Lessons From Vermont’s Demographic Crisis

And yet in Vermont — at the leading edge of a decline in students that is looming in other parts of the Northeast, the Midwest, and parts of the South — no institution can be too comfortable. Southern Vermont was one of four colleges in the state to die in the past year. The others were the College of St. Joseph, Green Mountain College, and, situated just 30 miles east of Bennington, Marlboro College — although the last was more like a closure in the guise of a merger with Boston’s Emerson College. In 2016, Burlington College shuttered after an ill-conceived real-estate purchase. Vermont’s Goddard College, which has reinvented itself time and again, has been put on probation by its accreditor.