Johnson State College is No. 61 on a list of most affordable small colleges. Courtesy photo
A recent listing of the 100 most affordable small colleges in the country includes three of the Vermont State College system’s 4-year institutions: Castleton, Johnson and Lyndon.
The list was published last month by a website called Best Value Schools.
The website whittled down the top 100 from 700 eligible schools overall. Best Value excludes community colleges, specialized and graduate schools, and considers only schools with fewer than 4,000 students.
Lyndon State College came in 55th on the list, which ranked 100 as the costliest. The net cost annually for students at Lyndon is $13,469.
Elizabeth City State University in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, ranked first at $1,993 a year; Young Harris College in Young Harris, Georgia, was 100th at $15,771.
Johnson State came in at 61st place on the list with a net cost of attendance of $13,775.
Castleton State was 85th with a net cost of $15,161.
The website calculated the net price of attendance – the published tuition minus government aid, scholarships and institutional grants – to come up with the average out-of-pocket costs students and their families actually pay for college.
They also factored in innovative academic offerings, small class sizes, and value for the educational investment, the website said.
Jeb Spaulding, chancellor of the Vermont State Colleges, said this week that that having three of the VSC colleges included in the list of the 100 most affordable colleges is good news.
“We were glad to have been included,” Spaulding said.
“People need to look further than the sticker price of tuition or fees, of whatever college or university they are thinking of going to.”
The Vermont State Colleges are committed to helping students who may struggle with getting into college stay in school and complete their degrees, he said.
“Approximately 50 percent of our students are the first in their families to go to college,” said Spaulding. “We are the access point for Vermonters who otherwise would very likely not go onto college.”
About 80 percent of students attending Vermont State Colleges receive financial aid, including Vermont Student Assistance Corp. grants and loans, federal Pell grants, institutional grants and others.
“Our colleges are working harder to increase their ability to offer scholarship assistance beyond the state and federal grants,” Spaulding said.
Another advantage is small class size. The average Vermont State College class size has 15 students, he said.
“The odds that you’re going to get to know your professor are very high,” Spaulding said.
Enrollment pinch
Colleges in Vermont are feeling the same pinch that public K-12 schools are: fewer students are coming through the doors. That’s “a significant challenge,” Spaulding said.
The state has a high graduation rate for high-school students, but some 40 percent of those students do not move on to higher education, a needle the state colleges want to move, Spaulding said.
“The pool of high school seniors is getting smaller and it’s been getting smaller for the last several years,” said Spaulding, and it’s projected to shrink further. “Enrollment has been going down at most of our colleges for the last several years.” As a result, the VSC system has had to “right-size.”
“There are likely to be some personnel reductions,” Spaulding said. “I can’t say there won’t be in the future,” but people should not read that as instability within the system. “It is the colleges and universities that don’t have the courage or the ability to address their cost structure that are going the way of the dinosaurs,” he said
The VSC system, as well as the University of Vermont, were all level-funded this year.
Vermont is near the bottom in the nation for state aid to higher education. State funding makes up between 15 percent and 17 percent of the colleges’ revenue, Spaulding said.
Spaulding hopes the spotlight on the three state colleges’ affordability will cause more Vermont students and their families to consider staying closer to home for college.
The average debt load for a bachelor’s degree for a student coming out of the Vermont State College system is about $30,000; for an associate’s degree at Community College of Vermont, about $15,000; and about $20,000 for an associate’s degree student at Vermont Technical College.
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