Facing declining enrollment and financial headwinds, Burlington’s Champlain College reshapes its academic programs

Aidan Pearl, 22, graduated in May from Champlain College with an undergraduate degree in law. He’ll be one of the last cohorts of students to graduate from the school through that program.

In June last year, the private, non-profit school began phasing out five majors — law, broadcast media production, data analytics, finance and accounting — announcing then that students would no longer be admitted for those majors beginning this upcoming fall, according to Nicole Junas, the chief executive of Junapr, a public relations firm working with Champlain College.

The move is part of a broader strategy by the Burlington-based school to design a new “career-focused” curriculum for the fall of 2026 “that is focused on and driven by employer needs and student interests,” according to a fact sheet provided to VTDigger by the college.

That effort includes redesigning the school’s 27 majors and streamlining academic offerings by merging or phasing out programs with lower enrollment numbers, according to Alex Hernandez, the college’s president.

The accounting program, for instance, saw its enrollment decline from 60 students in 2015 to 20 in February 2024, according to documents from the school’s Academic Affairs Committee. The law program, similarly, had little student interest, Hernandez said, and had only three students apply in the fall of 2023, while the data analytics program had only two applications.

“Our majors evolve over time to meet the needs of Vermont, to meet the needs of our students,” Hernandez said in an interview. “And so we’re really looking at, where are there career opportunities?”

The adjustments to curriculum, the school wrote in a fact sheet, “are not about reducing academic opportunities,” but are “about modernizing how Champlain delivers education in ways that preserve the college’s distinctive strengths while creating more room for student agency, innovation, and adaptability.”

But students who have either recently graduated, or who remain in programs being phased out, fear for the school’s future, and said the administration is playing down their impact.

As part of the college’s restructuring last year, a “very small number” of faculty members were eliminated, said Junas, the public relations executive. The college could not comment beyond that, she said, citing “individual personnel matters.” She noted though that “no widespread layoffs occurred as a result of the program phase-outs.”

Still, that has caused some consternation among the students still enrolled in the college’s accounting program and others being eliminated. (Students still enrolled in those programs will graduate with a degree).

Pearl, who served as the head of the college’s student government before graduating, estimated that 12 people were laid off, while 20 additional staff members and faculty left on their own.

“My worry is, whatever the direction is, whatever the efficacy of that plan is, we are losing people along the way that would execute that plan,” Pearl said in an interview. “I truthfully think the direction we’re going in is going to lead to the doors closing.”

‘Social capital risk’

The changes at Champlain College come as small, private colleges and universities across the country are facing tremendous financial pressures. Responding to declining enrollment and increased operating costs post-Covid, many schools have been forced to cut programs and staff, or close altogether.

Champlain College is no different. Enrollment numbers reported at the start of the school’s fall semesters have steadily declined since 2016. That year, the school enrolled 4,778 graduate and undergraduate students at the beginning of its fall semester, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics.

By fall 2023, enrollment had dropped to 3,328 students, down more than 30% from 2016. This past school year, the school saw this trend continue, with roughly 3,200 undergrad and grad students enrolled in the fall of 2024, according to the college’s fact book for the 2024-25 school year.

The college’s finances, meanwhile, are facing headwinds. The school ran budget deficits in 2023, 2021 and 2019, according to publicly available tax forms filed by the non-profit.

A more than $60 million bond the school issued in 2016 to refinance its debt — and to finance the construction of the Eagles Landing student housing project on Burlington’s St. Paul Street — has weighed on the college’s cash flow.

A federal audit of the school’s finances in 2023, conducted because the school was a recipient of federal grant money, found the college was “not in compliance” with a minimum debt service coverage ratio — meant to measure whether an organization has enough cash flow to pay its debts.

The college corrected course in 2024 after bringing on a consultant, a federal audit conducted in 2024 noted. But earlier this year in May, the college’s bond rating was lowered, and its outlook downgraded to “negative” by S&P Global Ratings, which cited “the college’s history of significant enrollment declines” in its analysis.

The ratings agency noted in their report there was a “social capital risk, as fewer graduating high school students expected in the region” may continue to put pressure on the college’s enrollment expectations. 

Their negative outlook “reflects our expectation that as both enrollment and operations remain pressured,” the school will have to draw from its endowment or reserve funds, “further worsening financial resource ratios” compared to the college’s peers, the ratings agency wrote.

Hernandez, the college’s president, remains optimistic, and said the school has been “really strategic and worked really hard to improve our finances over the last couple of years.”

While 990 tax filings are not yet available for 2024, Hernandez said the college “made an important step forward in 2024” to improve the school’s financial health.

“We expect to do that again in 2025,” he said.

‘Growing our community’

The school’s recent reorganization is meant to lean in on the school’s strengths, Hernandez said. While several programs are being phased out, Hernandez said schools are being “redesigned” to offer a more fluid education for students.

