This commentary is by Allan Rodgers, who is a former president of Vermont Technical College, where he is now a professor of business.
[W]ith layoffs at Vermont Technical College and three of the remaining four VSC institutions facing budget deficits, we must face the obvious conclusion: Vermont’s higher ed system doesn’t work. For about $40,000 in tuition (not including room and board), one can earn a bachelor’s degree at one of the VSC’s four residential colleges. Add 50 percent or $20,000 for the same at UVM. For Vermont college students who want to stay in Vermont, either out of economic necessity, family, or lifestyle preferences, $40,000 to $60,000 in tuition requires parental sacrifice or a lifetime of debt.
Tweaking an underfunded and archaic model will not result in a substantive change. Instead, let’s look to our close neighbor for some ideas. Southern New Hampshire University, for example, is offering an entire bachelor’s degree for $10,000. Classes are offered online with the support of business and industry. Unlike traditional colleges, it does not teach through credits, but through competencies. Furthermore, if someone can demonstrate a competency, they need not take the course.
Farther away, Iowa, Florida and Texas are contemplating state-run fixed priced bachelor degrees. Their models include community service as tuition offset with tax benefits for participating employers, dual enrollment (college courses offered in high schools), and other cost managing features.
Here’s a bold flight of fancy: Could Vermont, always first in experiments, offer a statewide $5,000 associate degree education, followed by a $5,000 bachelor’s degree completion program? If so, what would it look like? How could this be possible when our current costs at the VSC and UVM are double or triple that amount (not even counting state support)? How do we offer a basic, balanced, no-frills education at a lower cost?
Here are some ways to make this work.
1. Don’t go residential. Colleges are poor hotel managers and the administrative cost of managing these seasonal hotels should be avoided. Colleges make money on the residential services only because they force students to live on campus. Any number of willing commercial enterprises, along with local eateries could rise to serve the needs of residential students in a commercial, competitive manner.
2. Don’t scholarship or provide financial aid. Colleges have become aid managers and banks. A fixed, one price for all reduces administrative burdens. Besides, at $2,500 per year, affordability would drive the need down.
3. Go year round. Our archaic summer-off structure benefited an agrarian society or allowed for faculty research. Faculty research should not be a necessity for the new state college – teaching should be the primary focus. Year-round operations provide a levelized approach to costs, faster potential college completion, and better use of physical resources.
Full-time faculty requires higher salaries, but this could easily be offset by teaching 16 courses per year over four shorter semesters, rather than eight courses over two semesters.
4. Offer fewer degrees but more minors. Here are five basic degrees that the new college might offer: business, computer science, nursing, education, and engineering. Instead of 40 degrees, the new college could offer minors among those five broad degrees, say, marketing as a minor in business and civil engineering studies in the engineering major. This allows for better use of faculty resources (costs), labs, and reduces the cost of administering many majors, with many departments, each with administered support.
5. Hire faculty to teach full time for 12 months of instruction. This provides huge options to run many more classes. For example, an annual academic could offer four 12-week semesters instead of two 14-week semesters as currently designed in the state colleges. Full-time faculty requires higher salaries, but this could easily be offset by teaching 16 courses per year over four shorter semesters, rather than eight courses over two semesters.
6. Provide common electives online. Online provides access to more students. The ability to learn and teach online is a skill set that cannot be avoided to have a successful lifetime of learning. The new college should specialize in teaching teachers and students to be successful in an online environment with cost reductions coming from reduced classroom overhead and maintenance.
7. Be employer and student driven. These are the customers, after all, and they should be well represented at the highest levels of governance.
8. Have one rate for in-state and out-of-state students. If we get our costs down, we won’t need the subsidy provided by out-of-state students. Plus, they would share the overhead burden.
9. Become competency driven. Like our neighbors in New Hampshire, let’s figure a way for students who already know something to get credit for their knowledge. We should not need a multi-month committee or a dozen hoops to jump through – simple, one-step assessments are needed. This will encourage more adult learners and non-traditional students to return to school, bolstering their career prospects.
10. Create a single system – no exceptions. In Chittenden County alone, there are five colleges or universities. Three of the five are state assisted and arguably competitive. Student tuition and state funding is used for hiring competitive staff to buy competitive advertising and to provide competitive scholarships. Does this make any sense in a state that underfunds higher education and has a $100 million expected budget shortfall? I don’t think so – one system surely makes more economic sense.
We should set some outlandish affordability goals for Vermont higher education. Shooting for a $10,000 college degree shouldn’t be a dream, it should become a reality.
