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At the University of Vermont, the share of in-state students is dwindling, and it’s raising questions about the role and mission of the state’s flagship public university.
VTDigger education reporter Peter D’Auria — with the help of data reporter Erin Petenko — has been looking at the enrollment statistics over time, as well as how they compare with those of other large public universities across the country.
Here’s the short version: Peter writes: “over the past two decades, the number of undergraduate Vermonters at UVM has decreased by about 300. Meanwhile, the university’s student body has added roughly 3,800 out-of-state students.”
That means less than a quarter of the school’s undergrads are Vermonters, as of spring 2023. That rate is near the bottom of the list of every large public university in the U.S.
Host Sam Gale Rosen talked to Peter about what we should take from these numbers.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Peter: So I was poking through some data from the University of Vermont. They have a very helpful data page. And you can see basically where all their students more or less come from. You can see the state they come from, the county in Vermont. You can see what country they come from. And you can sort of go back and look over time how those numbers have changed as far as the student body.
Sam: And what did you see in those?
Peter: I was looking at the percentage of in-state undergraduate students to out-of-state undergraduate students. And looking at those ratios throughout the years, you can see that the percentage of undergrad students from Vermont just dwindles. And you can see that the percentage of undergrad students from other states just expands. And they have these, very helpful pie charts, where you can look and see the Vermonter piece of the pie getting thinner and thinner and thinner.
Sam: You said it dwindled from what it was in the past? Now it’s something like a quarter. Can you talk about what the numbers are and what they used to be?
Peter: Yeah, so for a while in, possibly the late ’90s or the early 2000s, the percentage of in-state undergrad students at UVM hovered around 40% for a number of years, and it would tick up and down, mostly down. And then more recently, that piece of the pie has shrunk to — last I saw, which is the data from the spring semester of 2023 — I believe it was 23% total of UVM’s undergrad student body were from Vermont.
Sam: And your story, I think, is trying to answer the question of what that means. Can you talk about why we should care? Why that matters?
Peter: I think there’s even an open question of: Should we care? It sort of puts UVM in this interesting position where it’s the state’s flagship public university, and there’s a perception that the flagship public university should be very focused on serving its own students and its own population. And I think that when the percentage of in-state students at the flagship public university — undergrad students — is a quarter or less than a quarter, it sort of stopped me. I was like, what? What’s going on here?
Sam: And how does that compare to public universities in other states?
Peter: So I enlisted our incredibly capable data reporter Erin Petenko to look at some federal data. We found that, basically, out of all the large public universities in the country that there is data for — and some of them didn’t report data — UVM is basically at the very bottom of the list as far as percentage of in-state undergrads. And there’s a couple institutions that were below UVM on the list, and they’re both online universities.
Sam: Before we start talking about, should that be the case, can we talk a little bit about why that is? Are there any obvious quick answers to why the number of Vermont students would be lower here than in other places?
Peter: Yes, the obvious answer is that there are not that many kids in Vermont. And there are not that many students that graduate from high school every year in Vermont, and that number has just gone down and down and down over the years.
Going to UVM, they told me: Yeah, this is how it is. There are just not that many Vermont students. Not only are there not many Vermont students in raw numbers that graduate from high school every year, but there’s not that many of them that actually go on to college at all. And of those, you know, many of them don’t want to stay in state. So, they’re saying: Listen, we are serving the Vermont kids that we can. But the numbers are just not set up for us to serve 50% undergrad in-state class, or 40%.
Sam: And that sort of assumes that for UVM to achieve what it needs to do, it has to be a certain size, right?
Peter: Well, I think that’s sort of an interesting question. Because if UVM was just serving Vermont students, it would be a lot smaller. But what they’ve told me is: If we want to be able to offer a competitive education, and we want to be able to offer strong academics, strong research opportunities, being an attractive place for professors, we have to be a certain size.
Sam: Here’s Kevin Chu, executive director of the Vermont Futures Project, a nonprofit think tank that works to promote economic growth in the state, from a conversation with Peter.
