Youngstown State University is opening its first regional campus this fall in Steubenville, Ohio, a city of about 18,000 where one in four residents lives below the poverty line and the only public community college shut its doors in 2024. The new campus occupies the former site of Eastern Gateway Community College, which closed after the U.S. Department of Education found it illegally charged Pell Grant recipients more than other students and state auditors condemned its “derelict accounting.”
University President Bill Johnson described the outpost as a lean operation with no campus dean and no local overhead staff. “This is essentially another building of Youngstown State University,” he said. “It’s just an hour and nine minutes away.” Technology help, financial aid and other student services will run from the Youngstown campus, an arrangement Johnson said saves a “tremendous amount” of money.
Johnson, a Republican who represented southeastern Ohio in Congress for more than a decade before taking the university’s top job in 2024, said residents of the region have long felt overlooked. “When it came to economic investment, highways, roads, bridges, you name it, they saw too many times the money would go to Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati,” he said. The closure of Eastern Gateway left Steubenville with only a small private Catholic university and a community college an hour away.
Youngstown State developed 14 certificate and associate’s degree programs for the Steubenville campus, covering fields such as welding, nursing and business. Johnson said the university invested about $7 million to design and win approval for the programs. The state provided $3 million in startup funds, and Jefferson County gave the campus property to the university, though it retained some land for future development. Johnson said the university is “flexible and agile” and “sitting on go” to tailor future offerings — such as a potential petroleum engineering program — to the region’s oil and gas industry.
The campus launch comes as Ohio’s higher education system faces calls for consolidation. Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said in a March campaign video that merging some of the state’s 14 public universities would create “centers of excellence” rather than “replicas and clones of one another.” Johnson said Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine “loves this model” and that the expansion was first seeded by DeWine in late 2023. Johnson also said he has spoken with gubernatorial candidates who support the approach, but he declined to name them. Ramaswamy’s consolidation push has drawn opposition from Democrat Amy Acton and others across the state.
Enrollment will be a steep climb. Johnson wants to return to the more than 3,000 students Eastern Gateway enrolled more than a decade ago, but Ohio’s 24 other regional campuses have seen full-time enrollment drop by about 14.5% over the past two decades, to roughly 29,000 students last year. The university declined to share enrollment projections for the fall, though Johnson said they have received a “significant” number of applications.
Johnson and Provost Jennifer Adams have made media appearances in Steubenville and held an open house to persuade families that the campus can deliver. “We’re not going to quit on them,” Johnson told Signal Statewide, adding that the biggest pledge is the academic programs themselves. He struck an urgent note about rebuilding the student body: “We need them to come back. And, I dare say, we need them to come back quickly.”