WAMC's Sam Dingman spoke with Alison Novak, staff writer for Seven Days Vermont, about how the Community College of Vermont is thriving when many four-year colleges and universities are not. The following is a transcript of their conversation.
Sam Dingman: With enrollment declining at some of Vermont's four-year universities, the state's premier community college, CCV, or Community College of Vermont, is thriving. The school's story is a microcosm of broader trends in higher education: who it's available to, who seeks it out, and how it prepares students for a changing labor market.
Alison Novak is an education reporter at Seven Days Vermont who recently looked at the unique past, present, and future of the Community College of Vermont. And Alison joins us now. Allison, good afternoon.
Alison Novak: Thanks for having me.
Sam Dingman: So, Alison, I was mentioning those enrollment numbers. Can you put that into context for us? How many students attend CCV, and how do enrollment trends there compare to other colleges and universities in the state?
Alison Novak: Sure. For the last decades, CCV or the Community College of Vermont has had about 10,000 students annually, and enrollment has held pretty steady for the past decade. So, when you compare that to four-year colleges, you know across the country, but also particularly in Vermont, where we've seen a number of four-year colleges actually close or see a pretty steep decline in enrollment, CCV is holding pretty steady. And then also it's pretty interesting because during COVID, community colleges nationally saw a big hit in enrollment, but CCV didn't. Enrollment held steady during COVID, and so part of what I was trying to do in the article I wrote for Seven Days was try to figure out, you know, what is the key to CCV’s success. And you know, one of the things that emerged is they've really been able to capitalize on partnerships and create new programs and find new funding to make education, more accessible and affordable to a wider swath of Vermonters.
Sam Dingman: Yes, and we're going to talk about some of that because it is really remarkable, as you say, the success story that CCV represents against this backdrop of other more dire enrollment circumstances. Am I correct that CCV's enrollment is projected to actually rise by something like 9%?
Alison Novak: Yeah. So, they had initial projections for this fall semester that showed that it would be a 9% increase over last fall. So yes, it's definitely holding steady, and in some cases, this year looks like it's actually increasing.
Sam Dingman: Well, let's talk about some of those factors to which we might attribute the success that they're having. One of the unique aspects of CCV, and you tell me if this is part of their secret sauce, is the type of students who enroll there, which is a very wide range of folks, right?
Alison Novak: Yeah. So, when CCV started in 1970, it served primarily adult women, and it continues to serve primarily adult learners. The average age is 26 of students enrolled, and so I think it’s ability to really cast a wide net and attract a wide range of ages has kind of insulated it a bit from some of the issues colleges that are you know drawing from a pool of 18 to 22 year-olds are facing, where they have kind of a very limited pool from which they're drawing, and so CCV has been able to grow because it is still serving a very wide range of ages.
Sam Dingman:
Well, let's, by way of a case study, in terms of what you were just describing, talk about one of the students who you profiled in the course of your reporting. There's a bunch of them in your piece. One of them is a woman named Theresa Mann, who is, if I'm not mistaken, a 57-year-old undergraduate student at CCV. Tell us a little bit about Theresa.
Alison Novak: Yeah, so I met Theresa when I was visiting CCV this summer, and I was able to attend a couple of the summer semester courses. And she has a pretty interesting story. So she had graduated from high school in Connecticut, many decades ago, and at that point, she really didn't see college as a viable option for her. You know, it felt financially out of reach. It just didn't feel like something she could do. And so she moved to Vermont and she established a pretty successful residential painting business, which she ran for 25 years. But that work, I think, started to get pretty physically demanding for her as she got older, and she really, you know, the way she described it, she really kind of got the itch to go back to school and learn new skills. And so she enrolled in 2024 in classes at CCV, and thanks to a scholarship program called the 802 Opportunity Grant, she was able to attend completely free. So this is a program that was established in 2021. So right after the pandemic, and it basically allows anyone in Vermont making under $100,000 a year to attend Community College of Vermont for free. I think her story reflects the way that CCV really meets people where they're at, and also helps them achieve things that they really never thought were possible.
Sam Dingman: So often higher education is framed as the key that opens the door to a prosperous adulthood. But the framing of CCV, at least the impression I got from your story, is that they view education as almost sort of like a multi-tool, like a Swiss Army knife, that you can apply to whatever version of adulthood you choose. Another story in your piece that makes me think about this element of things is the story of Erica Scott. She was able to leverage her CCV education in a very interesting way.
Alison Novak: Yeah, so I had learned from the president of CCV, Joyce Judy, who, incidentally, has been president for 18 years and has worked at the college for more than 40. So you know, really strong and steady leadership there. So I had learned from her about Erica Scott, who was graduating this spring from CCV after trying college a couple times and not being successful, turns out that she is the daughter of our governor, Gov. Phil Scott, and so that was also an interesting element to the story. But yeah, she had worked at an organization called Lamoille County Home, Health and Hospice, and was told by her boss that you know it's going to be hard to advance in this job if you don't have a degree, and so that spurred her to go back to CCV. I believe she took most, if not all, of her classes online, which is another thing that kind of distinguishes CCV. They do offer a lot of online classes, and she graduated this year with her degree from CCV and became executive director of the organization that she had worked for.
Sam Dingman: One of my other favorite illustrations from the piece was this thing called the Library of Things.
Alison Novak: So when I was visiting this summer, I stumbled upon this student resource center, which essentially is a room where students can go. They can pick up free snacks and meals, there's a lot of flyers that offer free services and support groups and things like that. But they also have this locker, which is a Library of Things. So students can borrow anything from an air fryer to jumper cables to a kitchen mixer, so it's a way that they're trying to kind of support students outside of the classroom. I found that also as a really kind of powerful way that CCV supports its students by really understanding that in order for them to learn, we need to provide for their basic needs.
Sam Dingman: It seems like such a perfect metaphor for the philosophical orientation of this place, where it seems like there's this implicit understanding that this place is not, you know, a place where you go to, you move your life here for a period of time, the way we think of more traditional colleges and universities. It's more a place that fits into the reality that you have a life outside these walls, that involves things like mixers and jumper cables and whatever else.
Alison Novak: Yeah, and I think you know students are really juggling multiple things. You know, often they're working jobs, they are caring for people in their household and taking classes. And I think that might also be something that distinguishes the student body there from students at a more traditional four-year college where you're often on campus, and the only thing you really have to worry about is going to class and your social life, whereas these students at CCV are often really juggling multiple things and you know need a little extra help sometimes.
Sam Dingman: Well, as the last question for you Alison, as somebody who focuses on education in your reporting, I wonder what you make of this story in the context of other more harrowing stories about the future of education and the ability of students to fund their education and direct it towards a viable career. I mean, do you think we're likely to see more stories like CCV in the future, or ought other institutions to take a page out of CCV's books?
Alison Novak: I mean, I think so. I really came away from this story thinking about, you know, what other colleges could learn from CCV, and you know, as we're experiencing this demographic cliff and lower birth rates, fewer young people, it feels like institutions of higher education have to start thinking about how to cast a wider net and really reach a wider variety of students, and that's something that CCV has been doing for its 50 plus year existence. So I think four year colleges have their place, and I don't think CCV replaces that, but I do think there's a lot to learn from an institution like the Community College of Vermont.
Sam Dingman: Alison Novak, education reporter at Seven Days Vermont, joining us this afternoon. Allison, thank you for this conversation.
Alison Novak: Yeah, it was fun. Thanks so much for having me.
This transcript was generated by artificial intelligence and then edited and reviewed for accuracy by WAMC staff.