Kevin: Some people are like, Yeah, we need to actually try to grow UVM’s enrollment. And then there are those that say, no, we have too many out-of-state students, and it’s causing pain in terms of the housing market for people that live here. But in those discussions, I haven’t heard like, what is the role of the university, and if that gets clarified, then it could help to, I think it would make it more clear whether UVM should try to grow or not, depending on what the agreed upon function should be.
Sam: And this is all leading to the question, which I know you looked at, of what UVM is trying to do anyway? What is the purpose of UVM? And you looked at UVM’s mission statement and how it compared to the mission statements of other similar state schools.
Peter: In this whole story, I was sort of asking this question, what is UVM’s mission? And who is this mission for, to a certain degree? I realized there’s a very easy way to answer that question, which is to go and find their mission statement, and it’s just written online somewhere.
What I was struck by was — not all but a number of these other universities’ mission statements — they mentioned that they’re serving the state. You know, this is University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign: “… charged by our state to enhance the lives of citizens in Illinois, across the nation and around the world through our leadership in learning, discovery, engagement and economic development.” The mission of the University of Michigan is “… to serve the people of Michigan and the world through preeminence in creating, communicating, preserving and applying knowledge, art …” et cetera, et cetera. University of Virginia, blah blah blah, “… serves the Commonwealth of Virginia, the nation and the world …” blah, blah, blah.
So UVM’s mission statement: in this little paragraph of its mission statement, it doesn’t mention the state of Vermont. It says: “To create, evaluate, share, and apply knowledge and to prepare students to be accountable leaders who will bring to their work dedication to the global community, a grasp of complexity, effective problem-solving and communication skills, and an enduring commitment to learning and ethical conduct.”
I don’t know what UVM would say about that. To be fair, I haven’t asked them. And it’s not that every single public university mission statement says something about serving the state or like serving the people of that state. But I just thought that was sort of striking. And maybe an illustration of the degree to which UVM serves people from out of state.
Sam: And you talk to some folks, and one of the points made, I think, was that UVM can serve a function to the state, even in that it is serving students from out of state. I mean, it’s an engine for the economy of Burlington, but it also attracts young people to the state, which is something that Vermont needs, right?
Peter: And I think this is another open question about the university’s function and service to the state. What is the best thing that this institution can do for the state of Vermont? Is it to educate the few students that Vermont produces that go on to college that go on to UVM? And/or is it to bring young people into the state who are desperately needed? And I think UVM says, we’re doing both, and it’s totally fine, and there’s no friction. And take that how you will.
Sam: So are there people out there who say: Well, no, they are at odds with each other? Or the mission needs to be clarified? And what does that look like?
Peter: I think a lot of the criticism comes in the field of housing. So UVM has made, they say, a conscious decision to become as large as they are. And because there are so few Vermont students, basically, any sort of undergrad enrollment growth over the years is going to have to come from out-of-state students. Just because there are so few Vermonters and so few of them go onto university, and so few of those go onto UVM. So, in increasing the size of the enrollment — and those increases are again, out-of-state students — UVM has drawn a lot of criticism that it’s really straining Burlington’s housing situation. So most students at UVM live on campus for the first two years, most undergrads, and then they go off campus. And this increasing number of students is outpacing this supply of housing in Burlington, which, as you know, everyone knows, is really struggling with the housing supply as is.
Sam: Some of that criticism has come from Troy Headrick, a Progressive/Democratic state representative from Burlington and an assistant director at UVM’s Center for Student Conduct. Here he is in a conversation with Peter.
Troy: I’m concerned that enrollment continues to go up, students continue to be forced into what I consider to be unhealthy living arrangements on campus, and we proportionately serve less and fewer and fewer Vermonters. That to me is alarming. I don’t pretend to have answers to that. I don’t pretend to have alternative solutions to that. Nor is it my job to have those solutions. I’m alarmed, though.
Sam: And does UVM acknowledge that this is an issue? Do they have plans to address it?
