UVM, State Colleges merger proposed
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By Louis Porter Vermont Press Bureau - Published: January 9, 2009
MONTPELIER – A total tear-down of the state's kindergarten through 12th grade school funding system wasn't the only education bombshell Gov. James Douglas dropped Thursday.
He also proposed consolidating the University of Vermont and the Vermont State Colleges, although final details on the idea will have to wait until a study group completes its work on the idea in the fall.
"This marriage of resources, from infrastructure to administration, programs to athletics, will allow each college the freedom and flexibility to better focus on targeted academics offering the very best to each student," Douglas said.
Limits on spending in the public schools he also proposed Thursday will free up money – about $16 million – that can go to the state's colleges, now among the worst funded by the state of any in the country, Douglas said.
UVM President Daniel Fogel said in the Statehouse Thursday that the university and the state colleges have very different structures and histories, but he did not discount the idea. However, the state must either increase its funding of the university – and its say in the school's future – or let it become more of a private institution.
"If we continue to have dwindling funding going from the lowest of the low to even lower, set us free," he said.
The proposed increase in funding – a little less than a 20 percent bump over the current state support – is just a start if the state wants to increase its say and involvement in the university and perhaps forge a marriage with the state colleges.
"It would be a significant step," he said, but "to my mind it would only be a beginning."
Even talk of the merger, if it is recommended by a study committee Douglas would like to have meet over the coming months, could pose problems for the state colleges, said Rep. Peter Peltz of Woodbury, a trustee of the Vermont State Colleges. That is because the college system is now in the final stages of searching for a new chancellor, Peltz said.
"If everything is brought into limbo it weakens the process," he said. That is because few would be willing to become chancellor of the colleges if the position could be eliminated through consolidation with the university.
"We don't like it," Peltz said.
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