Just Asking - With 80% of University of Vermont Students Coming from Out-of-State, Should It Be a Private School?

At Compass Vermont, you get the full story; you get to decide. and vote.

Every late August, it’s a familiar sight. The parade of cars with license plates from Massachusetts, New Jersey, Connecticut, and New York streams up I-89, loaded down with dorm-room essentials. It’s a sign of the seasons in Vermont, as reliable as the first snowfall. The students are returning to the University of Vermont.

But for years now, a quiet question, asked around kitchen tables and in line at the general store, has grown louder: Whose kids are being welcomed?

Leading the Nation in Out-of-State Students at a Public College

It might not be surprising to learn that Vermont now officially leads the nation in its reliance on out-of-state students at its public colleges. At UVM, the numbers are particularly stark. For the class that entered in the fall of 2023, only about 18 out of every 100 first-year students were from Vermont. The overall undergraduate population sits at just over 20% in-state.

For a state’s flagship, land-grant university, that’s a number that gives pause, especially when the land-grant program was intentionally designed to be executed with a primary and unwavering focus on the people, communities, and economies of each university's home state.

This has led some of their neighbors to ask a tough, almost unthinkable question: If UVM already looks and acts like an elite private college, should it just be made official?

The View from the Business Community: A Pragmatic Pivot

There’s a pragmatic argument to be made, one that might be heard from a Main Street business owner in Burlington or a CPA in Rutland. They look at the state budget and see a simple, hard truth: for decades, Vermont has ranked near the bottom for state funding of higher education. They see the state's own shrinking number of high school graduates.

From this perspective, UVM’s leadership made a calculated, and perhaps necessary, business decision. They built a national brand, a “Public Ivy,” that attracts thousands of students willing to pay a premium. That out-of-state tuition—north of $44,000 a year—is a powerful economic engine. It funds cutting-edge research, pays the salaries of thousands of Vermonters, and allows UVM to offer programs that a smaller, state-focused school could only dream of.

These folks aren’t being callous; they’re being realistic. They argue that this model is what keeps UVM not just solvent, but thriving, while other colleges have struggled. The question they pose is this: If the university is primarily funded by out-of-state families, and the taxpayers can’t or won’t foot the bill, why should there be opposition to it becoming what it needs to be to survive? Maybe, they argue, it’s time to let UVM be a private partner to the state, not a public dependent.

Has the Out-of-State Student Push Worked Financially?

In two words: not really. UVM’s leadership has been candid that the university is under financial stress, even if they stop short of calling it a crisis. The phrase “financial turmoil” is not too far off – UVM is grappling with budget deficits, cost overruns, and the need for emergency measures, despite the high tuition revenue from out-of-state students. In effect, the pivot to 80% out-of-state has not fully stabilized UVM’s finances; it may have been necessary to prevent worse shortfalls, but the university today is still running on razor-thin margins.

The View from the Farmhouse: Protecting A Public Trust

For every one of those voices, there's another that speaks to the very soul of Vermont. This is the view from the family farm, from the teacher in the Northeast Kingdom, from the parent who dreams of their child attending the same university they did.

To them, this isn’t about balance sheets; it’s about a promise. UVM is a land-grant university, a public trust created to serve the sons and daughters of Vermont. The idea of privatizing it feels like selling off a piece of the state's heritage.

This perspective highlights the very real downsides many see. They see the housing crisis in Chittenden County, where a flood of students competes with working families for a scarce and expensive housing stock. They hear the stories of valedictorians from Vermont high schools who get waitlisted at UVM while a spot goes to a student from a wealthy suburb of Boston or New York. This is the "crowd-out" effect, and it leaves a bitter taste.

For these Vermonters, the issue is one of access and fairness. They worry that turning UVM fully private would slam the door shut for good on middle-class Vermont families, creating a permanently stratified system where the best the state has to offer is reserved for those who can afford the sticker price. They ask a different question: What is owed to the next generation of Vermonters, and what is the cost to the state's future if the ideal of a flagship university for everyone is given up?

A Necessary Conversation

This is the double-edged sword facing the state. The economic vibrancy that UVM’s national profile brings is undeniable. But so is the sense that the state’s premier public university is drifting away from its public. Recent efforts by UVM to build more housing and modestly increase in-state enrollment show that this tension is being felt on campus. But is it enough?

This isn’t a simple debate with easy answers. It forces a confrontation with the state's identity and its core values. Is it time for UVM to fully embrace its national identity and go private, or should the state fight to reclaim its public soul? It's a conversation worth having, because the future of the university is, in many ways, the future of Vermont.