Enrollment is again down in the Vermont State Colleges System.
Like colleges across the region, the system has seen enrollments decline as New England’s demographics increasingly skew older. In Vermont, which is near the bottom nationally in state support for public higher education, the problem is also compounded by high tuition costs. The VSCS has seen its numbers drop by more than 16 percent since 2010.
Total headcount on Oct. 15 stood at 11,259 across the system’s four schools. That’s 183 full- and part-time students fewer than last year, according to enrollment data provided to system trustees, and 2,235 fewer than eight years ago.
Not all of the VSCS’s schools saw an enrollment drop this year. With 2,195 enrolled this fall, head counts actually increased by 54 students at Castleton University, where officials have said new articulation agreements — formal agreements between schools generally on transfer credits, programs and degrees — are boosting enrollments. Vermont Technical College, with 1,639 enrolled, saw a modest bump of 23 students.
But things are different at Northern Vermont University. There were 2,587 students enrolled at NVU this fall, 112 fewer than there were in the combined enrollments of Johnson State College and Lyndon State College last year. NVU was created this fall when the two schools merged. And Community College of Vermont counted 5,379 students in October, 125 fewer than last year.
The system is also on track to end fiscal year 2019 with a $4 million deficit. But just three months into the budget year, VSCS Chief Financial Officer Steve Wisloski cautioned the numbers were extremely preliminary.
Part of the projected deficit is mostly a matter of accounting, Wisloski said. An overhaul of the VSCS’s payroll that will cost more than $500,000, for example, counts toward the projected deficit despite the fact that the expense has been planned and saved for in a separate fund. And the system isn’t off its enrollment projections at all the way it was last year, he said, when Castleton abruptly shut down its polling institute and announced it would lay off dozens of employees to close a budget shortfall.
Still, Wisloski said the system spent more than anticipated on personnel and on discounting tuition to attract students.
“I don’t mean to be sanguine about it. A $4 million deficit means we do have a lot of work to do over the course of this year,” he said. “But it’s not bad as it might otherwise look.”
