 And we have President Sullivan coming in and out. So I do want to give him those two-thirty-two-three. So I'm hoping we can just get a flying start. It's cupcake time then. And if we could begin, we don't have either Senator Plino or Senator Starr. I'm trying to get him. That's all right. We do have Suzanne Young for the administration. So Suzanne, would you like to start? And would you like to bring anybody to the table with you? No, I was going to turn it over to Trish Coates from my state colleges after I teeded up a little bit. And thank you. I, too, have to leave for a better call. Thank you for the record. I'm Suzanne Young. I'm the secretary of administration. And I thank the chair for inviting me in today to talk about the proposal or in the governor's budget. The governor has proposed $200,000 of one-time money that we have from the FY19 surplus to be directed to the Vermont state colleges. And the purpose of the appropriation was for the Vermont state colleges to put some energy and some expertise and some people power behind developing a potential associate degree program, which we found very exciting in concept. And so we supported the direction of the money to the Vermont state colleges to work on the concept and come back and see if it would indeed be something that we could get behind and support. So to begin, when we were looking at budgeting and when we were looking at the education space, the governor, as I'm sure you're all aware and he's talked about it, and I think most of his speech is really interested in the cradle to career education system. And for him, that means putting money in the front end before kindergarten and I'm sure you'll be hearing more about his proposal to direct $7 million into early education, early care, and learning. And this is the other end, the career end, where after high school we're making sure that we're providing training for the young adults and training them up to the tech skills that we need in today's economy. And making it more affordable and easier for those students to achieve an associate's degree or some other certification and get the jobs that are out there right now for the taking. So with that, we also look at the demographics. And today I just brought one piece of paper for you all and this is what we did to Gene, I believe, so you can have it through the record. But this is just two pieces of data points for the committee. The county labor force data and the percent change since its peak in each county, since we're dealing with senators, we thought you were all interested in how your county is doing. So what these two slides show you, I'm going to zoom out to the crowd here. So what the first slide I would look at is the percent change in the K-12 enrollment by county, and it just illustrates by county the decrease in the enrollment since 2004 in each county. And as you can see the K-12 enrollment is a pretty stark decrease in some counties, and it's a decrease in every county with the most minimal in being Chittenden and Lemoyle. Oh, Franklin, I'm sorry, yes, Senator Carrant. Franklin followed by Lemoyle and Chittenden, but the most stark is the 25, 41% decreases, Essex, Windsor, and Addison. So this just illustrates that we are, we have an ever-decreasing population in the K-12, and the cradle to career is really to try to spread out the resources that we're putting into a decreasing population in K-12, and it's spreading them out over a longer time frame for students, giving them a healthier start and helping them get into the workforce that we have. So the idea presented by the Vermont State Colleges certainly was in keeping with the back goal, and the Governor's focus has never been on decreased spending but realigning the resources to the demographics that you have in front of you, and our challenge with developing workforce development and the jobs that our employers need and how we can better train them up. So we... Can I ask you a question about this? Sure. These are supposed to be declines in the... No, on the labor side. I'm sorry, I should have been more clear. On the labor side, these are declines. Just the way the data was reported to us. One was reported as declines, and the other wasn't. But these are the declines in labor force data since the peak, and what we have are peaks in every county over a period since 2004. I don't believe that I have it right here. These should be negative percentages. So from 2000 to 2017, we have data, which we could get to, which we'll put it in context, which basically shows by counting what the feed labor force was in each county. And in each county, that's a different year. So what this shows is that since Basics County made its peak, and what I can just tell you, 2009, today it's decreased 19.23%. So, yes, that is not a clear one. They're both negatives. Got it. Displaced. See how this goes. Yeah. So just to give you an overview of some of the items other than this that are included in the Governor's F-Ball 20 budget. Again, I mentioned he's proposed an additional $7 million into the child care system to make it accessible and affordable for low-income and working families. Always trying to help people pursue education and training opportunities outside the traditional college track and their credentials as well. So there's an increase in funding for BSEC's non-degree grant program by over a million dollars. Continued investment in the capital bill for adult CTE equipment grants, and the committee wants to hear some really exciting work that's going on. These grants have proven very successful and about 75% of last year's grants have already gone out the door. And they're buying equipment that is mobile. So it can be brought from, you know, tech center to tech center. And it's just been a really, I think successful program and the commissioner of labor can talk about what's going on in that space. And so we've recommended that that program be continued with additional capital money this year of $800,000 over the two years of the bill. We've put in $700,000 for UBM because they're declining Medicaid revenue. And so that's to bring them back to replace the Medicaid revenue that they've lost, they're going to lose this year. And then bringing us up to $3.2 million to the Vermont State College and Trish can fill you in a little more on the details on that. But $2.5 million of that is to buy down a 3% tuition increase that was voted by the board for this upcoming academic year. Some additional money to their base for ongoing operations. And then the .2 is the $200,000 of the one-time money that would go to developing this associate degree program. Just for clarity, those last items you mentioned are not related to the $7 million McDermott report for the end, which would be the sales tax online sales tax money. Yes, yes. Yes, the revenue that if we clarify the sales news tax laws to extend to the modern marketplace, we are anticipating about $7 million in additional revenue there, which we had proposed to be directed into the early care money. So again, I thank you for inviting me into to tee up a discussion about this program. And at this point, I'd like to turn it over to Trish Coates and Pat. Oh no, there she is, just in time. Who's really been doing the yeoman's work on this, pulling together, you know, the strings and some ideas about what this would look like and why they need a consultant to help them design the program. What excited us about it is the potential. Again, there's no clear program on the table yet because this is what this money is designed to do, is to help us design it. But the potential for this being something that a high school student could use in a tech center, complete their senior year in high school in their tech center and receive one year of credit towards an associate degree and potentially spend a second year in their home tech center and earn an associate's degree without having to incur the cost of room, board, travel, bills. That would be something that we think is really a great opportunity for that student body. Now, whether we'll be able to pull that off, it remains to be seen, but we thought it was well worth putting some of our extra surplus money into that study. Just one thing before you bring me first, thanks for coming in. Second, we had a caucus today, a Democratic caucus, and I talked briefly about this and the pro temp had been and his immediate comment was don't necessarily feel you have to stop with a pilot. It's possible to go bigger than the committee feels that that would make sense if we proposed something bigger. So I'll just pass that on to your side that there's a good reception so far to the extent that you might have a mandate to go through this. Well, thank you. We'll really look forward to what if this passes and on June we have the money available. We'll look forward to the work that the fine work to know that state colleges