 This is Bill Doyle on Vermont issues and I'm very delighted to appear before this panel with Jim Spalding, the Chancellor of the State College System and with whom I've spent many, many years. How many years did we spend together? We spent 16 years in the Vermont State Senate. I learned so much from you, Bill. Oh. It was a pleasure. We were on the Education Committee for a while together and we served 12 years on the Government Operations Committee under your leadership. Well, and I must say that having said that, I could not have served with a person who worked so hard at this job as Jim Spalding, as a senator. Thank you. And I'm glad to be here today. We're really grateful to have you here. So I basically am thrilled to have you here because there was an article in the Seven Days which made me nervous about Vermont State Colleges and I think you're the guy with the answers. Okay. And so what colleges and universities are part of the Vermont State College System first so that we have a full overview? That's good. And because I actually don't remember exactly what was said in that article so I don't know whether it was referring to the Vermont State Colleges System or to colleges and universities generically in Vermont. In Vermont. I think that's what it was. So I'll talk about both if you want to. But the Vermont State Colleges System itself is made up of, I'll do it in alphabet, actually I'll do it in not in alphabetical order. I'll start with Community College in Vermont. So we have 12 locations throughout Vermont. So we like to say there's a community college site within 20 miles of any Vermonter out there. And interestingly about a third of the courses taken through CCV now are online. So there are locations around the state and online and they primarily deliver associates degrees and courses and direct job training and workforce development activities for businesses. So for example at our Global Foundries or Brattleboro Hospital they'll do programming specifically for the employees. So some of them are students enrolled in an associates degree program and some aren't. They have a place like Community College in Vermont. Over the decades they have had a somewhat older student body and that's still not abnormal but an increasingly a number of young Vermonters coming out of high school are going to CCV because it's the most affordable route to get their college education. So that's Community College and we have Vermont Technical College which offers both associates and bachelor's degrees and one master's degree program too in computer science. And Vermont Tech is known mostly for its engineering technology programs whether it's mechanical, civil, electrical, computer. And healthcare? Yeah, people don't really realize that a lot of its enrollment and growth in recent years has been in nursing and allied health. And that's probably going to be a continued growth area and they also through history have a dairy management program. It's the only dairy program actually in Vermont now and still has a working farm at the Randolph campus. Vermont Tech also has a campus in Williston and there's one dorm there but it's primarily a commuter campus and is obviously in a growth area there. So Vermont Technical College, associates and bachelor's and also does a lot of specific workforce training for employers in Vermont. Then we get to our more residential four-year bachelor's and master's programs and we used to have three of those, two of them have been unified in Northern Vermont University. So we have Northern Vermont University with campuses in Johnson and in Linden. There used to be Johnson State College and Linden State College. And if we have time later we might get back to why did we do that and what do we hope to accomplish with it because it's a pretty big move. And then finally, Casselton University down outside of Rutland and Casselton, Vermont. A really wonderful university and it's bachelor's and master's and has offered new programs and has international students from like 35 countries and I think it's 27. I think NCAA athletic teams and so it's quite a wonderful place. So that's the constellation. Some people are confused that well is the University of Vermont part of the Vermont State College system and it's not. It is a public college, it's independent, it's you know student body undergraduates probably 75 to 80 percent out of state students at the University of Vermont which is the reverse of what you find in the Vermont State College system. But it's got its own governing body and so forth so it's not. And then we have just in the constellation of colleges and universities we have you know a large number of independent or private ones so everything from a Norwich to a Champlain to a Goddard to you know all kinds of around the state. Yeah, but we're at Casselton Community College, Northern Vermont University and Vermont Technical College. So Jeff would you tell us some of your priorities of the Chancellor? Well I mean you know it's all about trying to serve students but my priority is pretty simple and that is to actually put our colleges and universities on a stable financial foundation and that's not easy to do in today's climate. You know people might not realize that there are 25 percent fewer seniors in high school this year than there were 10 years ago. So if that's your traditional customer base it's getting smaller and what that means is the competition between the colleges and universities out there over a decreasing customer base is intense and the average discount rate at the independent colleges is about 50 percent. So if you were to say gee look at that expensive tuition of 40,000 the average person is paying 20 like half of it and you know that probably can't go on forever but that's the competitive world we're in so it's like one you know you've got fewer fewer people graduating from high school we hear about that all the time in