 Welcome to Higher Education Matters. I'm Jeb Spaulding, Chancellor of the Vermont State College's system. This is a monthly program. We thank public access around Vermont for airing it and ORCA and Montpelier for producing it. It's a show about higher education, people in higher education, exciting opportunities in higher education, challenges that people get to deal with on a daily basis, and we're going to try to help people understand what the options for meeting those challenges are. I first want to tell you about the Vermont State College's system in a nutshell. We are the extension of the pre-K-12 system into the post-secondary years. More Vermonters enroll in one of the Vermont State Colleges than all of the other colleges and universities in this state. We are anxious to let people know the opportunities and experiences that they can access at the Vermont State Colleges system, but equally important, we want to touch higher education matters at any institution here in Vermont or across the country. One of the most, I think, important issues people need to think through is how to pay for college. People read a lot about the pricey aspects of going to college. We have an expert with us today that can help us explore how you can afford to pay for college. Should pay for college. Our guest is Pam Chisholm. She's the Dean of Enrollment Services for the Community College of Vermont. It's great to see you, Pam. We've worked together over the years. We have. You've been on the board of the Vermont Student Assistance Corporation for quite a long time and are one of the foremost experts in how to pay for college. So I'm looking forward to our conversation today. Me too, Jim. I think I really like to start though with why is it important for people to think about going on to college? Well I think, you know, all the research is shown and we've read in even our local papers that employers are looking for folks who have good skills, soft skills, hard skills. And you're not necessarily going to get those coming right out of high school. You know, you need some communication skills, you need some writing skills, math skills. And you know, unlike me where a lot of my family, they went to work in the mills in Maine and here in Vermont, those jobs aren't there anymore. Employers are looking for more and it doesn't mean that you have to go to get a bachelor's degree or even an associate's degree. You can go to a welding program, you can get some of our certificate programs. But embedded in those are the skills to help you work collaboratively in your workplace. Yeah, I think you make an important point there, Pam. I mean, a lot of people may be watching and say, gee, when I think of going to college that's like, you know, four years, going to be a history major and nothing wrong with that at all. But college or post-secondary education means a lot more than that, as you indicated. It might be an apprenticeship program. Exactly. It might be an associate's degree program at Community College of Vermont. It might be a certificate program and there are lots of options out there. What I think we do know is that unless you're a superstar like LeBron James, not having some kind of post-secondary education is going to severely limit people's lifetime opportunities. Absolutely. And you know, all the statistics support that now and you know, and I think our message has the Vermont State College system is to get that message out there with our business partners, too, that this is an investment for not just the individual, but also for our businesses. And I think the Vermont State College system is doing a wonderful job in terms of elevating that conversation. Yeah, and actually we're going to be talking about paying for college and the affordability, but one of the sort of aspects of that can be the assistance that employers can provide. And oftentimes employers are either helping people pay to go to college or bringing programs right into the work site. And Community College of Vermont, Vermont Technical College, do a lot of programs where they develop tailored certificate programs or just upgrading skills tailored to the needs of a specific employer. Absolutely. You know, maybe there's some employers watching thinking about, gee, I've got a fairly large number of employees, our skill levels aren't keeping up with the changing in technology and the state college system can help with that as well. Absolutely. I mean, we've had some wonderful examples of that over the years where we've taken our prior learning assessment into some major businesses where people who, you know, they've worked a long time, they have some really great skills. They can transfer to college credit. And you know, I've had conversations with several folks who's like, oh my gosh, I had no idea. All of a sudden I've got 45 college credits, which is more than halfway to an associates degree, and then they get motivated to continue with the support of their employers. So I think the partnership between business and the Vermont State College system is just going to grow. It's so important. And I know you're doing a great job getting out there and beating the bushes. Well, we're trying. You know, and I think, I mean, people do question these days, you know, whether the price of going to college is worth it or not. And one of the things we're going to really sort of try to hit home today is that actually there are a number of ways to reduce the cost of going to college. And you know, thinking that I can't afford to go or my children can't or my grandchildren can't is a real disservice because the bottom line is there are ways they can afford to go. There are lots of ways. There are lots of ways. Before we get there, I just really want to finish by saying, look, you know, not going to college has consequences. And the statistics show that not only are your lifetime earnings a lot more with some level of post-secondary education, but people's health outcomes are better. You literally live longer if you're in the group that does go on to college. You vote more often. You volunteer more, serve on public committees like select boards and so forth in the legislature, and get in trouble with the law less if you're in the group that goes to college. So if you think about, you know, what you want your children or grandchildren