Rural New England's demographics crisis and its impact on higher education

In this post, I am going to talk about something that gets touched upon tangentially in one of my upcoming articles, the role of higher education in driving economic development in rural spaces and the impact of the region's demographics crisis on its decline. The Boston Globe recently published an article that talked the decline of higher education in Vermont. The article talks about many things familiar to readers of this space, particularly the decline in the college aged population and the graying of the population in rural spaces more broadly. The message is clear, rural New England is facing a demographics crisis and rural colleges are feeling the brunt of it. Just last week, Green Mountain College in Poultney, Vermont announced that they were closing their doors, in Rutland, the College of St. Joseph is teetering on the brink of closure after facing accreditation issues because of their funding concerns, Vermont Law School in South Royalton revoked tenure for 75% of its faculty, and just last year, the State of Vermont merged two public colleges, Lyndon State College and Johnson State College in order to form the new Northern Vermont University. In order to survive, schools are also having to dramatically alter their missions in order to attract students. In New London, New Hampshire, Colby-Sawyer College, a liberal arts college, has eliminated English majors in order to focus more on "practical" pursuits like nursing. Small schools across New England are suffering.

In many New England college towns, the college is the economic engine. After World War II, college towns like Plymouth, New Hampshire and Castleton, Vermont saw larger than average population increases because of the growth in higher education that happened in those years. The growth of higher education saw once sleepy, perhaps even declining, towns become vibrant economic centers. As colleges grew, they fed economic growth and it wasn't just colleges that employed people either, they also fed growth in the businesses surrounding the college as the increased numbers of faculty, staff, and students were spending money in town.

Colleges are also magnets for talent. In Lamoille County, Vermont, Northern Vermont University contributes mightily to the local economy and the development of local leadership. It also serves to attract talented people. Schools not only attract talented faculty and staff but also alumni who often remain in the area after graduation or who return later in life. In my alma mater, Dartmouth College's home area of the Upper Valley region of New Hampshire and Vermont, the economic footprint of the College is apparent. Not only is the poverty rate in the immediate area around Dartmouth lower than the broader region but alumni are acting as business owners and local political leaders, driving growth, and contributing to the growth of rural New England. If you remove that pipeline, the quality of leadership in rural spaces will also suffer.

This is just the latest in a string of effects of the demographics crisis currently ravaging Northern New England. A year and a half ago, I noted its effect on the state bar in Maine. Just last year, New Hampshire Public Radio aired a series called "Going Local" on their daily program The Exchange. The series profiled the different regions of New Hampshire and the challenges that they face. In almost every region of the state, the lack of young people was mentioned as a challenge. In Vermont, the state is prepared to pay $10,000 for remote workers to move to the state and work there (as I note here however, I have doubts about the ability of Vermont's broadband infrastructure to truly support this). As fewer and fewer young people move to and live in rural New England, we will continue to see adverse effects on the ability of the states to not only grow but to provide a high quality of life to the people who still live there.