Monday, the State System revealed numbers showing that overall enrollment at its 10 universities declined 2.2% from last year to 82,688 students this fall. Half of the universities saw enrollment gains, and seven saw increases in first-year students.

Graphic

Both Greenstein and Kenneth Mash, president of the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties, expressed confidence that the issues impeding PennWest are being resolved.

“The declines at PennWest do not reflect the good things happening in our classes and on our campuses,” said Samuel Claster, head of APSCUF’s Edinboro campus chapter. “We are confident that we will see enrollments stabilize in the next few years.”