to do, there are severe consequences in not going on to college. When it comes to sort of how to pay for college, how to afford it, what is the single most important thing parents or grandparents or friends or neighbors should keep in mind, Pam? I think encouraging the students, regardless of the age, because within the Vermont State College system we serve high school students. We serve, you know, the returning adults who may have some college credit, as you've referenced before, I've heard, explore the options. There are ways to pay for it. My career has been in financial aid, as you know, Jeb. So I think if you talk to your high school counselor, if you talk to the staff at our admissions offices across the VSC, we have ways to help you figure out how to pay for it. You know, there's federal financial aid, grants, loans, work study. We have a strong state grant program through VSAC. And all of our institutions also have our own financial aid through gifts from many of our grateful alums and other philanthropic groups. So some of it's merit, some of it's just based on you want to come to school, we're going to help you figure it out. So if somebody, you know, actually is out there and they hear, gee, the tuition at X College or University is X, you know, let's say it's not one of the Vermont State colleges have the lowest tuition in the state for sure, but let's sort of pull it away if they were looking at one of the independent colleges in Vermont and we have a lot of them and the tuition was $35,000. Does a family of modest means say, I can't possibly go there, do they pay the $35,000? Generally they don't. I think one of the tools on any college's website is what's called the net price calculator and you can put in your family's financial information and your scholastic information and see what you might qualify for. Generally, most people don't pay the full freight because there are other financial aid options, scholarships, merit, don't just shut off your options because you think you can't pay the full freight. Check out the net price calculator. That would be, I think, a very good thing to do. And then I'm assuming that, you know, for example, let's just take the University of Vermont. If a student is from a family that's eligible for Pell grants, for federal grants, Vermonters don't pay any tuition at the University of Vermont. Exactly. And so I just point out as an example, hey, you think it's this, but don't let that limit your child or grandchildren or nephews or nieces' thoughts about going on to college. People would be surprised. When people have questions, what's the best way to get answers, Pam? I mean, should they go to VSAC, go to the college? What would you recommend in that regard? Well, it depends on where they are in the process, Jeb. You know, I think if they're brand new with this and they don't have any idea what colleges they want to look at, VSAC has some great tools. They're a great partner with the Vermont State Colleges and you've worked with them a long time. I know if you are thinking about particular schools and you've gone on our website, CCVs or the other Vermont State College websites, the admissions counselors at all those institutions are more than happy to help you sort of navigate this. And we do our very best to want you to come to our schools, but want you to be well educated about the whole process. So are people using Community College at Vermont as a way to get an affordable education and if they start there, do they have to end there or can they build on it? I know at CCV, which is my home, we would love our students to want to stay with us to get their associate's degree so they have a credential to complete, but we also recognize that part of our success is sort of giving people wings so they can go where they want to go. We have very small classes, you know, 14, maybe 18 students in a class with a large diversity of students, single parents, veterans, older students who are coming back in after being out for a while, along with our high school students because of the Act 77, which is dual enrollment in early college, which I think is really important for people to know. Well, just while we're on that, let's just stick with it for a second so people know they might not know what is dual enrollment and what is early college. So let's go with those one at a time, Pam. It's a great opportunity for high school students and talk about, you know, ways to reduce the cost to go into college, those are two ways you can do it, so let's start with intro to college and careers, which CCV offers in the majority of high schools around the state and also at some of our centers, which is aimed more at freshman sophomore students to get them thinking a little bit broadly, right, and it's not just about college, it's about careers, so we have that curriculum and then as you know, if you are a junior or a senior in high school, you can get up to six credits, two classes, I'm using, you know, our lingo here, credits, who knows what that is, two classes for free through what's known as dual enrollment if you work with your school counselor and make sure that it fits in with your degree plan for to graduate from high school and you can get those in your high school or at any of the colleges that participate in dual enrollment, so there's six credits right there, two classes, okay, and then early years thousands of Vermont high school students have taken advantage of the opportunity, I mean we've just seen it growing. Early college is for a high school senior and working again with their school counselor, planning what they need to do to graduate from high school, they will take 30 credits at the participating schools, which is all in the Vermont State College System and others around the state, you can see that on the Agency of Education website who participates and you, the state pays for those 30 credits, so we've had students who've come to CCB and other of our sister institutions who graduate from high school, they're already at the second year level, sophomore level, at college. So if you think about that, if somebody were getting an associate's degree, like a two-year associate's degree, that early college year and the dual enrollment too, but just as take the early college, that would cut your tuition cost for an