Editor’s note: This is the first in a series about higher education funding in Vermont.

In Vermont we pride ourselves on our state’s accolades. We have a 90 percent  high school graduation rate, one of the highest in the nation. We tout one of the loftiest rankings for public high school funding in the U.S. We have highly ranked social services that reflect our commitment to our most vulnerable. The quality of our maple syrup is world-renowned. Burlington has been called one of the most livable cities, and Vermont one of the healthiest states.

We like being the best, and while the validity of the metrics of such intangibles as “livability” and “health” might be questionable, one near-superlative can no longer be ignored: Vermont ranks second-best at being the worst in the nation for higher education funding. We are in the basement, at 49th. Not only that, we’ve been in the basement for over 16 years, an inglorious record all too familiar to outgoing chancellor of the VSC, Tim Donovan.

Donovan, who after a 38 year career in the VSC system announced last spring he would retire, said one of the two biggest challenges facing his successor will be fiscal. “In 1980, for every $1,000 of personal income in the state of Vermont, $7.78 went to fund higher education,” said Donovan, “Today that number out of $1,000 of personal income is $3.31. And here’s the reason I like that statistic: It takes out inflation. It takes out everything. It simply says where our priorities are as a state.”

Being last, for Vermont, defies logic. Being last for 30 years defies belief, and it prompts the question, how did we get here?
According to Senator Anthony Polina, who has been trying to reverse the trend for years, it’s simple: “Over the years the Legislature and the governor have deliberately and consciously cut support for the state colleges. It’s not as if it had to happen,” said Polina. “We have just chosen underfunding, and we’ve gotten so far behind, that it’s now going to take a real commitment, and frankly a fair amount of money, to get back to where we need to be.”

The Legislature last spring agreed where we need to be: the 1980 ratio of funding. In 1980, 51 percent of revenue supporting Vermont state colleges came from state appropriations and 49 percent came from student tuition. Many legislators refer to this target as 50/50, a substantial increase from the current ratio that stands at 18 percent to 82 percent, public vs. private funding.
Last spring, after years of trying to push it through, Polina succeeded in getting his bill, S40, adopted. Senate Bill 40 established a subcommittee of the PreK-16 Council (pronounced: pre-K through 16 Council) to draw up a recovery plan by which the state could restore the 1980 ratio of state funding.

While the committee was formed with that in mind, realities have significantly altered expectations, with the subcommittee finally advancing a much more modest proposal to the Legislature: increase higher education funding by 1 percent over a period of years – a far cry from utopian vision of a 50/50 restoration.

Every year in January, the Legislature approves a budget. This is when our state decides who gets what, and every January for 30 years our state has decided not to make a serious cash commitment to higher education funding. The most often-cited reason is that there just isn’t enough revenue in the general fund, although in the last 30 years there have been many times when the coffers were flush, yet the Legislature still chose to underfund our state colleges.

As we head into another budget battle in Montpelier, the storyline hasn’t changed, and senators and legislators are talking about an approximately $93 million shortfall in expected tax revenues for this year.

“For some of us it’s been pretty clear that (higher ed. funding) has been a challenge for some time,” said Speaker of the House Shap Smith. “I really became acutely aware of it in 2007, 2008, at the same time that all of a sudden we were facing incredible financial pressures because of the fiscal crisis, and there wasn’t anything we could do about it.”

Many programs might wind up on the chopping block this year as legislators look to close the gaping hole in the budget, and the word from legislators is that this won’t be the year to try to get new money for new projects.

Given the fiscal pressures facing the state, “Higher ed. funding levels won’t change,” said Rich Westman, a JSC graduate and Republican senator from Lamoille County. Westman said he’s aware of the negative effects of underfunding our state schools and is cognizant of the positive economic impact a fully funded Johnson State College (JSC) could have on his county, but he says the economic hurdles are likely to be too great this year.

Meanwhile, some foresee a possible cost of inaction that has many who are invested in the Vermont State College system worried. Senator Don Collins, a Democrat from Franklin who sits on the PreK-16 Council, said the group has entertained discussions of possibly closing one of the VSC schools. The talk didn’t progress very far, but considering that Vermont Technical College (VTC) just eliminated 23 positions including 8 full-time faculty teaching positions, the fact that it happened at all provides ample reason for concern, however unlikely a closure would be .

“The state colleges have played an important role in the state of Vermont…and I just think we have to be real sensitive to the fact that these colleges…are great economic drivers for the communities where they are,” said Collins, a JSC graduate. “I lived in Johnson for a number of years, and the college is a contributor to the economy there, and I would hope the legislators would see that if we don’t fund more financial aid, enrollments will continue to drop and colleges will be closed, and that will have a real strong negative impact on local areas like Lamoille County and up in Caledonia County in particular [if Lyndon were to close].”

Another option is to find higher ed. money by looking for it in other programs budgeted from the general fund, though many legislators feel there simply isn’t any fat left to trim from other programs.

While most legislators sing that by now all-too-familiar tune, not all agree. Senator Richard McCormack, a Democrat from Windsor County who is the chair of the Senate Committee on Education and attended Castleton State from 1977-78, said he feels the money can be found and that he would support a percentage increase to the higher education fund.  “A lot of people say there is no more fat. It’s just muscle tissue and bone, now,” said McCormack. “My experience is that there’s always additional savings.”

Scavenging money from outside the general fund, however, seems unlikely. “I have had legislators tell me over the years that it’s really hard to cut social safety net programs because there’s no other place for the money to come from,” said Donovan, “but I’ve had legislators tell me for decades, ‘But, you have another source of revenue. You can raise tuition’… and when you do that year after year after year, that’s how we get to where we are now.”

And where is that? It’s in the basement, 49 out of 50 in a country ranked 12th in the world for college completion rates. Donovan wants to see Higher Education properly funded and feels it could be budgeted. “If we as a state made a commitment to return to $7.78 out of every $1,000 of personal income…over the course of 10 years by raising it 50 cents a year…by 2024 we would be back to $7.78. You would double the appropriation to higher education.” It would more than double it, added Donovan.

Climbing out of the basement, even with the resolve of the Legislature and public aligned, won’t be easy. Representative Linda Martin, a Democrat who represents Johnson in the House of Representatives and attended CCV, summed up the nature of that climb succinctly. “The desire’s there, but the money’s not,” said Martin.