This commentary is by Patricia Shine of Concord, Vermont, who retired in May as a professor of human services at Vermont State University-Lyndon.
I recently retired as a professor from the Vermont State Colleges System. One of the many joys of having taught at the Lyndon campus for 20 years is seeing our graduates succeed, thrive, and become leaders in our communities.
It’s a rare day that I go anywhere in the Northeast Kingdom and not run into an alum. They are everywhere, staffing and running local businesses, teaching in our schools, and serving in local government.
Having taught in the psychology and human service program, I am particularly overwhelmed by the contributions graduates from our program make in our communities every day. I don’t know if there’s a human services agency in the NEK that doesn’t employ at least one, if not several, of our graduates.
All education, including higher education, is first and foremost an investment in our communities and in our future. Democracies don’t function ethically or effectively without an educated citizenry. As such, educational institutions must be supported by our communities and our government.
Should universities engage in sound business practices? Of course. Should a higher education system that was significantly underfunded for decades, which has undergone two consolidations within five years, along with having survived a pandemic, be expected to right itself within a few years? No.
However, according to our governor, as quoted in a recent Seven Days article, that appears to be the expectation — with little support from him.
“They have an expanded infrastructure that they can’t afford, and they’re either going to have to lease part of that out, find out ways to profit or make money off of that or close some campuses, it comes down to that. That’s a decision they have to make on their own.”
Well, Governor, the campuses are selling and leasing off properties. They are downsizing significantly. They are losing staff and faculty through attrition — though higher-level administrative staff appears to be growing and well-compensated, which would be an excellent area in which to downsize.
And in terms of making these decisions “on their own,” autonomy is great, but it’d be nice to have some robust and supportive leadership provided by you, the governor of our state.
Call us what you will — Northern Vermont University, Vermont State University — we are and always will be Lyndon at heart. And at Lyndon, people in the NEK who couldn’t have been able to go to college “away’ have turned to us for over a century and received an excellent education in a supportive, people-first environment. An education that has allowed many graduates to remain in the NEK and become the engines of our communities, along with out-of-state and international graduates who chose to stay and become Vermonters — at a time when we need to grow our population.
This is the case for all our state colleges, which provide their students an educational environment that helps them to learn, grow, and become their best.
I believe I speak for many if not all my former colleagues at Lyndon and throughout the system when I say, despite the enormous challenges the system is facing, they will continue to provide an excellent education for their students — students who are the future of Vermont.
And that is an investment we cannot afford to lose.