will do on this. So thank you very much for having me in. Thank you, sir. And I think I'll sit in this and throw a little while. So feel free to come in before you prefer, I don't know, Trish to pass first. Me? Would you like to? Okay. I knew it was good. Nice to see you. Right. Do I look any different? Great. Thank you very much for the chance to be here. I'm ready to start when you are Mr. Chair. And if I could just say Senator Polino, we already moved into the administration making their pitch. Do you mind waiting just through Pat's testimony and then we can have you say a few words? Sure. Well actually you're here to speak about your free college bill. Okay. Could we ask you to come back because I think this discussion is going to take half an hour, 45 minutes. Could we ask you to come back after three? Good. Okay. Could you do that? Okay. Because this is a sort of more somewhat separate issue. I'll sit for a couple minutes. Okay. Sounds good. Please. Great. Well good afternoon. I'm Pat Moulton and I'm President at Vermont Technical College and I'm about two and a half years into my presidency there and as Senator Brief noted I come from an economic development force development related background. I often refer to myself as a recovering bureaucrat having worked in and out of state government a variety of times. But it's a pleasure to be here to talk to you about this opportunity today and we are very excited about the possibility to examine and plan for how we might do this and we're very grateful that Governor Scott has built funding into his budget. And as Suzanne Young had indicated we still have probably more answers to our questions and answers at this point. But really the idea is to offer all or a portion of an associate's degree at our career and tech head centers. And the hope is that this opportunity provides better more affordable access to higher education to students throughout Vermont. And also the hope is that we can pick up some percentage of those students who do not pursue any education after high school by making it more accessible and affordable. And I won't give you a chapter in verse, I know you know it in terms of the importance of some education beyond high school and the direct correlation between education and earning capacity and therefore careers and contentment in folks one's life. So that is really the hope. And also if we can do this well and figure out the scaling, it's very likely we can provide this as an opportunity for working adults as well to access higher education and a degree. And we're clearly hoping that this is a pathway for more students to come to Vermont Technical College and earn a technical degree as that is just a screaming in the workforce right now. We also believe this is an opportunity to try to I don't want to imply anything negative here but elevate the image of career and technical education by having college level courses available. But also that we can entice students that are high school students who may not be in CTE to consider CTE and or come and start their degrees there, or start a degree there. There are lots and lots of questions and I guess my one statement is if this were easy we would have done it by now which is part of why the funding that the governor has proposed that enables us to really examine how to do this in a way that is a win-win for everyone, win for students, win for CTE, win for Vermont Tech and higher education. And to do that we really need to fully investigate the ins and outs. How does this impact accreditation? How do we fund this model? Where are the funding risks? Where are the opportunities in terms of funding? And that's important because to be perfectly honest Vermont Tech is not really in a position to absorb financial risk at this point. The budgets are tight and getting tighter every day so we are not able to put risk capital on the table. The funding is also really critical in that we don't have a lot of capacity. I don't have somebody I can take off anything and assign to this work. So the opportunity to either whether it can be a consultant or freeing up existing staff who have familiarity that's to be determined but we really need to dive into the ins and outs. And I had prepared a very, very, very rough draft that I understand you have Mr. Chair that really starts to outline where a lot of those questions are and where the questions exist. But I'm viewing this as we have potentially up to 16 regional labs that we can use through our Career and Tech Ed centers. And in some cases those labs are in better condition than we have in college. So I see that as a real opportunity as well as decentralizing education to Vermonters. Our nursing program is right now quite decentralized. We offer nursing in 12 locations around the state. Are there other programs we can bring out and do the same type of thing. And how do we do that in partnership with Career and Tech Ed so that they see the win and the opportunity as well. So I'm happy to answer whatever questions I can for you. But know that you'll probably give me more questions that we need to answer. But some I may have an idea of where we want to head, but we need to build the model first. I've asked Senator Parent to send to Genie your link with the language. So we'll all have a copy in a minute. In advance of that there's 200,000 which has already come forward in my governor's budget. And I believe the appropriations is fine with it. What do you specifically see that going to pay for? Well in the short term it would be to pay for either a consultant or some staff that we could bring on to really analyze the questions and determine the ins and outs. Depending on what that cost finally looks like there may be some remaining funds that could help towards implementation. It's hard to know sitting here right now. But the expectation is that there would be to fund up to a couple of years of having somebody who is focused on answering the questions and then moving towards how we could implement. And that may be different people still trying to figure that out. And I'll apologize that this we didn't know for sure that this was going in the governor's budget until December. So we've been scrambling trying to put some of the skeleton together and some meat on the bones and have at least identified the important issues we need to address. We have reached out to four different technical centers to determine their interest and they have indicated yes. They're interested in working with us. We do a lot of work with CTEs now so I'm sure that number will expand but we want to walk before we run quite frankly so that's why we're not talking to everybody quite yet. Are those four technical centers geographically distributed? Yes. Northwest Northwest St. Albans, North Country Newport, Stafford, Rutland and Hartford in White River is the four that we've talked to thus far. So I mean it would be with the $200,000 you could probably have a full-time person for two years. Exactly. Is that what you think is the problem? That or we have an individual that works for us, Lyle Jepsen. He was the director at the Stafford Tech Center for a number of years. Went to work for Castleton for a while. He's now working for us running our certified technical education teacher preparedness program. We do licensing for career and text teachers. We might try to backfill some of the work he's doing around administrative, etc. to free him up because he knows CTE he knows the VSC alternatively look for somebody who might be out there. We know a couple people who have been in and around CTE in Vermont or in and around the state colleges so that we're not really having to have somebody climb a big learning curve and learn about Vermont or these systems but that can hit the ground running. And then to go on with what I said when Suzanne was testifying my discussion with the pro-time was very positive and he was thinking about it in terms of how could we make it bigger rather than smaller. I immediately started thinking can we have something working by September. If we don't then we're going to have to wait probably another year and myself I would rather not be talking about 2021. I just think that's such a because we're not reinventing the wheel where we're doing early college which exists which has very well defined financial pathways as well as feeders from high schools into the early college program so that would be my question is working quickly get the first class of this in September without making mistakes without ultimately disadvantageing by screwing up how their credits work or anything like that but if it's their final year I'd hate to have to wait three classes this year's to finish next year's to go and then a third one so if we could go with the class of beginning of September that would be ideal I would think. That would be ideal but I have to be honest since coming into higher education