UNH Plymouth? What Does the Future Hold for PSU?
By Brady Lyons
Published November 14, 2025
With many prominent concerns across the Plymouth State Campus, such as faculty receiving the Separation Incentive Package (SIP), food issues at Prospect Dining, and potential program curtailment, one begins to wonder what the future of Plymouth State University will look like.
Facing substantial budget cuts from the State of New Hampshire, the University System of NH must cut almost $18 million in spending across the board. This includes Plymouth State University, Keene State College, and the University of New Hampshire. At Plymouth, many professors were offered a separation incentive package as a cost-saving measure for the university.
All of this is part of an effort to follow a mandate from the USNH Board of Trustees that USNH institutions maintain a 1% budget margin, with the goal that PSU is capable of meeting the requirement by May 2027. “[The] 1% margin really equates to about a million dollars,” said PSU President Donald Birx. This means that PSU has two years to prove it is a sustainable University by spending $1 million less than it brings in, or it will be absorbed into a more “unified structure,” according to a University Days slideshow shared with faculty in August. To reach a budget surplus, Birx shared six options with faculty. “If I didn’t feel like the outcome was going to be positive for both Keene and Plymouth over the next two years, I probably wouldn’t do this job,” he told The Clock.
Option A has Plymouth, Keene, UNH, and UNH Manchester absorbed into one unified university. Plymouth and Keene would no longer be standalone schools, instead becoming UNH Plymouth and UNH Keene.
Option B maintains the current status of Plymouth and Keene as independent schools. “Right now, we’re in B. The goal is to avoid A,” said Provost Nate Bowditch.
Bowditch labeled Option C and Option D “cool intellectual exercises.” Option C resembles Vermont’s public higher education model, where the state’s flagship University of Vermont remained independent, but state colleges were merged into Vermont State University. Plan C would have Plymouth and Keene governed separately from UNH by “New State College Trustees.”
Plan D would bring the Community College System of New Hampshire under the USNH umbrella.
Option E, plain and simple, was labeled “Close Campus.”
Option F includes a “Shared Leadership Team” with three presidents, three provosts, and three chief financial officers in a cabinet working together in a structure that otherwise resembles the Option A merger, Bowditch said.
The two-year timeline to meet the Board of Trustees’ 1% margin requirement dates back to April 2025, when initial plans to restructure General Education and create a six-school structure were introduced. As of November, the next steps in the timeline include potential program closures and reductions in force for tenure-track faculty, depending on the outcome of the separation incentive package.
Next year will see the implementation and evaluation of the new academic structures, and ultimately a decision on the future of PSU. For now, however, our future largely remains a mystery.
