Sterling College, a tiny, environmentally focused liberal arts school in the Northeast Kingdom, will close its doors as a degree-granting institution after 65 years. The school announced the board of trustees’ decision on its website this week, citing “persistent financial and enrollment challenges.”
Sterling is the ninth private college to effectively close up shop in Vermont in the last decade.
The college brought on a new president, Scott Thomas, just two years ago, with the mandate to buck the enrollment and demographic trends that are rapidly shuttering small colleges across the Northeast. But in an interview Thursday, Thomas said the school didn’t have the runway it needed.
The school dealt with flooding, debt, unanticipated infrastructure costs and uncertainty about federal aid given the national landscape, he said — all at a time when enrollment continued to decline.
Sterling has always been niche and small by design. Its maximum capacity is 125 students, and it focuses solely on environmental studies and sustainable agriculture. But there were fewer than 50 students enrolled this year, Thomas said.
“We had embarked on a program diversification strategy where we could actually reach other markets of learners that required some upgrades to campus. It required some outside investment,” he said. “Those infusions of resources that could carry us to that vision were simply just not fast enough to meet the demands of the timeline.”
Students who were on track to graduate this year will be able to do so as normal, according to the college, and a commencement ceremony is scheduled for May.
Sterling is finalizing partnerships with other institutions for students who will need to transfer elsewhere to complete their degrees. The school has already reached agreements with College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, Community College of Vermont, and Champlain College in Burlington, and is awaiting the final greenlight from its accreditor. Talks are underway with other schools, Thomas said.
Fewer than 30 people work full-time for Sterling, Thomas said, and some will go part-time right away. Teach-out partners could potentially hire some Sterling faculty, although Thomas emphasized that he could make no promises.
It’s unknown at this point what will happen to the school’s substantial land holdings. Sterling’s main campus is on a 160-acre parcel in Craftsbury Common, and it also owns some 300 acres of conservation land in Wolcott’s Bear Swamp. The school said on its website that trustees would decide at a later date what to do with assets, but that existing community access would remain in place for the time being.
