The Maryland Higher Education Commission has signed off on the integration of Baltimore Hebrew University into Towson University, bringing the merger within a vote of becoming reality.

The commission issued letters to Towson President Robert L. Caret and BHU President Erika Pardes Schon on Wednesday saying it had approved a merger agreement signed by the two institutions. Approval by the University of Maryland System Board of Regents on Friday would allow the 90-year-old center of Jewish learning to complete the move from Park Heights to the campus of the larger public university in time for the start of the fall semester.

The two schools agreed to the merger earlier this year. With the approval of the regents, BHU programs, faculty and courses will be dispersed among different schools and departments at Towson. One floor of Towson’s Albert S. Cook Library will be cleared to accommodate BHU’s 70,000-volume Joseph Meyerhoff Library, which school officials describe as the largest collection of Judaica in the Mid-Atlantic.

Founded in 1919 to train teachers for local Jewish schools, BHU grew with the community to offer master’s degrees and doctorates. A high school that operated from the 1930s through the 1980s graduated thousands of students.

But declining enrollments and rising costs have made it increasingly difficult for the institution to remain independent, leading its sole donor, the Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Greater Baltimore, to direct administrators to find a new model.