One year ago, Penn State reported it was educating 87,903 students.

Of those students, 49,135 attended University Park, 13,564 attended World Campus, and 1,522 attended Penn State at Hershey, Great Valley, and Dickenson.

Twenty-three thousand, six hundred and eighty-two attended Commonwealth Campuses.

Those 23,682 students are often the afterthought of Penn State students. Situated far from the beams that hold up Beaver Stadium or the bars of downtown State College, Commonwealth Campus students don’t always get the full piece of Penn State’s pie.

It’s probably why there are fewer of them each year.

Facing plummeting enrollment numbers and budget cuts that have forced out staff at Commonwealth Campuses, Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi and her administration have been tasked to answer a question that determines the fate of those 23,682 students: What does Penn State do about the Commonwealth Campuses?

Penn State has made no effort to hide the financial struggles facing the campuses that grace 19 towns across Pennsylvania. Enrollment at those institutions has fallen 24% over 10 years. Dropping enrollment led the university to offer optional severance packages to eligible employees in May — 383 staff and faculty members, 10% of the Commonwealth Campuses’ staff, took the buyout.

That move, according to Penn State administrators, was one of several steps in innovating the campuses to make them fiscally stable.

Penn State is doing more than just letting go of employees. According to Vice President for Commonwealth Campuses Margo Dellicarpini, the university is working to make the campuses work together better for their own survival.

“Our campuses have evolved to be very working in isolation from each other, although we’re part of an amazing interconnected network of Penn State University,” Dellicarpini said on a live stream Thursday. “Regardless of budget challenges, we really need to look at how to modernize our business model, to be responsive, to be proactive, and to weather ourselves against the storms that we know continue to arise in higher education.

“We want to provide consistent services across locations for students, faculty, and staff. We want to amplify the impact that we have in our communities, and we want to do so by really leveraging expertise and thinking about what a modern land grant institution means to the communities that it serves.”

Part of modernizing that business model will come from taking the best of each campus and using it to promote those around it.

Penn State Schuykill’s Co-Op platform was at the forefront of discussions that Bendapudi had with her staff and with student media. Outside of the specifics of that program, however, Penn State is trying to figure out how to make its campuses unique and efficient.

“While we’re addressing budget realities, and while we’re undergoing great, amazing transformation in our business models and the way that we think about our role in communities and how we amplify that, we also know that we have to invest, and that’s been an area that I’ve been very focused on,” Dellicarpini said.

“We’re looking at employer engagement. We’re looking at aligning programming to provide students with opportunities in the region. And so these are investments that are exciting and that are really going to have an impact on the outcomes for our students.”

Working together will be a key aspect of the Commonwealth Campuses’ survival, according to Bendapudi. Some campuses might be “cannibalizing” each other because of how close they sit in an already competitive market.

Instead, Bendapudi said, Commonwealth Campuses need to work collaboratively. Bendapudi’s administration introduced a regional leadership model in June. It doesn’t seem ready to stop there as it tries to figure out what to do with the homes of those 23,682 students.

“The whole is truly greater than the sum of the parts. That has to be important,” Bendapudi said. “That’s why alignment matters, because we could all be working with focus, with dedication, with energy, but if we’re working at cross purposes, we’re not serving the mission.”