I have a far better appreciation for why things take so long as an example we're scheduling now next fall so for us to try to figure out all the where's and why fours of all this I and then market it appropriately to students so that they see the opportunity I think it's a lot aggressive to make September happen and not make mistakes I mean one of the big questions is we're talking about high school seniors that still have high school requirements to finish out and then we want to put 30 additional credits for a full year on top of that is that even physically possible within that high school schedule can it be done or how close to 30 credits can we get and also planning for what in order to maximize potential for these students and help assure success have do we might have to go look at their junior year and just say what kind of courses are they taking that are going to support and help them ease into this program in their senior year so we've kind of got a reverse engineer the process a little bit to get into that and so and you can appreciate coming from higher education things don't move too fast but so it would be our goal but I don't want to raise that expectation that I don't think we can deliver if we're going to do this and do this well we're I mean especially if we're looking at funding in let's say July if swimming the bill pass the budget passes then I mean that doesn't give us much time to September and we're going to continue conversations obviously keep working on this but I just I understand your point about not wanting to miss these classes but keep in mind that we're already doing a lot of dual enrollment we have vast we have concurrent enrollment so there are opportunities right now for students to take advantage of college credits but to really set this up as a degree is more work kind of in his thought on feasibility something I think to be really powerful is program and I just want to get your comments initially on it is what if we were to turn these tech centers where like that person could do their first year of senior year to come back to that tech center to actually finish that associate's degree in St. Port already their tech center so they may not have to move on to campus right you know how feasible you think that is I think it's very possible and and I think that certain programs that is very doable the question is which programs and so really looking at where is the CTE offer good lab space where are the instructors of have the educational background to meet our accreditation standards I mean accreditation loan is going to be an issue that we've got to address but I think it's possible being candid if we do that it does some of the questions I've had already as well if we decentralize this to CTE why do we need these programs on campus and I think that's a good question and yet that's going to be disruptive of our college model being you know very clear and transparent I'm not certain that's a bad disruption I mean I think it could be the right answer but something we've got to really examine pretty closely I also think that there are certain programs I know we have degrees that we can't duplicate at CTE there isn't any clear pathway or new labs whatever the case might be so I do think the two-year offering has a lot of opportunity for certain programs particularly programs where they're all in big demand but looking at things like auto-tact or construction management things of that nature where there just is a lot of screaming need and not enough students coming in the funnel if you will directly I would say that's true of any program we offer but I do think there are some that learn themselves nicely to a two-year offering but we've got to look at what that long-term impact means and frankly need a little time and so I think piloting one to maybe three programs makes some sense so we can collect the data are we in fact capturing students who didn't otherwise go on to college are they being successful are they meeting the needs are we delivering this in a way that meets our presentation and learning outcome needs so just to clarify it seems from this what the thought is to do a study free up to 200,000 dollars at the same time to allow the hiring to have that person be conducting the study then do a pilot program I hear you saying the pilot program would be not starting in September but a year first very likely yeah and so then we would be rolling out the whole program if we expand or like three years down the road yeah I would think if we could do our first pilot fall of 20 we could potentially maybe we could do more than one pilot fall of 20 then if we see that there's and we'd want at least I think a year of data maybe a couple but at least a year of data to know how are students doing how are we attracting more are we attracting adults then we could roll additional programs out after that as appropriate so I you've used the phrase several times screaming me I agree with you and not even putting it in terms of me but opportunity for kids so I just want to say I'm on board with everything about the timeline I'd like to do it somewhat faster maybe maybe that maybe we go from a study to a roll out instead of a pilot and Trish do you remember in terms of the development I think it was an act 77 of dual enrollment what was the lead time from when we passed the act to when we started giving out those well yes maybe it was already it was already in place so we already had it in one program for the act 77 but it was limited same with early college that fast okay and here similarly I'm thinking we have an early college program we must be able to piggyback in large part on that structure now I think it's the delivery that center level okay Pat anything else you'd like to add or are there questions so it sounds like you haven't gotten as far so I mean a lot of my questions might be answered when you actually do your study but we already have a bunch of these programs that we mentioned the dual enrollment in early college program we also have community or CCD campuses all over the state in most of our counties I think so I'm wondering I've heard you have said screaming me and clearly we don't have enough kids who are graduating from high school and going on to higher education but have you done any kind of enrollment or demographic analysis to see where the need is what the need is how many if we would be serving new kids that aren't already certified by one of these other programs so that we're not just constantly sort of targeting the same kids right the short answer is no not any kind of deep dive analysis but and the early college programs that we have now are very effective and we're seeing I mean vast we we're at 95-96% of our students go on to college we're pleased that a higher percentage are actually staying at Vermont Tech every year I think the difference is we're not able to deliver technical education in the same way and this is about trying to bring a good accredited technical degree out into technical centers to bring and build that pathway so I would believe that there are students out there now who this is all anecdotal and who would love to get into say an auto or diesel program or a paramedicine program but between the tuition, room and board or even just the usual fear of college they're not they're not doing it so I think the opportunity I mean we saw an increase in the number of nursing students when we increased and well I can't say decentralized we picked up a bunch of existing nursing schools but provided a constant rigorous curriculum across all that met all the needs this would be the same type of opportunity for technical degree so I don't think we have a really we do dual enrollment of a number of our programs through our high schools but there's a limit obviously on the number of credits they number of vouchers they can get vast a lot of those students are coming and knowing what their major is a lot are undeclared so I do feel that there is a population out there that would take advantage of this but no we haven't done that analysis in any depth at this point I mean somewhere in this study I'd love to see us do some survey ask high school students how likely would you be to take a degree because I would be concerned that it would have an effect on you guys are you having enrollment issues if you have even more enrollment issues as a result of this what's the impact on your existing programs and is there with our declining K-12 population is there a need to continue to expand options for people or do we need to start thinking about maybe some of the options we currently have are no longer relevant if we move to different options so how would this affect their negatively affect their enrollment? if some of these kids who might take advantage of this would not actually then go to the Vermont technical college in Randolph because they are going to