A photograph of the Penn State law school branch in Carlisle and a photograph of the one at the University Park/State College campus.

Together again: the Penn State law school branch in Carlisle (top) and the branch at the University Park/State College campus (bottom).

Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Penn State

A decade ago, Pennsylvania State University’s two law school campuses divorced, becoming two separately accredited entities. Now, they’re getting back together.

This month, the American Bar Association approved the university’s request to recombine the two similarly named schools: Penn State Law, located at the flagship University Park/State College campus, and Penn State Dickinson Law, in Carlisle. The J.D. class of 2028 will attend the combined school, which will also be called Penn State Dickinson Law.

In news releases on the reunification, Penn State officials have said they are “responding to enrollment challenges.” One release said that “with an extremely competitive marketplace for legal education and nine law schools in Pennsylvania, the university’s current two-law-school model is not the best approach for achieving excellence.”

It’s true that Pennsylvania universities, including those in the Penn State system, have been hit hard by enrollment declines, and multiple non–Penn State campuses have closed in recent years. But, nationally, law school admissions have been relatively steady following a pandemic spike in 2021. Devan Drabik-Frey, a spokeswoman for the Carlisle campus, wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed Friday that both Penn State law campuses “have a thriving student population.”

If enrollment challenges don’t fully explain the merger, then, what does? Almost two years ago, back when Penn State president Neeli Bendapudi announced the planned reunification, she told PennLive/The Patriot-News she was concerned about future declines in law school applications, budget issues from subsidizing the schools and “competing against ourselves.”

Drabik-Frey told Inside Higher Ed that the merger will combine “the best of what both locations have to offer.” It will create “efficiencies” that are “expected to result in significant savings,” she wrote—though she didn’t provide specific or even ballpark financial projections. The university didn’t answer multiple emailed questions from Inside Higher Ed and didn’t provide interviews, so further explanation is sparse.

Bendapudi established a “reunification panel” and said she accepted its recommendations, but the university hasn’t released the full final report. Drabik-Frey said it includes information “that is considered confidential and was intended to be shared only with the president and her advisers.”

“That’s not something that was ever given to the faculty,” said John Lopatka, a law professor who’s been at the University Park campus for nearly 20 years. Lopatka, who said he wishes the law schools would remain separate, said, “Some of the questions you have, I think we would have as well.”

The questions aren’t just over why there’s a merger, but why the reunified school will have its primary location in Carlisle rather than the flagship campus, 80 miles away.

Drabik-Frey wrote that “among the factors” for why Carlisle is now becoming the headquarters are “the history of Penn State Dickinson Law as the oldest law school in Pennsylvania, the large alumni base, existing contractual arrangements and the proximity to the state capital.” (Carlisle is about 25 miles from Harrisburg.) She didn’t provide further detail.

Penn State also said it plans, in the merged law school, for the University Park campus to have fewer traditional law students than Carlisle. Each entering class at Carlisle would have 125 in-residence J.D. students compared to 75 at University Park, though University Park will have a “Center of Excellence” for international students pursuing the master of laws, or LL.M., degree. Compared to 2023 enrollment figures, that means Carlisle will grow and University Park will shrink.

Whatever the full reasons, the remarriage of the law schools is just the latest twist in a saga that’s lasted more than a quarter century.

Carlisle Keeps Surviving

In 1997, when Penn State was already around 140 years old, it finally got a law school. “The one component we’ve always felt we missed is the law,” a spokesman told The New York Times in a brief article.

But the newspaper of record itself referenced questions at the time about the demand for legal education, inquiring, “What does a major university do if it is interested in adding a law program, but does not want to increase the number of lawyers entering the job market?”

Penn State’s answer seemed to be to merge with the much smaller, and even older, Dickinson School of Law. That free-standing law school opened in 1834 in Carlisle, about 80 miles southeast of Penn State’s University Park campus.

Did this make sense? Whatever the initial intent, within a few years, then-Penn State president Graham Spanier was pushing to relocate the law school to University Park, according to reporting from PennLive/The Patriot-News. There was political blowback, and the move didn’t happen.

“There was a huge amount of political objection to that in Carlisle, and so that plan was withdrawn,” Lopatka told Inside Higher Ed.

However, in 2006, the university began admitting law students at its University Park campus anyway. These students were physically on the university’s flagship campus, but also technically on the branch campus of a law school over an hour away. Doubling down on its University Park location, Penn State built the Lewis Katz Building to house its branch of the law school, plus the School of International Affairs. The university said the building cost $60 million.

The Katz Building opened for classes in 2008, according to the university. Penn State innovated in using distance education to share courses between the two campuses.

But then, Philip J. McConnaughay, dean of the two-campus law school and founding dean of the School of International Affairs, proposed having all law students at least begin their education at University Park. This was “part of a strategy to help Penn State maintain its current academic ranking in the face of declining applications from new law students nationally” at the time, PennLive/The Patriot-News reported.

That plan also foundered. Then, a decade ago, with McConnaughay’s support, Penn State turned the University Park branch into its own, separately accredited law school.

One faculty member, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal, said this happened because “the two-campus structure was acrimonious and fell apart.” Calling the history “a saga” and a “soap opera,” they said both locations had talented faculty, but University Park wanted a more national reputation while Carlisle was more locally focused, and there were arguments about curriculum and hiring.

Lopatka said economic deterioration was the impetus for the breakup—the subsidies to the law school branches were increasing instead of the branches financially supporting themselves. But the anonymous faculty member said the split led to two Penn State law schools with similar names competing with each other for a dwindling pool of applicants, and each school was deeply discounting tuition to attract quality students.

The separation persisted until Bendapudi became president in 2022. About six months into her tenure, she announced the plan to reunify—and, at the outset, she said the primary location would be in Carlisle and the Carlisle dean would lead the combined school.

Lopatka said he thinks Bendapudi saw “having two law schools as unusual and unnecessarily expensive.” The anonymous faculty member said they think Penn State was looking to cut budgets and, for Bendapudi, “budgets that were as bright red” as the law schools’ “were probably right in her crosshairs.”

The anonymous faculty member said the November 2022 meeting when Bendapudi announced the plan to faculty “was pretty grim—there were people crying.” Lopatka said that ending the University Park law school presence was among the range of options at the time.

Whatever the initial considerations, though, the reunification panel unanimously recommended keeping a “substantial presence” in University Park, according to the released executive summary of the private report. Even with two campuses, the panel still forecast savings from “natural attrition in personnel in all categories; tuition discount rate reductions; structural efficiencies; and budget savings resulting from the reduction in resources expended to maintain competition between the two law schools.” And even with the cutbacks, the panel said the unified law school’s “selectivity rating” is expected to increase.

Bendapudi said all tenured and tenure-track faculty jobs are safe in the merger, Lopatka said. He also said he doesn’t fear closure of the University Park branch.

But the anonymous faculty member said the flagship location could go away sometime in the future. The university has changed course before, after all. “I wouldn’t be surprised,” they said.