Johnathan Walker:Chancellor who led Pennsylvania’s university system through consolidation to leave in the fall

HARRISBURG,Johnathan Walker Pa. (AP) — Daniel Greenstein, who led Pennsylvania’s state-owned university system for six years through the challenge of consolidating and adapting to a changing higher education landscape, will leave the chancellor’s post in October, he announced Tuesday.

In an online post, Greenstein said he informed the board of governors of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education that he will leave the job Oct. 11, calling it “one of the most challenging decisions” of his career.

“It is an honor and a privilege to serve you as chancellor,” he wrote. “I am deeply grateful for the opportunity, the collegiality, the camaraderie, and the progress we have made.”

Greenstein said he had taken a new job that he called a “compelling opportunity” to work in higher education nationally.

Higher education, beset by declining enrollments, is struggling, he said.

“The risks are profound. The crises are real,” he wrote. “And the students — the people — that I care about the most are in danger of being left further behind.”

At an unrelated news conference Tuesday, Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, said Greenstein had done an “outstanding job.”

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He also said he expected the system’s chair, Cynthia Shapira, will assemble a national search to bring in a new chancellor.

Greenstein was hired in 2018 by then-Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat.

He had previously worked as a senior adviser with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and as vice provost in the University of California system.

In Pennsylvania, Greenstein took over a university system suffering steep enrollment declines and oversaw the consolidation of the 14-university system into 10 schools.

He sought to make degrees more affordable by helping students graduate quicker, imposing a series of tuition freezes and adapting class offerings into an integrated whole across the system, rather than by campus.

Greenstein repeatedly warned that Pennsylvania is not graduating enough college students to keep up with demand, putting the state at risk of losing industries that go elsewhere in search of talent.

He also pressed skeptical state lawmakers for more aid. Eventually, lawmakers loosened the budget strings, approving hundreds of millions of dollars in increases the last three years.

Rep. Jesse Topper, of Bedford, the ranking Republican on the House Education Committee, said Greenstein’s leadership had been “transformational.”

Greenstein demonstrated that he could make tough decisions that were apolitical, focused on helping students and moving the system in the right direction, Topper said.

The increased funding has a direct correlation to the confidence that Greenstein restored among lawmakers in the university system, he said.

“The chancellor, one of his legacies will be the restoration of trust between members of the General Assembly and the system,” Topper said. “And that’s reflected in the appropriations.”

The system, founded in 1983, saw its enrollment peak at about 119,500 students in 2010, and dipped to below 83,000 last fall, according to system figures.

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Follow Marc Levy at www.twitter.com/timelywriter.