Editor’s note: This commentary is by Lisa Cline, who is president of the Vermont State Colleges Faculty Federation, and Linda Olson, the vice president of education for the American Federation of Teachers Vermont.
[V]ermont currently ranks 49th of 50 states in terms of state support for public higher education. For 38 years the state has provided dwindling support for public higher education. In 1980, state appropriations covered 51 percent of the budget for the Vermont State Colleges System; now it covers only 14 percent. The remaining 86 percent of tuition costs fall almost entirely on students and their families. This places a significant financial burden on Vermont families. Our students pay one of the highest tuitions in the country and graduate with more debt. In Vermont we have one of the highest high school graduation rates in the country, but 40 percent of our students don’t go on for post-secondary education. A significant reason for this is the cost of college in Vermont. It is also impossible to maintain high quality education in light of dwindling resources. When the VSCS was created in 1961 the enacting language promised that the state would support us “in whole or substantial part.” The state has not honored that promise and for the well-being of Vermont it is important that it do so.
We see the impact of this neglect most clearly in the VSCS, especially right now at Castleton University. The lack of state support has meant that we live a pretty precarious existence where any changes can result in difficulties. In a recent interview on WCAX, Chancellor Jeb Spaulding of the VSCS discussed how “our traditional customer base is getting smaller.” While we prefer to call them students rather than “customer base,” he is right that demographic changes mean we have fewer college-aged students. At Castleton, we also lost New York students who stayed in their own state where there is now free tuition. These demographic factors combined with a previous president at Castleton who tried to grow our university at a time when weathering the storm was probably a better option, has led to the reductions in faculty and staff mentioned by Spaulding in the WCAX interview. While Spaulding stated that “a couple dozen” lost their jobs, actually 38 people have either retired (to save the jobs of others), had a reduction in their work to 80 percent (resulting in a reduction in pay), or have been laid off. Many of these people have served Castleton and our students for decades. While we think Castleton will survive, we also know that the loss of these members of our community will change us in ways we may not fully understand until our students return in the fall. We think of Castleton as the canary in the coal mine. Unless the state starts to adequately support public higher education, it is just a matter of time before this happens again to another of our public colleges. Not supporting public higher education is short sighted and detrimental to the well-being of the state.
In Gov. Phil Scott’s State of the State address this year, he discussed Vermont’s aging population and that the health and survival of Vermont require attracting and convincing young people to live and work in Vermont. We agree completely and believe that free college tuition to the Vermont State Colleges and the University of Vermont for all Vermonters will enable us to do this. Providing free tuition would benefit Vermont in a number of ways:
• When students stay in Vermont for college, they are more likely to stay after graduation.
• Free tuition might encourage the 40 percent of our students who don’t go on to college to do so.
• With free tuition Vermont students would graduate with less debt, so they would be able buy homes and settle in communities more quickly.
• If these young people stayed in Vermont and worked and raised their families here, this investment in public higher education would be an investment in Vermont’s future.
It is also critical that we be careful stewards of the limited resources we do have in the VSCS. In the WCAX interview the chancellor also said the goal of the Northern Vermont University unification was to cut administrative costs and focus resources on the student experience. We hope that will be the case, but the chancellor could start the reduction in administrative costs in his own office. There have been seven new positions created in the chancellor’s office since 2015 despite the demographic changes mentioned earlier which have affected all of the colleges. Also, on a recent episode of “Vermont Edition,” the chancellor said that cuts in administrators would “not be realistic.” We believe that if cuts are being made, those that are least likely to impact students should be made first.
It is time Vermont invests in public higher education and that the state colleges and universities put the needs of our students first. This investment is critical for the future of our state.