terms of the K-12 system fewer students and mergers and all that kind of stuff like that well obviously that means there are fewer people graduating from high school and furthermore you might be interested to know that actually in 2016 was the smallest number of births in Vermont since the Civil War and 2017 had fewer births in Vermont than that so you know when I look at it go okay well those are the students are going to be going to college you know 17 18 years from now so is this going to get is the population sort of trend got to reverse itself it doesn't appear that that will be the case how much if Vermont it's losing population does have anything to do with what you're talking about you know it's interesting we're not the only ones losing population I mean this is a big big trend across the country certainly in northern New England you know Maine and New Hampshire have have the same dynamic we don't have a lot of immigration up here I wish we would and I appreciate the fact that at least our governor governor Scott welcomes people from other parts of the world and we'd like them to come but they often you know are not anxious to move to Vermont and you know it's not and actually another challenge that we have so we don't have a lot of immigration and you know a lot of times these days we go through trends where people want to be in cosmopolitan areas and back in the 60s and 70s they wanted to be out in the hills of Vermont and at the moment people are gravitating towards the city so you if you were in Pennsylvania or Georgia and went to the rural parts of those states you would find basically the same dynamics in terms of their their populations and they're you know all having to adjust to meet that for it's a good question but it's it's so the population is decreasing particularly in young people I mean if you were to look at you know the projections for how many people are going to be in Vermont that are over the age of 65 in the next ten years that's gonna gotta that's gonna double so it's like the old people older people and you put it that way they're more and more they're living longer and thank goodness they are being more vital for longer periods of time but that that that segment of the population is getting bigger it's on the other end when it's getting smaller and has a lot to do with a lot of different things it's not just that people don't want to be in Vermont but Vermont happens to be relatively highly educated even though in the upper echelon though not in the lower oh yes one of my questions really is why is Vermont supporting so much elder care when it's not having its own young people put in college right that part to me does not make sense if you want young people here you have to give them a certain amount of respect right so that they feel like they can afford to have children or they can afford to be part of the community because they're respected so the Vermont State College system the ones I mentioned we are the de facto extension of the pre-k-12 system into the post-secondary years like nobody else I mentioned the University of Vermont but you know others too back in the day Champlain College was 80% Vermonters it's now 80% out of status you know Vermont State College system we're like 85% Vermonters and half of our students are the first in their family to go to college and you know and nearly half of them are Pell eligible which means they're a modest income and we're proud of that so I don't really have anything to say that you know we're not trying hard we take students I mean I have so many stories of students that come to Vermont State College is they couldn't have gone to college anywhere else and they come and they don't always succeed and you know by the way if you're gonna be taking students that you know have haven't had a family culture of going to college and realizing that it's not easy and you're gonna be homesick and you know they're gonna push you a little bit and so forth it's harder for them so we have to build up a support system but you know just as a as an example I mean if if you looked at the students that are going to Middlebury College is one of the colleges in Vermont every one of those students is academically prepared every one of them has you know almost every one of them has a as a emotional support system at home and they've got the resources to really support them down there and that's different from in-state yeah not very many and why is that because the in-state well because prepared like that no I don't think so I think I think actually you know I mean the mission of my institution the Vermont State College's system is for the benefit of Vermont you know we're all about Vermonters a place like Middlebury is it's an educational institution for the world located in Vermont its mission isn't Vermont its mission is turning out you know I don't know what well-rounded professionals and critical thinkers from anywhere and they happen to be located but our mission is all about Vermonters and yes we want to have some out of status and we'd like to have international students we'd like to have a diversity on our campuses not only because it helps us financially but it's good for Vermonters to have a more vibrant diverse community to go to college with so you know why don't I think your question is why don't more Vermonters go to college and it's it's this is you know you are on to something here in Vermont we have one of the very highest high school graduation rates in the country and our results are pretty good yes there are people that are graduating from high school that aren't prepared but if you compare there they're always gonna have some of that and you know back in the day we just said just let them not go let them not finish high school but you know there's been an emphasis to try to keep people in high school my point is that our results on any measure compare favorably with those