be taking advantage of this but I see them as getting a VTC degree in either case VTC is going to get paid but then will the number of kids number of students at their campus in Randolph decline or the number of students that is in their CCB they're getting paid in other words if you take Cory's idea that they get their degree but they're being accredited and the credits are being provided by VTC the money would go to VTC where it would be shared maybe so in that case it seems like a positive addition I think it's mostly just where's the saturation point for all of these programs we have lots of different avenues and we still have a low college entrance and graduation rate in our state so we've created a lot of these entrance programs into higher education and they're not having the effect in what would what yet one other one mean and I would just like to see a broader analysis sort of writ large of all of these to see what's being effective, what's cost effective what what is actually getting students to get into college and graduate with a degree that they can then use in whatever field they're in well and to be perfectly honest some of the concerns I've heard from folks on my campus is exactly that is will students say oh great I'll take the option to stay home so yes we're still getting paid we're not getting the full tuition as I understand early college's percentage second we're not getting room and board that all has financial impact and so as I've looked at it let's say 20 students in a program now and we decentralized and we've got 10 and then 20 and the other we're no net better off we haven't grabbed anybody new we've shot ourselves in the foot whereas if we're 20 now and we end up with 10 and there's 30 then that's a net benefit and more kids are taking advantage it's better for us so I think some of that really remains my gut is that if it were me and I knew I had a college program in my backyard that would be a no brainer but what does that look like long term for the college is part of it but also really understanding will students take advantage of it and I think it's a legitimate question in terms of at what point have we provided so many options and they're still not coming and where are the real nuts and bolts problems I mean I deal with this every day on my campus and higher ed does in terms of level of preparedness of students coming out of high schools it's not what it used to be and it makes life harder for us so that's why the idea of one of the things to really look at is can we add 30 credits to a senior year in high school and will those students succeed doing that and what are the student supports that we need to be able to provide that are over and above what they might be getting now in tech centers and accreditation all locations all modalities all students we've got to make sure they're all getting the same tutoring support the same counseling support and you know we hear a lot of anecdotes about overworked guidance counselors in high schools and so I mean all that's got to get sort of that I think it's doable but we want to walk again before we run I'm wondering if it's to collapse the timeline just a little bit so that I understand the program in September would be very hard could you do a very small pilot starting in September that you have all your you know you can see all the moving parts you've got a pilot class of 10 something and then you could use of the 200,000 you could use a chunk of it to fund the issues surrounding that pilot and the full time person that way you could take them through a whole class or that class through a whole year and you'd have that by the following September just it seems like that would be just you know maybe you learn a little bit as you drive those 10 people through but they'd be highly the most highly motivated Center review I see this as getting some students interested is there any at the tech centers but to go on to college whether it's the tech center or another school maybe they'll change your majors more than once before they actually graduate but I'm seeing this as an entry level to walk in if it's a senior possibly in the tech center most of their credits are already I've already taken their credits for the year I mean some of the kids in junior year might only have one class those are the ones that you want to target because they're getting part-time jobs say changing tires at a car dealership where they should be learning how to repair vehicles so I'm thinking that that this is an easy something easy that can be done in a small size small scale and and has the most experience in techs he was a staffer tech for years I went on to Castleton University but he's got the experience to pull this off and that's probably has it all written out some place and I've got a lot of musings from Lyle yeah he's got he doesn't need to sleep like most of us but I'm sure he can pull this off a small pilot is potentially available and we will absolutely look at that and see what we can do would you like a trash tip come in I wasn't on your list today you're always on thank you senator anything you'd like to add we're willing to keep sharing information as we get it but we look forward to your support for this 200,000 absolutely and so senator parent will be taking the lead on this for us and that you have additions to language or having noodle down that small pilot idea anything you can look at it and get it to us anybody else from either the administration or state colleges who wants to speak secretary do you have anything you'd like to add thank you well thank you very much and I appreciate your consideration and if we look forward to working on this I do think there's a great opportunity good to see you too can I just add one thing thank you so much for thinking about students and their stress levels whether or not they can manage early college, early everything let's speed everybody toward something I think it's really important to keep our eyes on it's impossible to ignore frankly we've always come in with those kind of challenges and we deal with the stress level all the time and you have to remember we're talking about 17 and 18 year olds in some cases and there are some who can ace it and others who are going to struggle and so recognizing everybody comes in at a different place and how can we bring them all up at the same time is the key I realize we did have yes mean on the agenda please thank you thank you very much the lock promise program the name of this that's what I was taking from the draft of S38 I think the language that I think she knows we've shifted yeah okay so Anthony's gonna come back in three so why we'll go ahead and we'll defer his intro to his bill sir is there another mic so committee just to clarify we've got two tracks one is that program that we'll call the tech center early college and then this is kicking off a more free willing discussion about free college or tuition assisted college senators have expressed an interest in that so my thought is we'll we'll open next month we'll take testimony on this and see where we land with it and so really this testimony is meant to be background more to give you a sense of the broader picture of what college affordability looks like right now for students in the state college system how existing financial aid works where some of the pressure points are and then a little bit thinking about the logistics of S38 the draft language is there how that would play out so some of this is background information and actually here the third slide there's a reference so really I'm pulling this you know why have other states forward with college promise programs it's a very clear message around post secondary attainment to students arguably it's a very clear benefit so how do you achieve better funding for post secondary education and then a third important piece is addressing affordability and access gaps for modest and underrepresented populations this is kind of a summary of some other states that have had college promise programs for a very long time and I won't talk too much about it but it sort of breaks them down by different eligibility requirements and something I'll talk about around this concept of first dollar versus last dollar institution types and all of the rest maybe one thing to point out here is just that these early programs in other states have pretty small participation rates for the total population if you go on to the next page for this is data from there's now a federal college scorecard that anyone can go to on the website collegescorecard.ed.gov and it gives important information for students and families and so I've pulled out currently what is posted there this concept of net cost which is taking the total tuition and room and board expenses and then subtract out all A, grant A that students get federal grants state grants institutional grants and