Vermont's small colleges eye Trinity's demise

The ghost of Trinity College haunts the halls of the remaining halfdozen or so private liberal arts colleges in Vermont with fewer than 750 students. While none of these modest schools is in imminent danger of following Trinity into oblivion, each faces financial challenges that could threaten its existence in the coming years.

Strategic consultants specializing in higher education say it is possible for small liberal arts colleges to survive in 21st century America - even to thrive. But, as Trinity's demise demonstrates, schools with low enrollments and tiny endowments can also go out of business. In fact, about 20 private colleges with fewer than 750 fulltime students have shut their doors during the past decade, according to the United States Department of Education.

In order to remain viable, specialists say little schools without big reputations must develop a clear and unique identity. George Dehne, an expert in the financing of small colleges, further prescribes that they create an educational niche that a critical mass of students will want to occupy. Relentless and effective marketing is also essential, Dehne added in an article appearing last January in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The ongoing economic boom and a propitious demographic spike provide boutique academies with opportunities they must not fail to exploit, planners also say.

If it invested cleverly, a small school will have seen its endowment expand considerably during the past five years, perhaps reaching the dimensions of a fat financial cushion. In addition, colleges are currently able to prospect along a wide seam of potential students. The number of Americans aged 18-22 has been increasing steadily in recent years, helping offset the continuing decline in the percentage of college-bound high school graduates who choose a liberal arts institution.

But one of these favorable trends is certain to come to an end fairly soon. The 18-22-year-old demographic group is projected to peak in 2007, which will make the already-intensive competition for this traditional-age market segment even more ferocious. And should a sharp economic downturn occur, at least some small schools could suddenly find themselves without sufficient paying customers.

The security of Vermont's own diminutive colleges appears dependent on whether they are meeting the general criteria for success cited by Dehne and other experts. Schools that have honed a distinctive image and developed a chic niche are faring better than those that have not managed to make their missions and their programs match the interests of a carefully targeted audience.

Burlington College, for instance, has seen its enrollment increase about 15 percent in each of the past three years, partly because of its rising reputation for cinema studies and for a New Age discipline known as transpersonal psychology. Those flagship programs, along with its location in a hip college town, have attracted the number of students needed to assure institutional self-confidence and stability, says Burlington College President Dan Casey.

With 240 students paying at least a portion of the full $8,000 annual tuition the school charges, "We've probably never been as well positioned financially as we are today," Casey declares.

The 28-year-old college's current endowment of $135,000 "may sound like nothing," Casey adds, "but it's a lot when you compare it to the 10 or so shares of Ben & Jerry's stock that constituted our endowment a decade ago."

One key to stability lies in the college's decision to confine itself to a single administration and classroom building in Burlington's Old North End. Needing to maintain only a small physical plant has enabled the school to avoid the real estate-related expenses that helped sink Trinity, Casey notes.

Burlington College has begun to expand slightly, however. It recently purchased an adjoining five-unit apartment house to accommodate students from out of town who have difficulty finding affordable living quarters in a city with a rental vacancy rate near zero.

Green Mountain College, nestled somewhat obscurely in Poultney, has also found a promising educational formula. GMC is believed to be the only accredited four-year school in the United States offering a bachelor's degree in "adventure recreation." 'that new major grew out of a decision five years ago to refashion Green Mountain as an "environmental liberal arts college."

The college is also making a marketing pitch to home-schoolers who are moving into institutional academics. GMC's Website includes a special invitation to that group of potential applicants. But college spokesman Stephen Diehl says it's too soon to tell whether Green Mountain will become a destination of

choice for the formerly home-schooled.

Established in 1834 as the Troy: Conference Academy, GMC today enrolls 660 students, most of them from out of state. With tuition, room and board set at $2 1,000 a year and with an endowment of around $5 million, Green Mountain is in less precarious condition than many schools of its size. Still, spokesman Diehl is less than ebullient in his description of the school's financial standing, calling it "fairly decent."

Green Mountain is about to get a lot larger, however. Under a recently announced partnership arrangement with Killington, the school will occupy five residence halls and classroom buildings to be constructed by developer Bernie Rome on a 45-acre campus at the ski resort. GMC will develop cooperative education offerings for Killington employees. The school is well suited to that task, Diehl says, given its existing degree program in leisure management.

Proximity to Killington and other ski areas is used as a marketing stratagem by another of the state's private liberal arts colleges with a slim student body. Billing itself as "Vermont's best kept secret," the College of St Joseph's notes that its 90-acre Rutland campus sits close to some of New England's best winter-sports resorts.

Only 270 students attend St Joseph's fulltime, with a roughly equal number enrolled as part-timers. Founded 50 years ago by an order of Catholic nuns, CSJ bears closer resemblances to Trinity than do any of the other small colleges in the state.

But St Joseph's future is "very bright," says spokeswoman Bonnie Simcock. Indeed, its finances seem more sound than Trinity's were as storm clouds began to enshroud the Burlington-based Catholic college. CSJ recently exceeded its annual fund-raising goal by 12 percent, bringing in a total of $154,000, Simcock reports. The school's endowment simultaneously surpassed $1 million.

Unlike Trinity, CSJ has an enrollment consisting almost evenly of men and women. By avoiding the single-gender stricture, the Rutland school faces fewer marketing hurdles than did Trinity.

