By Madeline Clark
Senior Editor
As St. Michael’s College grapples with declining enrollment and an ever tighter budget, the school has looked to a consortium with its neighboring institutions to help save money. The Green Mountain Higher Education Consortium is a partnership between St. Michael’s College, Champlain College, and Middlebury College that was founded in 2013. Participation in the consortium saved St. Michael’s College over a half-million dollars since it began. According to Registrar David Barrowclough, the partnership with Champlain and Middlebury gives St. Michael’s greater numbers and ability to negotiate.
All three institutions have faced financial challenges at a time when small liberal arts colleges around the nation are struggling. St. Michael’s College has a projected deficit of $1.1 million for the 2018 fiscal year, according to Rob Robinson, the director of financial planning and business services. In an article published in April 2017,
The Middlebury Campus reported, “A flawed policy intended to limit Middlebury College’s yearly tuition increases [was] a major contributor to its current financial troubles.”
Barrowclough said the consortium enables the three schools to bolster their purchasing power on projects like buying paper in bulk, ordering supplies on Amazon Business, document shredding, and some healthcare benefits for faculty and staff.
He likened the consortium’s efforts to a Friendsgiving dinner, and compared the three colleges to friends who have different ideas of what food should be on the table and what the meal should be. “We all know we want to eat, [and] we all know we’ll be well fed. Who’s bringing what to the table is…the discussion right now,” Barrowclough said. “Right now, we’re not happy with the meal.”
He explained that the projects the institutions collaborate on are non-competitive. “The minute it [the conversation] goes to student experience, that’s off the table,” Barrowclough said. This means that any costs associated with student experience are not part of the shared projects. For example, the partners would not be forced to offer the same academic programs. St. Michael’s would not adopt the core curriculum of Middlebury, and Champlain would not have to add Statistics because St. Michael’s is offering a new major in Statistics, according to Barrowclough.
“This is really an opportunity to change the cost curve,” Robinson said, adding that in the five years since SMC joined the consortium, the college has saved $582,000.
Together, the three institutions have saved around $3.2 million, said Corinna Noelke, the executive director of the consortium. The colleges have recognized that the consortium can help sustain them, she added. “They are all conscious that things have changed in higher ed.”Noelke said she had no reservations about the three competing schools working together. “It’s back office,” she said. Noelke provided the example of the institutions pooling purchasing power to buy new software for registration. “It won’t change what classes are offered…it will not change that St. Michael’s is purple and gold, or that the knight is its mascot,” she said.
“It seems like sleeping with the enemy,” Barrowclough said, with a laugh. “Standing together and becoming stronger together just makes sense.”