scholarships so what is left is the total cost of students whether they're then using additional financial aid in the form of loans or other means work study to cover that cost but these are the net costs just for a range of institutions and Vermont on average and this is for students in the bottom quintile of family income so up to $30,000 so you can see what those costs are this is for having a year this is just for one year one year cost so if you want to go to the next page this is data actually from VSEC they have been following the class of 2012 looking at where those students go to post secondary what their profile is and what their outcomes of success are and I think with if you're contemplating a design of any kind of college promise program that's an important consideration to think about the equity considerations for students one thing I'll highlight right now is full-time enrollment which is a condition in the draft legislation and obviously the Vermont State College is in particular as an access point for Vermonters we serve a wide range of students and that includes a lot of part-time students particularly at the community college so it's something to think about certainly it's a challenge for students to go through complete when they're going part-time and incentivizing them to go full-time but the reality is particularly that's really not doable pay if you want to I'll pause there for a second there's a lot of detail in there really is just background for you and some websites to go to if you're looking for more information I'm sorry? equity considerations oh CU I apologize short hand that's Castleton University I'm giving you some contrast running through the quality what one is that? okay so then now let's step back take a deep breath and do a quick review on how financial aid works these days and how college costs are being covered and I've just pulled picked out Northern Vermont University as an example here total college costs right now this fall at Northern Vermont is 23,800 and you can see the breakdown there are tuition and fees and a room and board and then an expense estimate for books etc so if you start with that as your total cost and then you subtract out for a student at the lowest at the bottom quintile of family income they're getting the absolute maximum aid dollars in Pell other supplemental federal and the VSEC amount that's about $8,000 so the net cost to the students $15,700 so that's that net cost calculation the federal student loan maximums for first year students right now are $5,500 that's subsidized and unsubsidized federal student loans so if a student takes out the maximum loan they and their families are still faced with a cost of over $10,000 again this is a student who would be on free reduced lunch this is at bottom well the cost is still $15,500 yes right I mean literally out of people's bank accounts and work studies how are they using payment plans they're doing private loans our students are taking on so that's the current reality it actually gets a little bit more challenging when you think about that next income bracket up which is $30,000 to $48,000 because that's when the Pell Grant starts to scale down to zero so you're going from a maximum $6,000 Pell Grant down to zero that creates an even more challenging burden so any before I move on or any does that generally so then I want to give you two scenarios roughly speaking when people are designing and talking about college promise programs nationally there's this concept of first dollar versus last dollar so I want to walk you through what that concept is what the foundations are for the student so let's start with what's called a first dollar program and the basic concept is the promise scholarship pays first and then whatever remaining costs exist students can use whatever other components might be at their disposal whether that's a state grant whether that's a Pell Grant scholarships whatever else so in a first dollar program we take room board and fees that gets us our $23,000 and then the state well actually you should think about the state promise scholarship being first would cover that tuition so that $10,944 and the student would then also have those maximum grants if they're in the bottom quintile so that net cost in a first dollar program to the student is $4768 so that's the net cost in the first dollar program a student can cover that within the federal grant maximum when you contrast that with the last dollar scholarship essentially what that means is the state promise scholarship would only be added on after you would only cover the difference between the federal and the SAC grant and the tuition so the state promise that would be that $2784 so that produces a much higher net cost for the student again at the bottom family quintile and they've got some remaining costs there now obviously those numbers in a last dollar scenario right start shifting between the federal grant and the state grant whereas in the first dollar you would always be doing the state promise scholarship at the set amount I hate to sound like a broken record I think I would redo these slides because it makes it seem as though they're not going to have to pay the loans when in fact they're going to have to pay the loan in plus interest so it's really representing that fair enough thank you but am I right that New York's program is last dollar it is last dollar most of the new programs now are last dollar for obvious reasons right any other questions on the two scenarios then now this does this is the one slide that does attempt to put some numbers down relative to the draft legislative S38 so what this gives you on page 8 is our total full-time Vermont students enrolled at certificate associate or bachelor's degree levels so roughly across the system we're talking about 4,000 individuals who would potentially be eligible under the draft legislation so those 4,000 individuals then what you have here below that is an attempt to look at where do they fall right now on the income spectrum so you can think about that a little bit so this is pulled the data is a little bit older because it is sort of the most recent set that we have broken down but this gives you just the incoming first-time students and their experience in receiving aid and what those aid dollars actually look like so most of our students are receiving federal aid and you can see sort of approximately on average what they're getting can I ask the numbers you have at the top the 4,000 is that in the bottom quintile? no this is everybody so you could as a rough approximation take those percentages and apply it to that top line number however the percentages down below are of students receiving aid so it's not 100% everybody is receiving aid so does this translate in this proposal into a price tag? if you wanted to vary back at the envelope I would take the 4,000 students and I would do this looking at that average total federal aid and say about $3,000 on average a student has of that federal and visa aid so that leaves you at a tuition price of 11,000 with about 8,000 per student that the state promise program would need to cover 8,000 times 4,000 about 32 million now that's 100% students not everybody would be eligible you have other criteria that you can take right now and if you that was why I asked about the lowest quintile because it means test it and have substantial lower cost okay well that's in exactly so this is just meant to give you some information for your collaborations then you have one more yes just a few comments then to think about the policy right now in the draft there's the expectation that the scholarship would convert to loan if the student doesn't complete you know students who don't complete college and have incurred debt that is a really challenging situation for students to be in right and so this would compound that potentially particularly when you start thinking about well have some unmet costs that they're going to have to cover some in some way so are they going to already be taking out many other kinds of loans so that's one consideration another consideration is the part time student and while working adult students really and you know there are credit enrollment strategies CCB has been doing quite a bit of piloting of more intensive courses and trying to figure out how to up the intensity for a working adult so they do complete faster without overwhelming them so nine credits fall spring and summer gets you very close to a 30 year full year of college instead of a 12 credit model for example so that would be something to think about and then finally I think to point of discussion in some programs that Tennessee has done this you know do you build in some other components that really is a synergistic way to increase the success of student participants so Tennessee has a required mentoring and some service components you