The newly created Vermont State University is reporting a 14 percent increase in enrollment this fall, a sharp turnaround after years of declines and a chaotic reorganization.

The Randolph-based VTSU said there are 1,700 new degree-seeking students in the new fall class. That's 200 more than the first-year class last year, with students from 35 states and 11 foreign countries. About 80 percent of the new class is from Vermont, administrators said in a press release on Thursday.



Vermont State University was created in July 2023 by unifying former state colleges in Lyndon, Johnson, Randolph and Castleton. VTSU and Community College of Vermont make up the Vermont State Colleges System. The Randolph campus, known before the merger as Vermont Technical College, includes a satellite for health careers training in Williston.

Maurice Ouimet, vice president for admissions and enrollment services, credited expanded marketing for some of the gains. Previously, each school sent competing representatives to college fairs, he said. VTSU now sends a single rep — freeing up resources for additional recruitment efforts.

VTSU started marketing this year in more far-flung places that people have been leaving lately to move to Vermont, such as the Pacific Northwest and the Chicago area. “We’re looking at migration patterns,” Ouimet said in an interview Thursday. “This is brand-new for us.”

The enrollment boost comes after several turbulent years, not just for VTSU colleges but also for liberal arts schools around the country. Rising tuition costs and student loan debt, along with a regional drop in the number of graduating high school students, have forced several small Vermont colleges to close over the past few years. Others, including the University of Vermont, are working hard to reconfigure their offerings and revenue models to stay afloat.
VTSU reached a crisis point in 2020 and started reworking its own model then. That year, then-chancellor Jeb Spaulding recommended closing three of the system’s four residential campuses — in Lyndon, Johnson and Randolph — to save money. When students, faculty and community members protested, lawmakers flush with COVID-19 money pledged $200 million in temporary assistance to keep the doors open while administrators worked to get spending in line with revenues. They also raised the state college system's annual appropriation from $30 million to about $48 million.
A new president, Parwinder Grewal, was hired a year before the merger. But he sparked outrage when he implemented the trustees’ plans to convert the schools’ library collections to digital materials in order to save money. He resigned a few months later, in April 2023.

Trustees then brought on former human services secretary Mike Smith as interim president. Smith focused on creating online and hybrid learning programs and threw his support behind the system’s popular early college programs for high school learners.

Administrators found savings by reducing employee numbers through attrition and buyouts, consolidating campus services from several campuses to one, adding seats in popular career-oriented programs such as nursing, and devoting more money to academic advising in an effort to help students stay enrolled.
In September 2023, trustees named former Johnson State College administrator David Bergh interim president, and he continues in that role.

VTSU administrators said on Thursday that the enrollment boost shows that measures to improve services and refine academic offerings are paying off.

“There is a positive response to our new program array and advising model, both of which put students and their needs at the center of our work,” vice president of student success Kelley Beckwith said in a press release.

Increasing the schools' online offerings has been central to VTSU's strategy. Ouimet said 15 percent of VTSU’s overall enrollment is online, a significant boost. Many of those students are pursuing degrees in early childhood education, nursing and psychology.

VTSU has also made it easier for students at the Community College of Vermont to transfer their credits to VTSU. Those transfers increased 33 percent this fall over last, system chancellor Beth Mauch said in the release.

Final fall enrollment numbers will be released in October. Administrators said more than 7,000 students will take a credit-bearing VTSU class at some point in the year. Others will take noncredit classes in apprenticeship programs, skilled workforce training or one-day courses, they said.

Ouimet said Thursday that all of the campuses have higher enrollments this semester. “We’ve seen out-of-state new students living in the residence halls increase at each of our major locations, Castleton, Johnson, Randolph, Williston, and Lyndon,” he said.



VTSU has 11 other sites where classes are offered, including Middlebury, Newport, Rutland and St. Albans.