Vermont State University union leaders are raising alarms over faculty and staff attrition at the institution, and in a letter to university leadership said that they’ve “borne the brunt” of financial cuts while compensation of upper-level management has grown.
Data compiled via public records requests and shared in the letter shows that more than 180 full-time staff and faculty positions have been cut since 2019. But while faculty positions have decreased, “the number of non-bargaining-unit managerial positions has continued to grow, and their compensation increased,” the letter reads.
Full-time administrative positions increased by 41% since 2019. Vermont State University now has 180 full-time faculty and 131 administrators, the labor leaders wrote.
The union’s concerns come as the university is in its third year of an integrated statewide university system. The Vermont State Colleges System leaders in 2021 voted to merge Castleton University, Northern Vermont University and Vermont Technical College into a single institution.
It’s been a difficult transition, as leaders have tried to balance the merger against the continued decline in enrollment faced by many New England higher education institutions.
The university has consolidated programming, including in its environmental science program at the Castleton campus, according to the Caledonian Record, and has since discontinued its associate degree program in the diesel and automotive mechanic training programs. The university’s leaders have also worked to manage or downsize campus property.
In their letter, leaders of the university’s faculty and staff federations and the Vermont State Colleges United Professionals called into question the university leadership’s decisions in managing staff reductions.
The university’s five campuses, meanwhile, have experienced hiring freezes. Officials have encouraged attrition through retirement and resignation, and previous full-time positions have been filled with interim employees, union leaders wrote.
The data has reinforced what faculty and staff members feel is a drift toward a top-heavy administrative structure, Chris Reilly, the VSC Faculty Federation president, said.
“We all understood that there were going to be changes in numbers for faculty, staff and administration,” Reilly said in an interview. “But we feel like, given the numbers, that maybe it was too heavy on faculty and staff, and not enough of a look at the higher administrative levels.”
Elizabeth Mauch, the Vermont State Colleges System chancellor, said in an interview that 2019 data preceding the merger does not reflect how the institution operates today.
“We are now a fully integrated system,” Mauch said in an interview. “So some of these numbers … they’re just not helpful for us to really think about in that way,” she said.
Katherine Levasseur, the university’s spokesperson, likewise said that “the university and the state colleges system has been focused on aligning staffing models with where the institution is, and where it is going.”
“It is a very different institution, and the system and the world is in a very different place than it was in 2019,” she said.
Faculty members have previously said cuts to the academic workforce have damaged their ability to operate, and union leaders in their letter said the data raises concerns about the quality of student-facing roles in the institution.
“The perception is that the financial burden of this transformation has been borne by the student-facing faculty and staff, and specifically, the bargaining unit faculty members and staff members,” Sebastion Lury, the Vermont State Colleges United Professionals’ co-president, said in an interview.
Factoring in inflation since 2019, Lury and other labor leaders wrote that full-time faculty and staff salaries decreased by more than 20%, while administrative salary spending increased by 15%.
Meanwhile, from 2024 to 2025, the five highest-paid positions within the system collectively received $129,188.34 in annual raises, with some increases exceeding 20%, or more than $35,000, they wrote.
These expenditures, the union leaders wrote, “stand in contrast to ongoing hiring freezes and staffing reductions affecting student-facing roles.”
Mauch said that faculty and staff compensation is front of mind for the institution.
“I want to continue to work with our faculty and staff and really see what we can do for compensation,” she said. “I know that that is going to be sort of a continuous improvement thing we have to do.”
Union leaders have met with university officials since sending their letter, and are optimistic about incoming President and system Vice Chancellor Sherry Kollmann. They urged the system’s leadership to “carefully review the trajectory of administrative growth,” they wrote in their letter, and to “ensure that future decisions reflect an equitable and sustainable investment in the people and programs that define our campuses.”
“We’ve heard each other,” Lury said. “We know that work needs to be done.”
