Trustees of the Vermont State College System voted Monday to freeze tuition next academic year, although room and board fees could still increase as much as 3%.
The trustees’ vote comes as the system explores much wider and deeper reforms, and grapples with the catastrophic toll the pandemic has had on the system’s finances.
Student trustee Ryan Cooney was the lone no vote on the tuition freeze, and argued the motion does not go far enough to help students. He also noted the University of Vermont had recently announced it would freeze both tuition and room and board next year.
“I believe in our commitment to affordability to those not only in Vermont, but to those outside of Vermont, but this just doesn’t seem right, especially right now, in the midst of this pandemic,” he said.
State colleges Chancellor Sophie Zdatny said she was sympathetic to Cooney’s point but that the system’s hands are tied.
“There’s really no easy answer given the financial situation that we’re in,” she said.
Long-simmering financial problems at the state colleges boiled over this spring when the pandemic shuttered campuses across the country, including in Vermont. State lawmakers ultimately chose to bail out the system, but they conditioned aid on reform and formed a special committee to create a new road map for the state colleges.
That committee issued its first set of recommendations on Friday, including that Castleton University, Northern Vermont University and Vermont Technical College unify as one school with multiple campuses. While the proposal does suggest somewhat shrinking of the system’s physical footprint, it does not contemplate closing any campus outright.
The Community College of Vermont would remain a separate institution. Northern Vermont University was created in 2018 by the merger of Johnson State College and Lyndon State College.
The committee also asked for an unprecedented amount of support for the system: $72.5 million, although the figure includes $25 million in one-time transition costs. For decades, Vermont has spent less on public higher education on a per-capita basis than nearly any other state in the country, and the system’s regular appropriation is usually about $30 million a year.
It’s unknown what the appetite will be in Montpelier for such historic investments, particularly as lawmakers contend with plummeting tax receipts in the pandemic-induced recession. But Vermont State Colleges System leaders have formally asked Gov. Phil Scott for a regular $31 million appropriation next year, plus $45 million in one-time bridge funding to help pay for reforms and plug the budget deficit brought on by the crisis.
Trustees have not yet explicitly endorsed the unification strategy, but they have asked Zdatny to work with college presidents on an implementation plan, and she plans to present one to trustees on Dec. 17.
Similar efforts in other states
Trustees also heard Monday from Barbara Brittingham, former president of the New England Commission of Higher Education, the region’s accrediting body, and Jim Page, former chancellor of the University of Maine System, with whom the state recently contracted to produce a report on the system’s finances.
The Maine system unified under a common accreditation during Page’s tenure, and the consultant told trustees Monday that unification could indeed create efficiencies and improve programming. Understaffed and under-enrolled majors, for example, could be significantly strengthened if academic departments could share resources across campuses.
Public college systems across the country have explored unifying in recent years, including in Connecticut, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. As in Vermont, college leaders are largely responding to financial pressures wrought by dwindling enrollment.
“There are literally, as we speak, a couple of dozen major efforts of … this scale and scope. Experiments, if you will, being run throughout the country. And we’re learning as fast as we can from each other,” Page said.
But the former college leader also said a unified system would not be a panacea for the colleges’ financial and operational concerns. Financial savings, in particular, would be “minimal” in the short term, he said, and the system would need an infusion of cash to pay for transition costs.
And while creating a single institution would allow for necessary collaborations across the system, Page said it would still be up to administrators, staff and faculty on the ground to make cooperation happen.
“By itself, it doesn’t drive that kind of innovation, which is what you need to really make the progress that you’re looking for. But it takes people who are ready to do that and removes the barriers for them from them for doing so,” he said.
