Tiny Vermont work college will stop teaching as enrollment dips

Sterling College, a tiny college in northern Vermont with less than 40 students, plans to wind down its degree programs, liquidate a handful of assets to pay off debt and see if it can re-imagine its mission at a time when small schools are struggling to stay afloat.

The school is one of 10 federally recognized work colleges, a designation that means students are required to work as part of their courses. Along with their academic curriculum, students tend gardens, look after livestock and cook in a farm-to-table kitchen to earn two- and four-year degrees in environmental studies.

But this May, it will join a growing list of small colleges across the country to succumb to declining enrollment and higher costs. Higher education budgets are being pressured as the industry confronts a falling birth rate that started around the Great Financial Crisis and never recovered. About eighteen years later, there are fewer kids available to fill classrooms and pay tuition. Just in Vermont, Sterling is among at least nine other schools to close or merge in the last decade.

“We have a beautiful location and a great mission,” Sterling President Scott Thomas said. “But there are some fundamentals that we can’t do much about.”

Northland College in Wisconsin and Limestone University in South Carolina closed this year, and Trinity Christian College in Illinois also announced plans to shutter at the end of this academic year, citing falling student rosters and rising expenses.

Sterling has faced obstacles accepting large-scale donations that can include expectations for programming that the school couldn’t afford to sustain, but Thomas said demographics are the driving force behind the decision to shut down its academics. Enrollment has fallen by more than 30% since 2013, according to the latest federal data. Thomas said the school has primarily enrolled students who are white, 18- to 24 years-old and from New England, which is a declining demographic. “So we’re really feeling that pinch,” he said.

Sterling’s small scale — among the tiniest in the country — has made those factors especially punishing.

“Every student really matters financially,” Thomas said. “We’ve had much smaller incoming classes since 2020, which has led us to realize that we need to take the safe route to ensure a smooth transition for our students, staff and faculty.”

The college will celebrate its final commencement ceremony in May and is formalizing agreements with other schools to transfer students that aren’t graduating.

But Sterling’s leadership is hoping that May 2026 won’t mark the end of its history. The school will sell a few properties to satisfy its $1.7 million of debt, according to Thomas. A working group will determine how the school’s assets — its 160-acre campus, about 305 acres of conservation land and an endowment with about $1.2 million of largely-restricted assets — can be redeployed to keep serving Sterling’s mission to the environment and its nearby community.

Thomas said the school may find a partner with another university or a foundation that shares its mission. He said he believes in Sterling’s future, but given the problems besieging bespoke higher ed, “it’s going to have to take a different form to be viable.”