A tremendous piece of reporting by VTDigger’s Theo Wells-Spackman lays out the dire situation facing Vermont State University and, although it sticks to the cautious, both-sides nature of modern journalism, it pretty much points the finger at the real culprits: Gov. Phil Scott and the Legislature.
It’s not a pretty picture. Falling admissions, leadership turmoil, cutbacks across the board, more cuts coming down the pike, half-empty (or worse) campuses, morale in the toilet. In short, something that looks just like a death spiral. And barring a sudden influx of resources from a state that has always shortchanged higher education, it’s hard to see how VSU pulls out of it. I’m sure it will survive in some form, but there’s no way it can become the robust, lower-cost, in-state alternative to the University of Vermont that we need it to be.
The situation would be bad enough, but the real killer is the state’s insistence that VSU maintain operations at all five of its campuses while implementing a painful series of state-mandated budget cuts.
This is where I once again bring up the self-immolation of Jeb Spaulding, former state senator, treasurer, and chief of staff in the Shumlin administration. As chancellor of what was then the Vermont State College system in the spring of 2020, Spaulding proposed shutting down VSC campuses in Johnson, Lyndon, and Randolph, consolidating operations in Castleton and Williston.
It was political suicide, and Spaulding had to know it. Everyone went into a tizzy, he withdrew his plan, and within a few days he announced he would resign.
Thing is, he was right. Without a dramatic turnaround in fortune (which could only come with a strong investment by the state), the system could not sustain all five locations at the time. The primary reason: Dramatic cuts in state funding. As I wrote at the time:
State support in 1980 amounted to 49% of VSC’s budget. Now, it’s only 17%. In 1989 Vermont ranked third in the nation in state funding for public colleges and universities; now, it’s 49th. The system has roughly $50 million in deferred maintenance, and more than 80% is at the three campuses targeted for closure.
That was at the very beginning of the Covid epidemic, which wreaked further havoc on VSC’s fortunes. It was also before the state mandated $5 million in budget cuts annually for five years — eventually reduced to $3.5 million, but still punishing. At the same time, the state mandated that all five campuses remain open.
It’s been all downhill from there. There’s been constant turnover at the top administrative levels, and VSU’s current president is an interim. There have been rounds of layoffs. Faculty, staff, and student organizations have all adopted motions of “no confidence” in the administration. There was the ill-fated plan to shutter the system’s libraries, which was eventually abandoned — but even so, as Wells-Spackman reports, the libraries are shells of their former selves.
Wells-Spackman rattles off all the signs of a system in decline. As VSU programs stretch themselves beyond thin trying to serve all its campuses, there’s more reliance on distance learning. The Johnson campus has already shuttered two of its five dormitories, and a third will follow this fall. (Castleton, at 70%, is the only campus with a dorm occupancy rate above 35%. Somewhere, Spaulding is nodding his head.)
“You’ll walk through the quad on a Friday afternoon and there’s absolutely no one else on the quad,” Johnson campus student Zib Miller told VTDigger. The system is gradually selling off pieces of real estate. Student clubs and student services are ebbing away.
Meanwhile, the state of Vermont still ranks 49th among the 50 states in support for higher education. It’s barely spending more than half as much per student as the national average.
I understand why a bunch of politicians would resist closing any campuses, especially in the economically challenged Northeast Kingdom. But they’re trying to have it both ways: cut funding and maintain all the locations. It’s not working. It will never work. It’s the oft-repeated definition of insanity, usually misattributed to Albert Einstein: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
The Vermont Political Observer. 
The former LSC has been threatened and fought off for years, despite having flagship programs in journalism, broadcast journalism, and meteorology, and a healthy education/psychology/liberal arts programming. Mr. Spaulding has waved his infamous “white paper” at us since he came on board. The board of trustees failed to fight and strategize well with the legislature, and for years there has been no trustee representative from the tri-county northeastern part of the state….or the east side, frankly. Saying that the college is important to the economics of the area is putting it mildly. The state colleges were also discouraged from pursuing healthy endowments early on, despite having fairly lucrative majors and a good earnings environment. Such endowments were considered inter-family competition. Poor strategizing, again.
