Amanda Ross

Editor-In-Chief

This post was originally published on September 24.

Penn State University president Neeli Bendapudi received a raise to her overall salary earlier this month, raising her salary 47 percent. This makes her the second highest paid University president in the country, behind Jay Hartzell at the University of Texas at Austin. 

Bendapudi’s salary was raised from $950,000 to 1.4 million. Along with the raise, she also received a hundred thousand dollar increase to her retirement plan as well as the potential of  annual performance bonuses around 15 percent of her base salary, or 210,000. This comes as a surprise to many after the university chose to close seven of its Commonwealth campuses this past spring, citing financial difficulties. 

Bendapudi, who was instated in May of 2022, has consistently worked to decrease spending in the wake of a multimillion dollar deficit within the university. This has included the closure of seven commonwealth campuses, along with cuts to the remaining 12. Behrend has had around 13 million dollars cut from its budget since 2022, along with firing of eight professors. The college also lost several others to the Voluntary Separation Incentive Program, or VISP, a retirement program that allowed faculty to retire early. 

The cuts haven’t only affected the commonwealth campuses, however. WPSU, the public broadcasting station located within University Park, is slated to close after cuts to federal funding increased the financial burden on the university. University Park’s Engineering program has had around 20 million cut from its budget since 2022. It’s unclear when students can expect the budget cuts to stop.