around the country so we're graduating most of our students at one of the highest graduation rates and relatively performing well compared to other states one year later we have a very very sorry record of sending kids to college 40% of the students that are graduating from high school do not go to college actually they don't go on to any kind of post-secondary education so here I would say they're not going into apprenticeship program they're not taking you know an associate's degree they're not getting a credential or bookkeeping credential or anything and that's a problem and by the way you know 60% of the students in the lower economic status group do not go on to any kind of post-secondary education so that's a huge equity problem you have in the state of Vermont but you know one of the difficulties that our counselors in high schools have at least this is my personal observation is that they're so busy dealing putting out fires and you know dealing with with with immediate critical situations that they don't have the time to spend helping students think about their post-secondary careers wouldn't that be beneficial for your group incredibly let's do it I don't understand somebody very recently who is a post-secondary guidance counselor in Middlebury and whether this is true or not I don't know but she told me she was the only counselor post-secondary counselor in the state at a high school and I would believe that you know and and by the way she was introducing me to a student and a mother of a mother a single mother and a student nobody had ever been to college before and there she's she is her mission is to try to help her you know go to college and and again I mean I'm using the word college loosely here because it could be an apprenticeship or something else although you know let's not kid ourselves I mean virtually 90% of the jobs if not 95% of the jobs that created in this country since the great recession of 2008-9 have required a college degree so is it is it is it a true statement that not everybody needs to go to college that is a true statement but most of the jobs that are being created in particularly the higher level jobs require a college degree associates or bachelors and isn't that fundamentally linked to our ability economically as a state I mean those two things like you're absolutely right so I don't understand why that would be like on the forefront of legislators like why don't we have school counselors pushing Vermont students to have the support system in place when they get to junior year that they say I'm going to Castleton I'm not gonna go do drugs I'm not gonna get pregnant I'm not gonna be a you know deli girl I think it's not that those are bad things we need them we do but it's not fair to say nobody's got any asset that Vermont needs we have to get our taxes done from Connecticut or New Hampshire because we don't have anything different with you somewhat is like I just said what we we have 12,000 students within the Vermont State College system of like 10,000 plus our Vermonters and half half of them are the first in their family to go to college so it's not like none of them are it's just that too many aren't and I would argue that cost is a big factor in that I think I have a funny thing about it because all of my girlfriends there are five of us from Central Vermont went to small amounts of schooling of our own financial situations after we were in pretty not good situations otherwise I mean no further of education no future discussion on anything literally just thrown out there like have a nice day and so now it's 25 years later my friends kids are doing the same thing that we did and you know we were all powerhouses so I don't understand why we weren't an asset why we weren't called into education I yeah I'm interested I mean it's a lost asset I hope that doesn't happen anymore yeah and I think and by the way it needs to start you know we can't wait till 10th grade okay you need to start you know at the very latest working with students and their families in middle school right it's one of the reasons why I and their pros and cons this but one of the trends you see around the country is there's more states basically offering tuition-free college and you know for example in Tennessee it's limited to community and technical colleges two years in New York it's now you know if your family I think it's if the family incomes under 120,000 you can go tuition-free to any one of the college their community colleges and you know we don't have that in Vermont but I think you know and people would argue by the way that you know in a place like New York a lot of the benefit of that is actually going to people that actually could afford to pay for college but they're now want to take advantage of it you know it is limited to a hundred twenty thousand dollar family income and for two you know two to work or family that's not it sounds like it but it's not a high-income family so I'd say you know higher income than that don't get to take advantage of it. I still think the 1% can afford college the rest of us still need the help. No question about it. No it's your absolute way I don't disagree with that. We have a tremendous equity issue in this country and I say it's getting worse it's getting harder for the lower-income folks to go to college although you know at the same time you know I would say there are opportunities for people to pursue college or a post-secondary education that they might not be aware of you know for example a vermoder who gets into the University of Vermont and is Pell eligible so that would mean you know their family income might be you know it varies depending on number of how my kids are in the family and so forth but let's say under fifty thousand dollars goes tuition and fee free to the University of Vermont. Now it's not easy to get into the University of Vermont but for you know those those