Three months after ruling Penn State a state agency for taxation purposes, Commonwealth Court said yesterday the University is not a state agency and does not have to disclose administrators' salaries under "right-to-know" laws.

No details were available on the ruling, which was issued during the late afternoon.

The court said it had no jurisdiction because the University is independent of the state.

Attorneys for the three student plaintiffs had asserted that the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862 made Penn State a state agency subject to "right-to-know" policies.

"Penn State sometimes changes its position depending on whether it is advantageous to them or not," Doreena Wong, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union in Philadelphia, said when the suit was filed.

But attorneys for the University, in their brief, said Penn State's dual status as a state-related school with a "unique nexus with the Commonwealth" made such dual roles possible.

The school had charged that Commonwealth Court had neither appellate nor original jurisdiction in the case -- an argument apparently affirmed yesterday by the court.

Purdon's Pennsylvania Statutes defines a state agency as "an authority . . . which performs or has for its purpose the performance of an essential governmental function."

The plaintiffs -- University students Stephen Roy and Donn Wonderling and alumnus John Orr -- said in their petition they believed education to be an essential governmental function.

They said a ruling in their favor would have increased Penn State's accountability to taxpayers -- who help contribute to the school's $228.1 million in state appropriations for 1989-90.

But even prior to this case, the battle for an open budget was not without confrontations.

Student government leaders in late 1988, attempting to drum up support for their quest to publicize the University's budget, revealed the salaries of top administrators, including University President Bryce Jordan's.

Jordan said the figures, which originated in a private survey, were illegally obtained from a confidential survey.

School officials for a time even considered filing charges against former Undergraduate Student Government President Seth Williams, who spearheaded the disclosure.

The students' litigation was one of two suits this academic year that threatened to re-define Penn State's status as a semi-private, semi-public institution.

Commonwealth Court ruled in October, with two judges dissenting, that the University was not required to pay $228 in real estate taxes to Centre County for an on-campus tract leased to Mid State Bank & Trust.

That decision upheld a 1987 Centre County Common Pleas ruling. County officials have appealed to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, supported financially by five municipalities that surround the University.

The dual ruling in effect presents Penn State as a public and private institution simultaneously.

Williams, now a law student at Georgetown University, said an appeal to a federal court would provide a definition for Penn State no matter which way the ruling went.

"A higher court will see the University's inconsistencies," he said last night. "Whichever way the higher court would fall, one of the two decisions would have to be wrong."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.