by Don Keelan
This column’s title is not meant to parody author Agatha Christie’s (1890-1976) 1939 novel, And Then There Were None. It is intended to describe a problematic trend that has unfolded over the past few years: the closure of ten small Vermont colleges.
A sign of what was to come in subsequent decades took place in Burlington in 2000: Trinity College closed its doors. The small Catholic college was a long-standing landmark in the Queen City, established 75 years earlier. Little attention was paid to the closure. Its closing was the canary in the coal mine.
The latest casualty, 25 years later, is Sterling College, located in Craftsbury, Vermont. According to a report in VTDigger on November 13th: “The college’s decision to end programming was made ‘in the face of persistent financial and enrollment challenges.”’ Sterling, founded in 1958 and with approximately 100 students, was not alone in having to wrap its arms around the issues noted above.
Green Mountain College in Poultney was the oldest of the closed colleges, founded in 1834, and closed in 2019. That same year, in Bennington, the very popular Southern Vermont College, established in 1926, informed its students that their college would be no more. The beautiful campuses of the colleges might soon be turned into tourist accommodation/entertainment venues.
2019 not only witnessed the closure of the above, but in Rutland, another long-standing Catholic institution announced it had to shut its doors. Founded in 1956 and offering a wide range of academic courses to meet its students’ needs, The College of St. Joseph made an unwelcome announcement.
In 2016, in Burlington, the home of two of Vermont’s most prominent institutions of higher education, The University of Vermont and Champlain College, witnessed the closing of a local small college, Burlington College, founded in 1972.
Also, covering both ends of the State, Goddard and Marlboro Colleges closed for good in 2024 and 2020. And, like their sister colleges, they also welcomed young students for over three generations, since 1938 and 1946.
For those who are counting, in 2020 and 2022, the New England Culinary School and Vermont College of Fine Arts closed their Montpelier campus operations.
Could the closings have been avoided if they had been asked the respective college’s student body, parents, faculty, and staff, as well as the local communities where the colleges were located? The colleges, in addition to their academic, sports, cultural, and social contributions, also served as economic drivers in their communities.
It should not be overlooked that the colleges attracted young people to Vermont. Their enrollment was not limited solely to in-state residents, but for many, to out-of-state residents who I can only suspect witnessed Vermont’s beauty for the first time. It is a fair assumption that some of the out-of-state students would have taken up permanent residency in Vermont upon graduation.
The metaphorical canary in the coal mine in connection with the loss of college-age students has application elsewhere. For over a dozen years, we have been informed that a meaningful number of Vermont young adults were afflicted with drug addiction, and approximately 5,000 are in recovery at any one time. The loss, even if temporary, of this sizeable pool of young people has and continues to be an essential factor in a declining workforce.
There was another canary, whose purpose was to monitor the demographics of many of Vermont’s towns and villages; the ever-increasing percentage of their residents was crossing the 60-year-old threshold.
Governor Phil Scott has been, for some time, the clarion: the State is losing its young people. Flood recovery, increasing school taxes, healthcare costs, illegal drug use, and climate change took center stage. Meanwhile, the workforce kept descending.
Other warning signs? A significant drop in public school enrollment, hospitals incurring millions of dollars each year to pay ‘travelers,’ and the hundreds of ‘help wanted’ posters plastered on the windows of Vermont retailers, restaurants, and nonprofit agencies.
What has been missing these past ten years: a connecting of the dots.
The highly ranked, 800-student Bennington College, founded in 1932, has so far weathered many of the crises of its Vermont sister colleges. May it continue and not become #11; otherwise, then there will be none.
The author is a U.S. Marine (retired), CPA, and columnist living in Arlington, VT.