Southeastern Ohio residents will see a new public higher-education option this fall, as Youngstown State University moves into Steubenville, the university announced through interviews conducted by Signal Ohio and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press. The campus will open on the former site of Eastern Gateway Community College, which closed in fall 2024, leaving the city with a small private Catholic university and another community college roughly an hour away.
Youngstown State President Bill Johnson said the Steubenville campus will operate as an extension of Youngstown State rather than as a standalone institution. He described the plan as a “lean operation,” saying there will be no campus dean and no “bunch of overhead people,” with technology help, financial aid, and other services run from the Youngstown campus. Johnson said the approach is saving a “tremendous amount” of overhead costs and that the Steubenville site is “essentially another building” of Youngstown State.
Johnson also linked the expansion to Ohio’s broader debate over public university costs and structure. He said Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine “loves this model” and that DeWine seeded Youngstown State’s push into southeastern Ohio in late 2023, before Eastern Gateway’s eventual shutdown. Johnson said he has also heard support from statewide gubernatorial candidates, though he declined to name them, and he pointed to a line of argument made by Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy about consolidating Ohio’s 14 public universities.
Ramaswamy has argued that consolidation could allow universities to focus on specialties. In a March video shared by his campaign, Ramaswamy said, “When you consolidate them, they can actually be centers of excellence, who are actually the best in their respective domains instead of trying to create replicas and clones of one another throughout the state.” Johnson said he is pursuing a model aimed at offering southeastern Ohio students local access while keeping administrative functions centered at Youngstown.
The Steubenville expansion is framed by Johnson as a response to a loss of educational options after Eastern Gateway closed. He said the community no longer had “access to choices in higher education” after the shutdown, and he said Eastern Gateway’s complex wind-down process took years, leaving, in his account, “no faculty, there was no staff, there were no students.” In a debrief to Youngstown State’s board in November 2025, Johnson said the Eastern Gateway saga helped drive a lack of trust between residents and higher-education institutions.
Johnson said Youngstown State is trying to rebuild that trust through academic programs offered at the Steubenville campus and through keeping promises to the community. He said the fall 2026 semester will offer 14 certificate and associate’s degree programs, including areas such as welding, nursing and business. He said the campus’ offerings will be tailored to local workforce needs, and he referenced the region’s connections to the oil and gas industry when discussing the possibility of a petroleum engineering program.
The Eastern Gateway closure also followed scrutiny of the college’s finances and federal student aid. The report said the U.S. Department of Education told Eastern Gateway that it illegally charged Pell Grant recipients more than other students, and that the state auditor later criticized the college’s leadership for “derelict accounting” and questionable spending. Johnson described the consequences of that long wind-down as a period with no students at Eastern Gateway, and said that meant state financial support that depends partly on enrollment was reduced during the transition.
Johnson said Youngstown State invested about $7 million to develop and obtain approval for the first slate of academic programs for Steubenville, and that the state later provided about $3 million in startup money. The report said Jefferson County gave the Steubenville campus land to the university, while retaining some property for future development. Johnson said the campus is, in effect, “starting from scratch” to rebuild enrollment.
For the upcoming fall term, Johnson said Youngstown State declined to share enrollment projections but that he wants to restore the number of students Eastern Gateway enrolled more than a decade ago, which he described as more than 3,000. He said leaders are also trying to reach prospective students and their families through local outreach; Johnson and Provost Jennifer Adams made rounds on Steubenville television stations ahead of a campus open house last month.
Johnson said he is optimistic but acknowledged the outcome will depend on whether students enroll. He said the university has received a “significant” number of applications, and he said that the years of preparation come down to “if — and how many — students arrive on campus this fall.” “We need them to come back,” Johnson said. “And, I dare say, we need them to come back quickly.”