lower-income students to get in there is no tuition to go there and we're really trying to up our tuition in a place you mentioned Castleton well they have an agreement with Community College of Vermont that you know if you graduate with an associate's degree from CCV Community College of Vermont you can continue at that same tuition level at Castleton to try to make it affordable people you know you talk about Vermonters I'm familiar with the one I won't I won't name her but she'll know it if she was watching a student from you know Belvedere Vermont home school went if nobody in the family had been to college before went to Johnson State College now Northern Vermont Johnson on a full four-year scholarship from the National Science Foundation was she driven you know was she you know academically able yes she was but but she didn't have a lot of family you know expectation or anything else like that and it was a free free four years and now she's got like a two hundred thousand dollar post-secondary fellowship out there with the I think it's the first one in the state colleges system I only mentioned those things because it the expense the tuition we have the lowest state support in the country for our public higher education system that translates to the highest tuition in the country and even though Community College of Vermont is our most affordable option it's still probably the most expensive tuition in the country and there's a direct direct link a direct cable from like the lowest state support in the country to the highest tuition in the country because you know you got to get your revenue somewhere and back in the 1980s bill when when you were you know in the state Senate and I was in the state Senate the Vermont State College has got roughly 50% of its revenues came from the state and 50% came from tuition now about 15% comes from the state and 85% from tuition that means Vermonters pay the highest family share of their income to send their kids to college in the country and there's no doubt in my mind that that's one of the reasons why we don't have a lot of we have too many Vermonters that are not going on to post-secondary because they think they can't afford it and in many instances they can't afford it and they don't want to take on excessive debt chance like some other way to talk chance of responding to talk about some of the greatest challenges as cancer well thank you for asking the biggest challenges are pretty much what I just mentioned that we get such low-state support that we are we are very very reliant on tuition and you know we have a declining number of customers you know students we are increasingly facing families you know that they tell me that the Gen Zers which are students that are coming into college now they're born about the year 2000 and subsequent are increasingly price-conscious so they're not interested in going and getting a bachelor's degree to be good good citizens and worldly thinkers they're going to college because they want to get a job when they get out and if they don't see that return on investment I mean I'm exaggerating a little bit but that's that's that's a current real thrust right now students want to know wait a minute here if I'm going to go spend four years on tuition what am I getting out of this and you know I think what we would like to have people understand is that you know when we talk about a northern of my university you know were you taught for a very long time at Johnson or a Castleton they're not just getting a liberal arts education that's going to make them a worldly thinking they're getting a liberal arts education with a strong link to the professions and with extensive internship and experiential opportunities are going to help them get their first job and jobs along the way you have to understand that I mean a lot of the the the professions out there that you might think of now probably aren't going to exist in ten years so if you just go in a very narrow I've got a simple skill and that's all I that's all I know and I'm not able to you know think critically and I'm not able to analyze I'm not able to work with people and and think broadly you're going to be stuck in a in maybe that one area that might not even exist into the future so the challenges are low-state support, declining number of traditional students, very skeptical parents and students, price competition that's very tough and new providers that are coming in so you know there are like you know I mean there are plenty of online providers and there are new for profit institutions that are coming in we should be very skeptical of by the way but you know we have a ton of challenges we also have strategies to try to address every one of those so those are the challenges and they're big but we also have opportunities. Well let's talk about the opportunities and talk about what we're doing to solve the challenges that you enumerate. Okay well you know number one an opportunity is the group of folks that Sophie has talked about. The 40% of Vermonters that are not going on to any post-secondary education. The 60% of the lower income group that is not going on to any kind of post-secondary education after after after high school. So for us well if we could get that from 40% not going down to 20% not going that's good for them it's good for the state of Vermont and it's good for us we are working very hard on retention that would be you know in late person's language keeping your customers we have too many students that come you know and again we have we take we have our valedictory students you know you will remember that at Johnson we have wonderful students and how many of your students are turned out to be legislators a lot of them they contribute to their community. A significant number. A significant number but you know I mean we also take a lot of students that have struggled in school struggled at home and you know they