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This story was updated at 6:55 p.m.
Amid swift and furious public backlash, the chancellor of the Vermont State Colleges announced Wednesday morning he would withdraw his plan to shutter three of the system’s campuses this fall.
“Our Board of Trustees heard loud and clear from thousands of students, employees, communities, and the State’s elected leadership and determined that my recommendations would be damaging on many levels and would not be acceptable. I accept their judgement,” Jeb Spaulding said in a statement.
But Spaulding also expressed “strident caution” in his announcement that “the current configuration of the Vermont State Colleges is not sustainable; it cannot continue for long.”
In the wake of the pandemic’s financial fallout, the chancellor announced Friday he would recommend trustees close Northern Vermont University, which has campuses in Johnson and Lyndon, and Vermont Technical College’s main campus in Randolph Center. The plan would have cut nearly 500 staff and faculty, and impacted about 3,000 students.
Public furor over Spaulding’s proposal was immediate, and legislative leaders over the weekend urged trustees, who were originally set to vote on his recommendations Monday, to take time to consider alternatives. Several lawmakers, including chairs of the money committees, have also suggested funds from the $1.25 billion federal stimulus package to Vermont might provide one-time dollars to buy time for the system as it explores its options.
“We will be taking additional time to work with elected, campus, and community leaders to redesign the Vermont State Colleges System to be sustainable,” Spaulding said.
Officials with the chancellor’s office say the system is rapidly running out of cash and will need at least $25 million – in addition to its regular annual state appropriation of roughly $30 million – to stay afloat. They have also warned that a scenario in which all VSCS campuses remain open will likely see that price tag climb as students decamp amid the uncertainty.
The system returned millions of dollars to students in room and board fees when its schools pivoted to online education when the coronavirus outbreak reached Vermont in early March.
Spaulding has argued that the pandemic simply exacerbated long-standing financial vulnerabilities in the system. Vermont funds public higher education at a lesser rate than nearly every other state in the country. At the same time the schools have had to increase their reliance on student tuition, demographic shifts have translated into steady declines in enrollment, particularly in the system’s residential, traditional four-year schools.
The closure proposals brought forward by Spaulding elicited objections from host communities, where local leaders said the loss of the schools would devastate the economy in some of the state’s poorest regions. But the closures also targeted parts of the system VSCS leaders have long telegraphed they worried were the system’s weaker points.
In an effort to boost enrollment and save modestly on administrative overhead, trustees in 2016 approved a plan to merge Johnson State College and Lyndon State College, maintain both campuses, and rebrand as Northern Vermont University. Before the pandemic arrived, the system was projecting it would end the fiscal year with a $4 million operating deficit, with NVU carrying the largest shortfall.
And while enrollment has been stronger at VTC, school officials had earlier signaled a desire to downsize their footprint in Randolph, where the campus faces steep deferred maintenance needs.
Spaulding’s now abandoned proposal has brought renewed attention to Vermont’s decades-long policy of providing low state support to higher education. But even as politicians scrambled to find money to buy time for the schools, they have emphasized that investments in the system are conditioned on reform.
At a press conference Wednesday, Gov. Phil Scott said the chancellor’s announcement was “breaking news” to him as well.
And while he noted that he had advocated for increased funding to the system over the years, he also cautioned that “just putting money into the system isn’t going to fix the systemic problem that they’re experiencing.”
Scott also added that subsidies to the system should target “the rural parts of the state – the Lyndons and the Johnsons and so forth, rather than Chittenden County.”
In a statement released Wednesday afternoon, Senate Pro Tem Tim Ashe, D/P-Chittenden, called the chancellor’s latest announcement “an important first step toward developing a transition plan that respects the students, faculty, staff and host communities of Northern Vermont University and VTC-Randolph.”
“It allows for a clearheaded analysis of what a healthy public higher education system in Vermont could look like, and how we can integrate broader state interests into that analysis,” Ashe wrote.
House Speaker Mitzi Johnson, D-South Hero, called Spaulding’s decision to withdraw his recommendation “the right move.”
“I appreciate that Vermont State Colleges system will be working with us as we move forward on a strategic plan for all public higher education in Vermont,” she said in a statement.
Linda Olson, the president of the state college’s faculty union, said she was “delighted” by the chancellor’s decision to withdraw his plan.
“I’m a little disheartened that it was presented in the first place and that it put everyone’s lives in such turmoil for absolutely no reason,” she said.
Olson added that faculty and staff recognized the system needed to adopt further reforms. But she emphasized rank-and-file employees needed to be key players in crafting solutions.
“We are agile, we are nimble. We can change ourselves to attract more students. But frankly, the administration has to get out of our way,” she said.