know we see dual enrollment participation dual enrollment as an important precursor to success in early college for example would that be an important consideration for this program I'm remembering right that Tennessee's began with a chunk of money from the lottery yes yes yes you know and that is a particular challenge for Vermont many other states start with a much higher level of state support for post secondary education which means tuition is lower so the amount of a state scholarship program has to cover is relatively less we have a much bigger figure but they did also start with a lot of funds and so yeah and so I've given you in fact on that final slide just a few details from Tennessee started with a promise program for new high school graduates and then moved on to roll out just this past spring a program that they call Tennessee Reconnector no it's an addition so the Tennessee reconnect is for adults the promise program is for recent grants that's 34 well thank you so much and you're right on time so one question in the remaining minute so what do you think would happen if we took 30 million dollars and provided by every college we gave them each whatever that fortune was I said would that compare to this program right simply gave it to them as opposed to saying we have a Vermont college promise program yeah that you know I think there is a real value to the message to students so you know the things I think about are are you going to increase the college going rate or are you going to increase the success rate I think to your questions specifically absolutely we would see retention go up we see students leave every year but for an unpaid bill of 500-2000 dollars so you know that would go along with this well thank you and I might have said this before but Senators Ingram and Hardy are going to appoint people on this so as we kick it around Cory was just working out some numbers of the bottom quintile and that's about seven and a half million yeah if you just take your 17% and see your times your 1100 times the 8 grand and across for each one it's just under 7.5 so that starts to seem much more doable now we just before you were in we were talking about another program that's going to cost money so it's all part of the same I had asked this before and I'm not sure who can get this but sort of demographic data on all of these kinds of programs together so we could see this is the demographics of dual enrollment early college the proposed demographics of this new and then this so we can sort of do you mean by demographics do you mean in the program? yeah by income by gender because I know you're concerned about the dual enrollment being more focused on girls and just sort of seeing you know geography where they're coming from how many are each county or each whatever it would be really nice to have a big chart do you have that? I know well the agency of education issues a dual enrollment report with all that information I'm pretty sure that's coming out very soon it doesn't include the early college or no but we have an early college report that we submitted two weeks ago that has that information okay so both of those things are coming your way okay good it would be nice to just put it all in front of us I'll make sure you know who is being served by all of these programs yeah fair enough thank you very much it's very helpful so we're on a super efficient schedule okay so President Sullivan is here from 9am welcome President Sullivan we we have a half an hour before I have that doesn't need no we don't need to take a half an hour well at three o'clock the university is hosting our annual ag reception warm up and buy an ice cream so everyone is invited always fun thank you chair Bruce I'm Tom Sullivan president of the university we're not delighted to be here with this opportunity to present the university and our request for appropriation this year you may also know that I'll be stepping out of the presidency this summer and so I want to particularly thank this committee and your colleagues in the legislature for the one hospitality and generosity that you've shown me personally as well as the university so thank you for this opportunity you can be staying at UVM and I'm going to be joining the faculty full time to teach them right so very happy about that my presentation today is going to be rather brief we have tried to be responsive to the instructions and the questions earlier and so we have a one page handout and I'll go through that rather quickly so that you can all get to your questions as you wish I wanted to remind ourselves reflect our memory that in 2015 there was by instructor of the legislature a summer study committee to look at higher education in general and we came back with a recommendation to the legislature which I believe was adopted and that was when you come in higher education to the legislature we really want you to focus on what the appropriation was how you spent, how successful you were and how we measure or know that largely kind of a focus on the return on investment from the appropriation itself and an emphasis on performance measures output performance measures and so my presentation today is attempting to follow that request and hence the one page which I think really illuminate the most important performance output measures that we have finally in my introduction I would just come back to what my conclusion will be so we'll see a context for my remarks we would ask for our general appropriation that's roughly $42 million going forth for the next year as you know that $42 million both pre-1955 when we were a private institution and post-1955 when we were a state of affiliated institution that although the dollars have changed of course over the years the categories have not approximately half in this case 52% of that appropriation we through our discretion set aside for Vermont students scholarships and financial aid the other half about $10 million goes to medical school education we have of course the only medical school in the state and the other quarter about $10 million goes to support the college of agriculture and extension so broken down into half student scholarships ag and medicine and extension so we would ask for the same general fund appropriation in addition I would ask for your consideration for two other items one and this is my fifth year asking this we were successful last year but not previous years if there's an extra surplus we at the university very much would like to urge you to consider additional money for Vermont scholarships and financial aid for low income and lower middle income affordability and financial access to higher education absolutely critical today and we want to put more focus and more attention more priority on Vermont students particularly those coming from less advantaged and third and last we have in the last several years really tried to focus on getting all of our students in internships the national data report that 80% of employers when hiring first time hire right out of internships so it's critical that students actually have an opportunity for a co-op or an internship or similar kind of practical experience while they're in college we in our last survey 67% of our graduating students have said that they've had an internship and importantly 81% of those students said it helped shape courses that they took in the future and also their career path trying to match that interest and passion in an academic field with a career choice so we would ask for an appropriation of $200,000 to really help us support those internships in those internships which don't pay salary or pay very little many of the internships across the country as you may know actually are without any pay well there are many students who can't afford that they need the summer experience to be able to you know pay the rent in the department or board and room so we are right now at the university supplementing by $300,000 internships for students who otherwise don't have the ability because they're not being paid enough we have projected that if we had a pool of $500,000 in additional two that's the request we could satisfy so many more needs and demands of those students particularly in the lower economy general fund continuation extra scholarship financial aid for Vermont lower and lower middle students and the internship supplement if we could so let me turn to the one page handout and move to your requested instructions and earlier conversations about UBM and output performance measures if you look at the top page you'll see that in any given time on average we have over 4,000 Vermonters enrolled at the university and at any given graduation period we have over 1,000 Vermonters receiving degrees now these are bachelors, masters or doctoral degrees we are not counting because we don't give associate degrees and we're not counting our certificates