they come to the Vermont State Colleges and sometimes we don't have the support system that allows them to succeed and they don't they don't stay. So you know if we can actually help those students that are now dropping out of college to stay that's good for them that's good for the state and that's good for us as well. Then we need to serve you know the group of students that are adults and you know there are 60,000 Vermonters that have some college but never completed and you know we're trying to develop more flexible delivery systems so weekend programs seven week semesters online you know ways that Vermonters that can't you know they might be working or they might be raising a family they can't go Monday Wednesday and Friday at 10 o'clock in the morning they need to have some other delivery and we're we're working on that as well and then we're you know we're doing some pretty creative things like like Northern Vermont University which is up and running we have our first class of students there they're very excited about it. If it wasn't if it was a sort of typical environment where you know finances weren't an issue we probably couldn't have pulled that off but I think people knew that wait a minute here you know we're committed to maintaining campuses in Lyndon and Johnson and we need to make sure that the dollars we do have are spent on things that matter to students so at Northern Vermont University with those two campuses we now have one president Elaine Collins is doing a great job we have one CFO not two actually we have one executive assistant for presidents not two on each one of those campuses and in the first year just in the transition here we save over a million dollars in executive management higher level management expenses and salaries and benefits and you know what we're seeing which is more exciting to me is actually increased opportunities for students so now the professors at Johnson and Lyndon are getting to know each other and you know a Ben Loos who's an eminent physicist and teaches physics at at Lyndon taught also at Johnson this past spring and loved it and I believe he's back there this fall so there's a lot of synergies there some of the classes that were too small to run when we can do them across two campuses are actually big enough to keep running so more opportunities for students both in the classroom and some of the extracurricular and travel opportunities we have it's it's pretty exciting so you know that's another one we're trying to like be creative and do shared services and then we're you know really need to make our case to the legislature that you know there is an impact of like such low-state funding and it is that too many Vermonters are not going on to college well I think like you said too I think a support system that actually recognized young people in Vermont when they're young I mean because literally like I have one girlfriend I was telling you she was great and calculus she was the head of her field hockey team and no one ever approached her about going to college not ever in the whole time that we were at you 32 and that was very common and so I've taken I'm one of those people who has multiple little bits of classes from here and there and the the those classes work fabulously but for my friends who were educated here and feel that they're not actually good enough to go to college you know those are the people I would love to see your program actually step up and and ask we know you'd be great we we have a place for you and like you're saying you know the legislative asset is huge to have that be recognized as a you know this is your economy this is what is going to make it possible for you to come and retire in Vermont is if you have educated sophisticated you know helpful people in the community and there are lots of them here and you know a lot of people aren't aren't appreciated and I'm so I'm glad to have this opportunity to talk with you about it do we you know I'm not sure this is right but I'd like to think that at the you know the high schools are doing a better job of counseling students than maybe they did 20 years ago I'd like to think that I hope that's the case yeah it's kind of hard for us because of high schools you know don't necessarily make it easy for you know like us to come in we they have nice college nights and you can go to those but it's hard a lot of students don't go to that so you know we'd like to do our part and you know one of the things we are trying to do another one of our strategies is just to let people know what we have to offer within the Vermont State College of System because sometimes you know I mean it's always gonna be the case you know my my daughters went to 12 years of Montpelier public schools and they both went out of state to college and by the way neither of them came back right and they're in their upper 30s now and I doubt they will come and they're quite successful well they are but but oftentimes my point there is like you know the majority of times once we go out of state they're not coming back there are also there's the minority times when people go out of state and do come back and that's great too but you know I see too often people are paying more to get an experience out of state when they could have stayed at one of our own colleges and if they'd gotten a good experience here the odds are higher that they would stay here and we'd have a better you know at a child-bearing age where you know it would help our demographics so Jeff is Romano for an affordable state in which to live well everything's relative and so you know compared to where you know my daughter is she is a physical therapist at a rehab hospital and in Boston the housing I don't think she'll ever be able to buy a house in that area so I mean you know actually I mean housing in Vermont is less expensive than other places post-secondary education is more expensive in Vermont