Lyndon State College laid off five employees Wednesday and announced it would offer fewer courses next year.
Joseph Bertolini, president of Lyndon, said the cuts were necessary to address a budget deficit caused by declining enrollment.
Each of the five employees will receive full salary and benefits through June 30.
No full-time faculty were laid off. The five workers who were let go were in administrative positions. The job cuts will save more than $300,000, the college said.
“This is heartbreaking news and something we’d hoped to avoid,” Bertolino said. “These are people’s livelihoods. Their professions. On behalf of the entire campus community, I extend my gratitude to these staff and part-time faculty members for their years of service to the College.”
Faced with a $1.5 million gap between income and expenses, Lyndon State will not reappoint some of its adjunct faculty, the college will reduce the number of courses taught by adjuncts and cut “overloads” paid to full-time faculty for taking on additional teaching responsibilities.
Lyndon State spokesman Keith Chamberlin said the college was already offering about 60 fewer courses than it did in the fall. The new cost-saving measures, he said, will eliminate another 15 courses from next year’s catalog. The shrinking course offerings could make it harder for the college to attract more students.
“But we won’t have a final count on how many part-time positions that will represent,” Chamberlin said. “In some cases, an adjunct who taught several courses may remain, but with a lighter class load.”
“While this is painful, it is vitally important for us to tackle this head on,” he said. “Ultimately these decisions will strengthen Lyndon State College and its mission in the years to come.”
At the start of the 2013-14 school year, Lyndon State had 1,519 students. Last fall the college attracted 1,430 students, Chamberlin said.
Other colleges in Vermont and Northern New England are also seeing a drop in college enrollments tied to a decline in the number of high school students as the region’s population ages.
The college is working on five new initiatives to increase enrollment:
• The Lyndon Learning Collaborative with Lyndon Institute is designed to make attending college easier for current high school seniors, and the college hopes to expand the program to other area schools;
• A partnership with Northern Essex Community College will bring three Lyndon bachelor degree programs to NECC’s Lawrence, Mass., campus;
• An agreement with Education First will bring the first cohort of international students to LSC in fall 2015;
• Also in fall 2015, the college will launch LyndonFLEX, a program to attract and better serve nontraditional learners in our region;
• And the college plans to make strategic investments to attract more student athletes in several new sports.