here these are four year or graduate degrees in those numbers if you go to the next slide on the right in the front you'll see that UBM today are very different and our chair knows that because he's one of our distinguished faculty members our UBM as you walk across the campus is very different today 29% of our Vermont students are first generation and dad didn't have a chance to go 31% of our students are Pell eligible or by federal standards come from family and comes to $40,000 to $50,000 that's a very different UBM from an earlier time and you can see coming straight down on our one page 44 and sometimes this will be 45% it basalates back 45% of our Vermont students go to the university tradition free how is that possible because we take 52% of your appropriation about $22, $23,000,000 and we set it aside directly for Vermont students scholarships and financial aid and we supplement that with private alumni and friends donations to make sure that we have the scholarships and the financial aid necessary for the students access and success to UBM 84% of our of our students receive scholarships and financial aid 84% we have about $125,000,000 in our budget set aside again half of your appropriation and balance through private scholarship funds to make sure that those students have the financial ability to go to university that's the need based it's actually a blend generally between need leading and of course merit there's a certain expectation of success that goes with it but almost all of that is a blend our Vermont students do very well at UBM first of all we have a preference for Vermont students in the admissions process a preference in financial aid and scholarship process and you can see that 92% of our Vermont students retain or sometimes called persists what that means after the first year they come back and they go to second and third years why is that percentage so critical it's the number one factor that tells us whether they're going to graduate in four years and graduating in four years is very important from a learning standpoint or retention standpoint as well as holding the cost of higher education for every year you remain after four years it gets more expensive and of course the opportunity costs them not being in the market with a job our students, Vermont students do very well and you'll see that 64% of our Vermont students graduate within four years the point I was making a moment ago with regard to private and public good associated with that and if you compare it to the public institutions on a national basis that is only 35% so we're doing very well relative to that finally you can see the economic development data there I will cover that finally if you turn to the right of the bottom page of the handout the point I want to make is the cost factor what is the cost to go to UVM what is the relationship of any to carrying loans and debt coming out so for an in-state student at UVM the real question here is from a parent or grandparents standpoint or a student what is the net cost of attendance it's not the sticker price the tuition figure it's the net cost of attendance which is the gross cost of room board tuition fees books and stipend that's the gross cost minus the scholarship or the financial aid package that you're getting we sometimes call that the discount factor and then the net is the actual cost that you would pay so for a Vermont student the net is $17,000 roughly $500 and the discount is about $12,000 on average that we discount the figures and that's about a 41% discount for Vermont students now finally I want to mention the current topic that's an important one and that is this debt or loan issue what the data here show is that if you look at you can ask this question two ways look at a graduating class and ask yourself what's the average amount of loan or debt coming out of that class this data point shows that the average debt for that class on average is $18,000 if you ask the second question what is the average amount of debt or loans that those who have loans have in that graduating class you'll see that that's about $27,000 and we are substantially better off than the national figure from public institutions that's a very important part and I think the reason for that is because of the substantial amount of scholarships and financial aid half of your appropriation and a substantial amount of private scholarships helping those students along and finally then I would say that when you look at coming into the university as a student the value proposition the quality of the experience and the cost associated with it I think UVM has a very high value proposition and I think these output measures show that the number of degrees coming out the timing of those degrees the cost associated, the modest debt or loans coming out and finally I would just mention when we think about loans and debt the general rule is and if you're a parent or a grandparent helping somebody through college the rule is if your first year salary is greater than your loan amount it's a great return on investment take that loan out if the first year salary is under your loan amount something went wrong here that's why I hope these data points will be helpful happy to take any questions Phil I have a couple and I'll go to senator parent so first of all thanks very much your tenure has seen a decline in the amount of debt for in-state students and when you first came in you put that out as a goal and I believe you've hit that so the 40% was my first question so just wondering are we still for the committee there used to be a piece of law that said in-state tuition couldn't be more than 40% of out-of-state tuition and the university asked to have that lifted because for complicated reasons in the marketplace it made them uncompetitive online and also for graduate courses so what my question would be are we still is that 40% still maintained or have we eaten into that the goal wasn't as Phil said particularly our out-of-state price point was getting too high and to be competitive which is about 75% of our student body because of the New England and Vermont demographics of fewer Vermont students we wanted to have greater flexibility and the constraint was that 40% percentage that you mentioned so we came to the legislature to eliminate that and my commitment then was that this is not a policy or an excuse to raise Vermont student tuition substantially higher than the normal 2% this is our ability to try to moderate the out-of-state tuition so that we get a balance that we need but at the same time watch the price point and try to moderate it we have done and we're now just third year going into this in terms of setting tuition every year we have been in fact all seven of my years three percent are under we will be under again three percent for both Vermont and out-of-state we've seen the positive goodness in the admissions process and I'm happy to say in my seven years of setting tuition and budgets that we have had the 40 years of the lowest tuition increases in Vermont perfect next question has to do with arts and sciences and if you've been watching there's a tumult on campus over cuts to arts and sciences the administration's rationale is that there's been a rapid decline in enrollment in arts and sciences and so how do you deal with that you're outgoing of course do you sense about what the outlook is for arts and sciences is there a commitment to maintain that or and this will wrap into my last question which concerns the presidential research but if you could just take the arts and sciences and that issue of cuts yes so since 2008 September 2008 when the recession began there was a clear refrain national discussion among parents largely and the fear of loss of wages and jobs and so and it was that if my child was going to college I want to make sure that he or she's majoring in something where there'll be a job when they get out it persisted and it still persisted I think that was a very bad local and so what we saw then is a major shift out of some of the more traditional arts and humanities and liberal arts based courses into those that have been perceived as having great ready jobs with good salaries engineering technology science for example across the country over 40 percent of the humanities lost in moments largely because of that family parent discourse we at the UVM are only down about 16 percent in the liberal arts and particularly here I think Phil your question then goes to the humanities mostly in the arts the rest is doing quite well so the problem we have seen since 08 although it's stabilizing a bit it's not continuing to go down in the moments is that the spending and the cost of maintaining is outpacing the revenue sources to support so the focal point here is on students enrolling in certain majors graduating in those majors we call it student credit hours because the student