associate's degree by 50%, or if it was a four-year program 25%, that's a pretty good reduction. Yeah, you know, and I don't mean to toot CCB's horn, but I'm here so I am, you know, students can come, they can come to CCB and graduate with no student loan debt or reduced student loan debt, we work very hard with them to help keep that limited, so when they do go on to their bachelor's degree, they're, and we try, you know, within the Vermont State College system to have a direct admissions program, so that students that start at CCB don't need to reapply if they want to go to Castleton, let's say. We have great pathways and we work with our sister institutions within the Vermont State College system and with our advisors at our centers to make sure that students are taking the courses that will transfer seamlessly, so they're not taking anything. We appreciate the fact that they'd like to maybe take something different, but all right, let's talk about this. How is this going to help you progress, you know, and within what we call electives, which is, you know, kind of the fun stuff you can take once in a while to make sure it still fits. So what, let me turn around instead of the most important thing people need to keep in mind, which I think the most important thing to me is if you are creative and plan ahead a little bit, everybody can afford to go to college in some level, and it's important to figure out, you know, what kind of college experience you're looking for, whether you're looking for the certificate, the four-year degree, and there are a lot of variations in the theme, but everybody can afford to go. What are the biggest mistakes you think, Pam, in your long experience that people make? I guess the biggest one would be to think, I can't afford to do this, but besides that, you know, what are the mistakes that people make that we ought to try to avoid? I think they look at the price tag on the college websites, and they see the sticker shot, you know, when you go to buy a car, you can negotiate, right? They don't give you financial aid to buy a car, but when you're applying to college, pretty much everybody's eligible for some level of financial aid, be it only loans, be it the work-study program, which is a marvelous opportunity for people to get some experience in their area of interest, as well as, you know, the grant and scholarship funds that we offer. So what are the federal grants that are available for students going on to college? The primary ones are called the Pell Grant, and that's a nationally awarded one. Students and their parents, if they are considered dependent, which is generally anybody under the age of 24, with some exceptions. You fill out the FAFSA, a free application for federal student aid, and I would advise anybody who's thinking about going to college at least do that application the first year, because many people are so surprised at, whoa, I didn't know I'd be eligible for that. So that would be sort of one of the mistakes people can make is, you know, hey, not making the effort to find out what's available, but let's talk about the FAFSA again. I mean, how do people do that? It's a free application for federal student aid, as I think what it stands for, but why is that important for people to take seriously? That is the touchstone to be determined if you're eligible for federal aid. And a lot of times institutional aid as well, the college financial aid that they might have. It's pretty easy to do. We've seen people hold up the full paper FAFSA, which looks like a, you know, huge income tax return. It's not that way anymore. They use a lot of smart logic behind it. So if you and I applied for financial aid, our parents information wouldn't be needed because of our age, right? That's good. If they were still alive. So I, and people, depending on, you know, their tax status or whether they're married or not, it uses logic to just take you to the questions that you really need. So it's not onerous at all. And the colleges, individual colleges or VSEC has counselors that are more than happy to walk people through the system. So they don't need to be stuck out there thinking, I can't do it if you're nervous about it. They don't have to do it on their own. We are more than happy to help them at all of our colleges. And I know VSEC staff come into many of our CCV centers to help people who are sort of new, whether they're coming to CCV or not. They just need help negotiating this because anything that involves money sometimes is a little scary, right? And when people hear, you know, financial aid, it's a combination that could be loans. We're talking about the Pell grants and of course it's important for people to keep in mind. Those don't have to be paid back. Grants and scholarships. People hear a lot about on the news and stuff about people graduating with a lot of debt and many students do, but equally as many find ways to graduate with very little debt. I believe this is true. I wonder if it still is that for a family that's fully eligible for the Pell grants, it's a family with modest means and a student wants to go to college, the Pell grant will cover the full tuition at Community College of Vermont and then some. Between the Pell grant and the VSEC grant, yes, that covers full tuition and fees. Important to keep in mind. And this is an example of going from Community College of Vermont. Let's say you get your associate's degree and you want to continue on to Castleton. Castleton allows students to continue on at the same tuition rate as they were getting at Community College of Vermont. When students who get their associate's degree from CCV, Castleton will give them an institutional scholarship that makes their tuition cost of Castleton equivalent to what they would be paying at CCV if we are for a bachelor's degree. And while we're advertising for CCV here, it's not, you know, in terms of the pathways, you know, where we encourage people to look at the Vermont State Colleges, but there are a number of private colleges and universities in the state that are very happy to have the Community College of Vermont students. I sometimes hear them say they perform better than the non-CCV students that are coming in. That's true. We've heard that, you know, and I think we hopefully prepare our students well. We help them