Penn State branch campus professors outraged as President Bendapudi gets 47% pay raise amid campus closures

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https://www.post-gazette.com/news/education/2025/09/16/penn-state-bendapudi-raise-commonwealth-campus/stories/202509160087

Penn State branch campus professors outraged as President Bendapudi gets 47% pay raise amid campus closures
Bendapudi now earns the second-highest base pay of any public university president in the country
By Maddie Aiken | Sep 16, 2025

When Penn State New Kensington professor Andrea Adolph learned of President Neeli Bendapudi’s 47% salary raise, she felt it was "obscene."

Over the past few years, Ms. Adolph, an English professor, has listened to university leaders raise the alarm bells over a budget crisis. She has watched some of her fellow professors accept buyouts. In May, she, her colleagues and her students learned the difficult news that the New Kensington campus would be one of seven branch campuses to shutter in just two years.

Hearing Friday, then, that the Board of Trustees would increase Ms. Bendapudi’s base salary to $1.4 million — a $450,000 raise — didn’t make sense to Ms. Adolph.

“It’s obscene … both the fact that she was offered it and the fact that she accepted it,” Ms. Adolph said.

The salary increase makes Ms. Bendapudi, in terms of base salaries, the second-highest paid public university leader in the country.

She now earns a higher base salary than all of her colleagues in the Big Ten, according to September 2025 data from the Chronicle of Higher Education. Her base salary is only out-paced by University of Texas President Jay C. Hartzell, who earns $1.45 million annually.

Penn State Fayette professor Julio Palma found the raise to be both “disappointing and surprising.” Earlier this year, faculty and staff received a 3% raise. That difference demonstrates a “disparity” between administrative pay and employee pay, Mr. Palma believes.

“[The trustees] don’t even care about optics. There is a lack of decency,” said Mr. Palma, whose campus is also slated for closure. “They are pretending to care about their employees and their salaries, and then they approve a grotesque salary raise for the president.

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