credit hours dictate the kind of tuition and the actual revenue that goes to support the college at the university we have a very decentralized budget all the money comes in stays in the colleges and departments that would be whether it's tuition or grant money or services or private donations with of course paying one's bills over and above that so it's a decentralized process a decision made budget decisions and personnel decisions are all made in the departments and in the colleges it's not made at Central so you see when you have a decline in student enrollment and student majors and student credit hours where the actual tuition revenue is not keeping up with fixed cost there's a serious problem and that's where we are now so the dean has a five year plan to try to rebalance and correct this he's working very hard and diligently optimistic that we can work through this it's a tough time trying out everywhere particularly with the humanities and the arts and sciences until we can get the value proposition turned around we have to renew again to America that the liberal arts are the foundation for lifelong learning and understanding as I frequently said and written since I've been here they really are about us understanding the meaning and the nature and the purpose of life and that the liberal arts are in extrably linked to the sciences and the technologies and the engineering and the AI and the artificial intelligence world and we apparently now live but you cannot understand or help direct where all the technology is taking us unless you have well grounded well understood well respected liberal arts foundation so I think Bill falls the dean fully understands that and we're trying to work with him but the problem is the student enrollment is that student credit hours have fallen off while we have otherwise fixed costs of faculty and so he has been making some adjustments particularly with enrollments where you have very few students in the class and we have adjunct or part time faculty or faculty who are on contracts as opposed to tenure tenure track the more permanent faculty those have not been touched in the sense of any cuts and he's trying to make those adjustments in an incremental way until we can get everything back through Bill's five year plan so I see we have only about five minutes left I want to give the others a chance I guess I want to just follow on the 40% you said your increases were but I didn't hear the answer and I just missed it our remoderners paying more than 40% of state tuition the tuition increase last year and I'm going to propose for this year and they were consistent with previous two when we were dealing is a 2.7% increase is a 2.8% increase excuse me for Vermont students it keeps it under 40% of the ad state so we're not constrained now by the 40% so we don't watch that relationship but we've been able to hold both of them down and here's a very important point one of our goals has to be to moderate or hold down the cost of higher education for students that's what we're trying to do with this on the other hand and 74% of all of our revenue comes from tuition on the other hand 76% of our costs are salaries and benefits for faculty and staff so you have a constraint on your revenue side and now the value proposition and at the same time fixed costs of faculty and salaries and benefits and how you balance that with a very acute sharp close and every year it changes it will fluctuate the number of students coming in the mix between in-state and out-of-state because of tuition differentials and just to speak to Corey's question the concern was obviously if that governor was taken off and you might lower out of state tuition but raise in-state tuition I was in the house when it happened I had a board against it and I hadn't seen that happen so it doesn't happen so that's why every year we're checking the center of England thank you I wanted to ask you about the unfortunate death of Conard Gage and the implications of school policy now he was underage and severely intoxicated I understand from reading the papers that universities ask fraternities to cease activities at the moment when will what is the university thinking to kind of agreement to work out with the fraternities or other social groups what's your goal well I will share with you what's been reported in the news federal law discussing a great deal until privacy matters but I will report to you what's been reported and I believe it's in this case accurate what's been reported in the news this is a person first year student who was found dead 2.30 or so on a Sunday morning Saturday afternoon intoxicated he was without warm clothes and it was about 4 below 2 the report in the news is that the police believe that he attended one or more fraternity parties that night upon receiving that information from the police and the investigation continues so quite frankly there's not a lot that I know in addition to that but immediately upon hearing that news we suspended all social activities and all of the fraternities on campus pending the investigation to learn more and once that investigation is complete we intend to take some very specific action depending upon the facts but right now all fraternity social activities are suspended on the campus and has this been would you say there's been a history of these kinds of problems and I have friends who work for other universities and underage drinking seems to be kind of a chronic problem across the country and I just wonder how you feel the university has been handling this in your tenure we have been very vigilant obviously this is a very sad case almost 4 years ago I set up a president's commission on alcohol and drug use on campus and this was made up of faculty and students, parents important group of about 40 to 50 people and in that 40 year period of time we have seen the use of alcohol and again most of our student population would be underage dropped more than 30% we have seen some increases in marijuana use on campus and the legislation that passed last year is a challenge for us because we like every other university in every state that has passed marijuana do not permit marijuana use on campus because of federal law that makes it prohibited so we all follow the federal law but the fact that for Monica's legalized it there's a certain normalization and we are seeing the use increase and it's a real challenge for us so on the one hand substantial decrease in alcohol use on the other hand campus use do you want to talk about weed program oh sure we have now in it's third year something called the wellness environment WE we now have between 1200 and 1400 students come in they have their own residence halls we have one new large residence hall devoted to WE students and two or three smaller 25-35 students in those these are students commit to no alcohol no substance abuse usage in the residence hall whatsoever they're engaged in nutrition classes mind and body health development taught by neuroscience at the university and we believe that program has a sheer number of students 1400 undergrad typically now first year and second year because it's a relatively new program is having substantial benefits and it still has room to grow in its own maturity and understanding of development and the students in that class take a neuroscience class and really understand the mind body development let me just share one statistic which may alarm you and really is contextual challenges we face and that is that neuroscience now tells us that the male brain does not fully develop until age 29 or 30 we all knew this particularly a certain a gender knows this very well the woman the young woman's brain about 25 so if you think about that neuroscience evidence we take students in its 17, 18, 19 years old typically they'll graduate 23, 24, 25 right in that spectrum where the brain is still developing not and this I'm talking about executive function and judgment and cognition and so if you introduce outside substance like alcohol or any kind of drugs including marijuana there is an effect on that development we know that and that's our student population here and everywhere else so there are really big challenges the WE program I think is a really wonderful counterbalance to that it's growing in its own maturity and development and sophistication that in yours to the benefit back to the students and a lot of publicity on campus about research health quite frankly unfortunately we don't reach everybody in time thank you very much President Selby so committee Senator Polina and Senator Starr we have to to speak and I as I told you I need to leave they're coming at 3.15 so Senator Starr is not here today oh he's not here why don't we, Ginny can you ask Senator Polina if you and Senator Starr can come tomorrow and that way you can adjourn well we can just adjourn now now thank you very much