give them their wings so they can fly into these other institutions. But we have, within all of the VCS, we have marvelous relationships with all the colleges here in Vermont. I think you and I have heard about students who have like, I just want to get out of here. I want to, I want to go someplace else. I need to get out of Vermont. Okay, I hear that. Explore some of the options here in state. You can do some study abroad. You can do study within institutions to get that out-of-state experience and probably save some money. And then if you want to continue on, grad school, whatever, fly. I mean I'm always amazed and all of our colleges have easy experiences for students to travel or do a whole year abroad. I love the program at Johnson, which is the National Student Exchange, and now the International Student Exchange, where you can go to hundreds of other colleges, universities around this world at the in-state tuition of Johnson. Yeah, isn't that marvelous? That's pretty good. And I run into students that say, it's the only way I could afford to see some of the world is through my college experience. And CCV, we, because so many of our students have families and they work, they can't go abroad for a semester. So we every semester have, I don't want to call it study abroad, but we have a program where they can experience something different. So we have students going to New York City this semester after having some coursework with us. The next one coming up is going to Paris. You know, where you do the studying, you learn about the culture and the food, and then you go for 10 days and you were immersed in it. So they can fit it in. And there are so many options within our system for students to do that. I think out in, you know, in the world of television and news, families have probably heard the term of college savings plans or a 529 plan. What are those about, Pam, and why would people consider starting one for their child or grandchild or niece or nephew or what have you? Well, for first place, they're tax deductible here in Vermont, so there's a good plan. We set up one for our youngest and started it when he was an infant. I didn't, you know, through my payroll deduction, put it in. It covered his room and board. So you can put little amounts in. And other family members can gift it and you can move it from child to child. So if my son decided, and I'm not ready for college right now, we could have moved it to another family member, so that would help. So I think there's, you know, one of the messages I would want to make sure that people walked away from this television show with is the importance of planning ahead too. So that 529, the college savings plan, so you can start it at the time the child is born, right? And 17 or 18 years later, it's not going to be a heavy lift for you. And it's an investment program, so you know what you put in grows, you know, if it's invested properly. And they would find out about that at the Vermont Student Assistance Corporation too, right? VSAC runs the major one here in the state. It's called VHIP, Vermont Higher Education Investment Plan. There you go, thank you. Former state treasurer. But it's a good thing. So the message is planning ahead. And there's a certain amount of, you know, if I hope it's not politically incorrect to say, personal responsibility and, you know, planning ahead and motivating. And students that are in middle school and high school, you know, if you put your mind to it and, you know, can demonstrate that you've, you're prepared and so forth, there are going to be colleges that are going to try to attract you and reduce your cost of going there. Exactly. And but I want to say to Jeb that people who, it's not in their family history to think about planning ahead. There are options for them too. I don't want people to feel like they're closed out. No, but I'm thinking, I have this example of this young woman that was from a rural part of LaMoyle County. Nobody in her family had gone on to college. She went to Johnson Four Years Tuition Free on the National Science Foundation program and got the chance to go around the country going to, you know, scientific lectures and that kind of thing. Yeah, this student you interviewed last week, right? Well, that was another one, but there are lots of examples. So there are examples out there. And I think, you know, another one since we're running out of time is, to me, is not all students can go full time. And we have students with families. We have students with, you know, financial issues that they need to work. However, for a great number of students, they should keep in mind if they don't stay on schedule and take, you know, the full five courses a semester, they're gonna, but they will, if you have a child or a grandchild that's going to college and paying tuition and not taking a full course load every semester, there's no way they can graduate in two years or four years. So that's adding to the cost and reducing your income stream later. So it's just a message to parents. Look, there are plenty of times when students can't take a full course load. Right. But when you go to, I'm not talking about community college of Vermont here, let's say Linden State College of Vermont Tech, you're paying a tuition cost for the semester, whether you take four courses or six courses. And if you only take four, you're still paying for what you would have paid if you took six and you can be guaranteed you're gonna have to come back longer than you otherwise would. Try to take what you can. So Pam, I hate to say it, but a half an hour has gone by. So what's, again, now that we're getting to finish up, first of all, thank you for coming in. But what is the key message that people need to take away as far as the ability to send your children or grandchildren to college? It's an incredibly important investment in yourself in our future. I'm looking for people to pay for my social security coming up soon, right? So we need people in the workforce. And there are ways to pay for it. You don't shut off the options. Perfect. I think we stopped right there. I want to thank folks for tuning in. This is Vermont Higher Education Matters, Jebs Baldwin, Chancellor of Vermont State College's system. I hope you've enjoyed the show and you will tune in for our next one as well.