What a sadness this all is. But one need to cast eyes over the national state of non-elite colleges to see a pattern. Families were promised a toe-hold in the middle class through higher education. Careerist majors were favored in tuition-driven finance models at the expense of citizen-making liberal arts programs, which incite critical , lifelong learning, and multi-culturalism. Except….the elite Harvards, Yales, Dartmouths, etc., have hung on to theirs. We see where this will go.
We’ve got the right idea with free Community College of Vermont classes. Sadly, we are probably too far gone to retain the beautiful state colleges system we had as state that has valued education in the past. In the past. College closures are very sad situations.
A short decade ago, the Lyndon campus was robust, approaching record enrollment and programs that had significantly high national rankings. Chief among those, was Electronic Journalism Arts, named a Top Ten national program in December 2013 by NewsPro magazine, a well-respected industry publication. Lyndon’s EJA program actually ranked 7th, up against behemoth programs such as NYU, Quinnipiac University, The Park School of Communications at Ithaca, Syracuse University and others. Lyndon at the time, even for out-of-staters was half the cost of those other, high profile schools. You can’t sell that?
All those Lyndon programs are now in a state of disarray. I’m sure the same is true for Johnson, Castleton and Randolph/Williston. What an absolute mess!
Message Governor Scott about this, and you’ll get a boiler-plate response about all he’s done for education in Vermont. He’s too busy trying to force the hand on his botched commissioner of education choice to provide any kind of personal or meaningful response.
This disaster lies most with the VSCS Board. They are arrogant and detached. They don’t listen to anyone because they already know everything there is to know. Just ask ’em. They won’t even respond.
I am personally disgusted with how this state has trashed higher education. I am an alumnus of Lyndon and I think everyone involved in this fiasco should be out of a job. All new hires certainly couldn’t do any worse than this parcel of lame horses.
If Vermont, the VSCS Board, Governor Phil Scott and the Legislature were really serious about the retention of Vermont’s young people, they would start with addressing higher education. A restoration of these highly recognized programs, excellent faculty and staff and state-of-the art facilities should be job 1. Attach to these improvements significant scholarship strings with in-state career path development post graduation requirements.
To be 49th in the nation in our support of higher education is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It makes us bone-dead stupid.
“I am personally disgusted with how this state has trashed higher education. ”
I wonder why our political system is trashing the State colleges. It’s deliberate no doubt. Is it to force people into UVM? Is it to force them into private colleges, which might give fairly generously at campaign time to reward having more students pumped into them and then everyone can look like they’re saving money? I don’t know, but it’s really sad.
I don’t agree, but as Americans, we have decided (after the Boomers got their cheap college) that college is a business. That being said, if I was an 18 or 19 year old, why would I want to spend my formative years in the Kingdom? Oh, its’the biggest employer in Lyndon? Cool, explain to me why its ok to drain funds from Castleton, an actual thriving school? Close Lyndon and Johnson, pump even more money into CCV, and call it a day. This legislature is soooo good at taking an easy, but culturally difficult decision and making ten times worse by being scared to do the thing that needs to be done. I guess its easier to pretend to take on Big Oil than solve actual problems
College wasn’t so cheap for boomers. I graduated from then-CSC. I paid plenty. As well, there were many many people who attended college with a lost limb or more because they paid for it with military service. Hey, just took a risk and that’s how it came out. As well, many a parental unit sacrificed their retirement funds or took out additional mortgages to push a new generation up through college. The issue isn’t your grandma. The issue is how college attainment continues to be an elitist achievement, and the way we fund colleges make them an alter of sacrifice for the declining middle class. We’ve turned them from institutions of higher learning to career mills. Get an education and get a better job.