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

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 increa