Peter: Well, they’ve certainly acknowledged it. They’ve said, we are not going to grow our undergrad enrollment any further. They have expressed a willingness to work with the city. I know that there are negotiations underway right now. I think it’s been a little strange to look at because, you know, they’re saying now, “we’re not going to grow undergrad enrollment any further.” And they’ve been really, really clear on that repeatedly. You know, this is not the plan to increase the size of the undergrad class, as of 2023. But if you look at the data, it has grown, and it’s been growing, and, you know, since 2019, they’ve added hundreds of undergraduates.
Sam: Here’s Ron Lumbra, the chair of the university’s board of trustees, making that point in a conversation with Peter. While they plan to increase enrollment in graduate programs. Lumbra says the university does not have a plan to grow undergraduate enrollment.
Ron: I’m not telling you it hasn’t grown, right? I can’t. The data is the data. I am 100% data driven. The data is that the university has grown over time, yes. It is not our strategy to grow. It’s not this board strategy or the administration’s strategy to grow.
Peter: I don’t know if they have been this explicit in years prior. But I do know that they have faced repeated criticism for growing the enrollment of their undergrad class, sort of quietly. And, you know, the critics say, not really telling anyone that this was the plan. So now they’re being very explicit, you know, we’re not going to grow it anymore. But, it happened, you know?
Sam: I asked Peter if he could go over some of the specific recent events he’s been covering that have led to tension between UVM and the city of Burlington.
Peter: So for about … actually I think exactly a decade, ’09 to 2019, the city of Burlington and UVM had this memorandum of understanding about enrollment. And one of the pieces of that agreement was that UVM would maintain a one-to-one (ratio of each) new undergrad student to a place for that undergrad student, whether it be a bed in a double or a single or a triple or what have you. So that expired in 2019.
Since then, there has been negotiation between the city and the university. I don’t know what that looks like, exactly. I think a lot of it is happening in executive session. I don’t know what’s going to come out of it. But they haven’t reached a new agreement. There’s been a little friction.
You know, UVM wanted to add housing on its Trinity Campus in Burlington, and the city said, well, we’re not going to let you do that. I think it’s a point of leverage that the city has as far as zoning. Since then UVM has said: OK, well, we’re going to add housing in South Burlington. But this has been sort of a point of contention between the city and the university, this question of housing.
Sam: This may be a dumb question. But if they say they don’t want to increase the undergrad population anymore, why not just sign a memorandum of understanding, or whatever it’s called, that says, if we do increase undergrad population we’ll build more housing?
Peter: That is a great question. I do not think it’s a dumb question because I also have it and have asked it, and I don’t feel like I’ve gotten an answer that has answered it for me, I guess, from UVM. What they’ve said is that we don’t want anything that is going to restrict our ability to control our own undergrad enrollment in the future. So maybe they think that something will change. I don’t know?
Sam: And is the university happy with its current mix of on- and off-campus housing? Are they happy with the way things are?
Peter: This is part of the Trinity thing, is that they are trying to build more on-campus housing. First at Trinity, and now in South Burlington. There is a concern that I’ve heard that UVM will add more on-campus housing and then as part of that, or after that, or during that, increase its undergrad enrollment further. And so I think there’s a concern, even though kind of intuitively you’d think that oh, that would be great, but then people are afraid that after that housing is complete UVM will say: Oh, we have more room, and then we’ll just increase the undergrad enrollment even more.
Maybe some context. Public universities, large public universities, adding out-of-state students is sort of a nationwide trend. And I think it sort of goes hand-in-hand with decreasing state appropriations for those institutions. You know, out-of-state students are a way to get more money since they pay out-of-state tuition. But even amid that trend, we’re still an outlier, basically. Despite this trend, we’re still at the absolute more-or-less bottom of the list, as far as ratio of in-state to out-of-state students.
Sam: And where are we on the list in terms of state funding to the institution?
Peter: Vermont has, for quite some time, also been very down that list. We’re a small state. So I think in some ways, it makes sense, but we just have not been able to give that much money to our public universities. Last I checked, I think we’re maybe third or fourth from the bottom.