St. Joseph's indirectly acknowledges, however, that it will have trouble surviving if it does not grow significantly. The college last year opened a $1.4 m Ilion student center as part of a $5 million construction program intended to help it attract twice as many undergraduates as it currently enrolls. Effort to strengthen its academic programs are also under way as CSJ strives to "achieve national recognition as a New England Catholic college."

The school's religious identity is integral to its self-definition, but St. Joseph's has not carved out an academic niche as clearly as have Burlington College and Green Mountain College. CSJ says its stu nts are members of "a caring community," giving it a service-oriented image similar to Trinity's. St Joseph's also seeks to persuade potential applicants that less can be more by emphasizing its small class sizes and "close-knit, family atmosphere."

In contrast to all the other Vermont colleges with low enrollments, Goddard College has a name recognized in other states. What's not clear is whether Goddard's reputation is an asset or a liability.

Since its establishment in 1938. the Plainfield school has been known as a center of educational innovation and experimentation. Goddard is also viewed as a free-spirited place that allows ample room for individual expression. "It's not for everyone," the slogan goes, "and that's the beauty of it!"

But incessant in-fighting on the earnpus has also put Goddard in danger of becoming a parody of itself. Students and faculty seem to be forever at war with the administration, enveloping the school in an aura of constant chaos.

Goddard's finances have suffered as a result. With an endowment of only $350,000, the college has scant cushioning against the shocks that have jarred it in recent years. An enrollment of fewer than 600 students does not generate the income needed to meet expenses and build for the future.

A succession of leaders has attempted to tamp down the turbulence without entirely dispelling Goddard's anarchic charm. But moves to assert top-down authority have led to new rebellions and further instability.

Barbara Mossberg, the school's latest president, may be breaking the cycle, however. Her three-year-long tenure already far surpasses that of any of her five most recent predecessors. Mossberg also managed not only to survive a noconfidence vote against her on the part of faculty and students, she won a five-year contract from the board of trustees.

The call for Mossberg's resignation should be seen as just one more expression of "the traditional political theatrics" for which the school is famous, says Dr Paul Blanc, chairman of Goddard's board of trustees. The college "has had its ups and downs, but has been evolving in a positive direction over the last three

years," adds Blanc, a research physician at the University of California at San Francisco and a 1974 Goddard graduate.

The school's finances may also be entering a period of reduced uncertainty. More than half a million dollars was raised in the second half of last year, most of it from two donors who earmarked the money for badly needed renovations of campus buildings.

Goddard has also formed a partnership with Presidio World College in San Francisco aimed at promoting socially responsible entrepreneurship.

The school's prospects are good, says Blanc. Among its advantages is "an extremely savvy" board and diverse forms of enrollment. With many far-flung students taking part in Goddard's distance-learning program via the Internet, the college is not as dependent on residential undergraduates as are other small liberal arts institutions, Blanc notes.

Thirty or so miles to the north, another unusual but much less well known college is also struggling to achieve financial security. Sterling College, situated on 100 bucolic acres in Craftsbury Common, has the distinction of being the smallest accredited four-year school in the United States.

Fewer than 100 students attend Sterling, where classroom learning is combined with outdoor experiences. "Working Hands, Working Minds" is the school's motto. In addition to doing chores on the campus farm and heading out on wintertime expeditions, students can take courses in the "forgotten arts" such as crafting snowshoes and canoe paddles.

Accredited in 1987, Sterling may not last another decade unless it manages to attract more students to its degree programs. The college has built a $600,000 endowment, but it runs annual deficits in the sixfigure range.

While its setting is extraordinarily beautiful and tranquil, the Sterling campus is also remote. It's a 90-minute-drive to Burlington - in good weather. Not many students, even those interested in environmental education, want to be so far removed from urban diversions and from the company of other young adults.

Sterling wants to double its enrollment, and it has made some encouraging progress toward that goal. But the college also has to retain those students it admits. Each year, however, some drop out, due primarily to the lack of social opportunities.

Southern Vermont College, which traces its legacy to a Catholic institution founded in 1926, has come closer than any other school in the state to sharing Trinity's fate. Enrollment on the nonsectarian Bennington campus plummeted a couple of years ago, prompting layoffs of faculty and staff. Southern Vermont also had to cat into its $1.2 million endowment to meet a budget shortfall.

The New England Association of Schools and Colleges meanwhile issued an assessment that proved a public-relations disaster for the school, with the accrediting agency declaring Southern Vermont to be in "very fragile" condition.

Inadequate planning, shaky finances, and deferred maintenance were all cited in the report as causes of serious concern.

But President Barbara Servis may have begun to reverse the downward drift. The school won a $275,000 foundation grant to assist in strategic planning initiatives intended to boost enrollment well above the 375 level to which it sunk in 1999. Deposits for places in the class being admitted in September are running well ahead of last year's, Sirvis reports.

Southern Vermont may not have yet defined a niche that will ensure its longterm stability, but the college has "done everything they asked us to do," Sirvis says, referring to the New England accrediting association. She has invited its monitors to visit the school anew, with another evaluation scheduled to take place next spring.

"Everything is moving in the right direction," she confidently declares.

Copyright Boutin-McQuiston, Inc. Aug 01, 2000
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