The college now offers 27 different majors for its on-campus students, Junas said, while more than 130 degree and certificate programs are available through both the school’s in-person curriculum and through Champlain College Online, which Hernandez noted has seen growing enrollment in recent years.

Hernandez said there was a “natural evolution” of adding, redesigning or stopping programs.

Hernandez, who teaches entrepreneurship in the college’s Robert P. Stiller School of Business, noted that while an accounting program is no longer available, students are still offered accounting classes through the school’s new Business Administration major.

“We’re moving towards a more flexible approach to our business programs, where you can study things like entrepreneurship, finance, accounting underneath a broad business umbrella,” Hernandez said. “It’s just a different strategy.”

The college has added programs in years past, including an animation and sonic arts program, Hernandez said. The school’s Game Design major has been ranked by The Princeton Review as one of the top ten Game Design programs in the country, alongside institutions like the University of Southern California and New York University.

Champlain College was also one of the first in the country to offer an undergraduate cybersecurity major, Hernandez said, which has since been nationally designated by the National Center of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity and by the National Security Agency, according to the school’s website.

“Part of growing our community, growing our enrollment on the on-campus side, is really driven by this new curriculum and the vision for what experiential, hands-on, flexible learning looks like in this world of AI, in this world where students need experience when they go out into the job market,” he said.

He added that, “more than anything, we’re just trying to stay focused on, how does higher education, how can Champlain College, evolve to meet the moment that we’re in knowing that there’s a lot of challenges right now for the sector.”

But amid these trends, students and faculty members who spoke to VTDigger say they are uncertain of the college’s strategy.

With fewer professors and academics on staff, some fear it will lead to a worsening educational quality, which could further compound declines in enrollment.

One student, still in the college’s business school who requested anonymity to speak candidly out of fear of retaliation, said the college has relied increasingly on adjunct professors since faculty from the school were let go. The quality of teaching they’ve brought in, the student said, “has not been up to the standard it should be.”

“It’s not prepping people for what they need,” they said. “They have said that they are going to give us the same quality of education that we’ve had in the past — which I think that most people would agree that it hasn’t been.”

Pearl said the changes were not effectively communicated to the broader community, and the cuts to programs in 2024 led to worries among the student body.

“At that time, students were finding out about the layoffs and the departures, because those faculty and staff were messaging students and saying, ‘Hey, I’m leaving,’” he said. “The correspondence we got was very much not aligned with the severity of what was going on. Most students didn’t learn of the full extent of the layoffs until the fall.”

Hernandez and Junas pushed back on that criticism. A fact sheet provided to VTDigger stated the college “communicated its academic program adjustments clearly and directly to the campus community in June 2024, with specific outreach to students enrolled in affected majors.”

‘Climate of uncertainty’

Faculty members also expressed concern the college was not fully committed to its existing programs and faculty members.

According to records and minutes of the school’s Academic Affairs Committee obtained by VTDigger, some in the college were hesitant to eliminate a program like accounting. While the committee ultimately voted to approve the discontinuance, concerns remained.

“The thought of having a named business school without offering an accounting major may have negative effects on the school overall,” the committee wrote. “Given the evidence, and the college’s need to boost enrollment, this seems like a major that the college may want to invest in rather than cut.

“However, given the curricular transition that the college is currently experiencing, that opportunity may not fit the direction the college has chosen to pursue,” the committee wrote. “In such a climate of uncertainty, this was a very difficult decision for this committee.”

One former faculty member, who requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation, said it was disconcerting to see “programs that had been there for a while, people who had been there for a while, sort of just being cast aside.”

Pearl said he agreed broadly the school should tighten its belts amid declining enrollment. “I will not defend that the law program should have stayed. The law program was declining,” he said.

But he worried programs with high career success rates, like accounting, were being eliminated. 

“We let good programs die that truthfully, had we put more investment into them, I think would have done the college a lot of good,” he said.

Hernandez disagreed, telling VTDigger that 90% of students who leave Champlain College “are employed or have a successful career outcome within six months of graduation,” while over 80% of students take jobs in the fields they studied.

But “if we don’t have enough students for a program, it’s challenging to run a program,” he said.

Hernandez is confident in the college’s ability to transform and “to really meet the moment that we’re in right now.”

“It’s no secret that higher education as a sector is experiencing a lot of different challenges,” he said. “We’ve been really intentional and strategic around that — we’re designing a new curriculum right now that is intended to be even more experiential, even more flexible.”

But faculty members worry that with fewer programs, declines in enrollment may only continue.

“You have to bring in a certain critical mass of students,” said another former faculty member who requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation. “And if those students aren’t there to bring in, you start running in the red.”