Sam: Is there some sense then that that’s just the trade off? If we, due to size or willingness or whatever, we’re unable to support this institution at a higher level, they’re just going to have to do something. And in that case, that means getting more funds through out-of-state tuitions?
Peter: I think in my conversations with people at UVM, they have been pretty reluctant to link too closely the parts of this equation. I remember asking: Are the out-of-state students paying for Vermont students to go tuition-free? And when I talked to people there, they were pretty reluctant to say like, X pays for Y, or Y pays for Z, or whatever.
They’ve sort of described it as like a pie, and they’re like, this is one piece of the pie. And there’s another piece of pie, or it’s a puzzle, and we’re just sort of putting all these pieces of the puzzle together. One of them is low state support. One of them is dwindling number of Vermont high school grads, and one of them is the interest in out-of-state students for the university.
This is one part of it, maybe that we should talk about, is that in a lot of ways, I think it’s kind of a success. Because UVM can attract people from California and Illinois and New York and New Jersey, et cetera, et cetera. They’ve built an institution that is attractive to people from across the country.
Sam: And that, at least, is exactly in line with the way they state their mission, right?
Peter: Yeah. You know, they sent out this press release maybe a couple of weeks ago, sort of talking about the demographics of their incoming freshman class, first-year class. I think they said explicitly the fact that so many people from all around the country and all around the world are coming to UVM is a sign that we have succeeded in outreach and making this an attractive place for people to go.
It’s like the demographics in Vermont are not changing super rapidly. It doesn’t look like, you know, suddenly we’re going to have a turnaround as far as how many kids are graduating from high school. I’m just curious what it’s going to look like in five years or 10 years, you know, what’s the in- state ratio gonna be.
And you know, this is another thing that I heard talking to people about UVM is that the ratio of in-state to out-of-state has changed significantly over the years, but the number of in-state students really hasn’t gone down by that much, compared to the drop in the number of kids in Vermont, the number of high school grads, and I think this may kind of a sign of how hard the university is trying to attract these kids.
Almost half of them, the Vermont students at UVM, attend tuition-free, just through this combination of benefits that UVM offers. And what they said to me was, you know, this is not a cheap way to run the institution. But I was sort of thinking, could that money be better spent?
Like, at what point do we say, yeah, there aren’t Vermont kids, and we really have to kind of be upfront. And maybe be proud of the fact that we are drawing these students from all over the world and all over the country. And, I don’t know, put the money toward something else, acknowledge that there are so few Vermont kids, that they’re hard to get, and, you know, transform the university into something else or brand the university as something else. Maybe this is already going on to a certain degree.
Sam: Yeah, that was gonna be my next question. With the mission statement and the sort of things you were hearing from people at the university, does that sound like the beginning of that strategy?
Peter: I think that strategy is underway. This is where they say these two pieces of our mission are not in conflict with each other, but I think, you know, where do you put your resources? Right? Do you put them into drawing these Vermont kids? Or do you put them into drawing people from out of state? And how much money goes here and how much money goes there?
I think the big thing is just this question of, what’s the best thing that UVM can do? And where’s the best place to put its resources? And what does that mean for its future?
When I talked to them, folks at UVM, they’ve said, we’ve hit the sweet spot, kind of, in terms of size. And it got me thinking like, why don’t they grow to 20,000? Or 50,000? If the best thing they can do for Vermont is be an economic driver, be a magnet for people from out of state, why not be like a really big university? And then you run into questions like, how much can Burlington handle? And what’s the capacity? And what the community wants? I don’t know what the answer is.
Sam: And if this is the sweet spot, what happens when, if the demographics continue to shift, and there are even fewer kids available from Vermont?
Peter: I just see the slices of pie shrinking and shrinking. And the out-of-state slice of pie just like growing and growing. And then I think, questions are going to be even more significant or louder? What are we doing as the public flagship university if 20% of our students are from Vermont? What are we doing if it’s 15%? What do we do if it’s 10% or 5% even? What is the identity of this institution? Who is it serving? I don’t know. I don’t have the answers to them.