so I would say you know the taxes are pretty high here but I on an affordability level it's probably you know in most instances in my opinion not really out of line with other parts of the country and in this particularly in New England you know if you go out to the Midwest in some of those places you can go to a state that doesn't have an income tax you know New Mexico or you know South Carolina or someplace like that it's probably less expensive to live there but we also have to understand that you know we have something like 620,000 people in Vermont and Vermonters have a commitment to a desire for a lot of services and when you're trying to try to provide that for a small number of people you know it does it does cost makes it it's more expensive for people but I actually don't think our cost of living is all that out of line I think our cost of post-secondary education is definitely out of line like I said we have the highest tuition in the country in-state and out-of-state tuition it's always been like that I mean when I was looking at colleges you could go to Berkeley for a thousand dollars a semester so and then UVM was 8,000 at that point so I mean it's always sort of been that way but why aren't Vermonters being looked at as an asset you know the I have another example of a friend who comes from an old farm family and he can't read and we were educated next to each other okay and I I struggled to learn how to read on my own because people you know I was special ed and that profoundly affected me to the point where I will never have confidence in myself as an adult with an education because I was special ed you know and that happened to what 40 to 60 percent of our working force in the state of Vermont right now and then those are your those are your numbers that you're looking at of who's not getting educated and why is that and is special ed actually helping us and are those people actually an asset or should they be sent to Siberia I mean you know what's happening here are we are we appreciating the people who are our assets and so here's a guy who now can't run the family farm because he's not educated enough and to whose benefit was that was that so that his family would have to sell off the farm in order to afford him existing here in the state of Vermont because he's not an asset you know what I mean so it becomes very personal to me and I become furious about it because my friends who are valuable to me aren't engaged in a society that they are forced to live in and that part of it is it's damning to the outcome of everyone and that part of it for me is so sad because you know here's a love this guy is a love he's got lovely children he's a wonderful brother and a wonderful son and he cares about the people in his life but no one actually cares about him and his ability to participate and and that part is you know that's why I think a lot of people do drugs right so I would say that the people that are working in public education are doing it because they have a commitment to children and families and they take they're passionate about it are there people that unfortunately have not gotten what they needed out of the public education system or out of the public higher education system probably but you know we're always trying to do our job better I'm not an expert in special education I would be surprised if 40 to 60 percent of the students are in a special ed it's 75 percent actually I don't know I'm very surprised yeah do it please do because I mean these are the numbers that have got me so worked up is because my peers on a mass scale are being swept under the rug so that people from other states can come in here and live comfortably and that's fine except that you know Vermont actually has an astounding groundwork for survival in difficult situations we need it all we need in a miserable climate status we need we need everybody so Jeff before we end this program are there any questions we might have asked well there's one of the thing I just like quickly to mention that one of the I think exciting initiatives that Vermont has done is is our dual enrollment and early college opportunities for students and you know every high school student now now has a legal entitlement to take two college courses while they're a junior or senior furthermore you know when you're a senior you can actually combine your senior year of high school and your first year of college might remember Bill there was something called the Vermont Academy of Science and Technology at Vermont technical college well now all of our state colleges have something similar and you know I remember actually being right here in the studio interviewing a young man from Bakersfield last spring who you know in the middle of doing his taps was an early early college student at Johnson was the first in his family to go to college and he had done his dual enrollment and now he's doing early college and what that meant was when he graduates from high school he can go and enter college as a sophomore and you know I've seen our statistics that show that students that are from free and reduced luck so a lower income level that do dual enrollment or early college are 20% more likely to continue on to post-secondary education than if they didn't so you know I'm very excited and if they're students or parents or grandparents that are watching thinking about gee you know I've got a junior or a rising senior that are thinking about how they're going to make their their year more productive or I want to get them to think about you know how they can better themselves I hope they'll take a look at our early college and do enrollment programs and our website is www.vsc as in Vermont state colleges dot edu that can take you to whatever you want to know as it's balding many thanks for your contributions today so nice to see you both thank you for coming it's really nice to have you here thank you