BRATTLEBORO — The School for International Training, a 55-year-old institution with a sprawling rural campus in southern Vermont, has erased a sizeable budget deficit and is reconnecting with the community as it adapts to survive.
SIT is an accredited college that is part of a Vermont-based nonprofit organization called World Learning that has offices in Washington, D.C., and around the world. SIT offers an array of diverse low-residency courses, more than 80 summer and semester study-abroad programs in 40 countries, undergraduate credit courses, professional programs and master’s degrees.
President Sophie Howlett started at SIT in 2017, when the school was $1.7 in debt and, she said, in peril of going under. Under Howlett, 23 positions were cut to save money. In January 2018, in the face of sharply declining enrollments, SIT announced it would end full-time programs at its campus in favor of teaching through its global network of campus sites. It also announced new overseas master’s programs that started this fall.
SIT expected to end 2019 in the black for the first time in four years, Howlett said.
A difficult era for non-traditional education
Some of the conditions that closed small colleges in southern Vermont this year are also causing financial pain at SIT. The College of St. Joseph, Southern Vermont College, and Green Mountain College all closed this year in the face of declining enrollments and budget deficits. Tiny Goddard College, in Plainfield, is on probation with its accreditation agency. And Marlboro, about 15 miles west of SIT, announced in November that it would merge with Emerson College in Boston, closing its campus.
Undergraduate enrollment is declining, the economy is strong (traditionally a time when people choose work over school) and there’s a vigorous public discussion underway about the high costs of obtaining a college degree.
But SIT’s mission and offerings are very different from those of the neighboring liberal arts colleges. And the institution is more diversified because of its partnerships with several colleges and universities around the country. Middlebury College sends 10 to 20 of its students on SIT study abroad programs each year, said Sarah Ray, director of media relations at Middlebury.
Howlett says there’s no chance SIT will close in the foreseeable future. To make sure of that, she’s looking for partnerships in southern Vermont that will help the school make better use of the 200-acre campus and its 130,000 square feet of space. The school can accommodate nearly 240 people in its dorms and has conference space, both used now for only about six months of the year.
SIT now has a full- and part-time staff of nearly 380 worldwide, with 148 of those positions in Vermont. Tuition pays some of its bills but not all of them. In fiscal year 2019, private, non-tuition funding for World Learning included $5.2 million in grants and $1.2 million in individual gifts, said Kate Casa, direction of communications for SIT.
New programs
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As Howlett looks for ways to stay relevant and to keep money coming in, she’s looking at ideas for offering associates or bachelor’s degrees on campus; teaching English to local immigrants; and modernizing the school’s 50- year-old TOEFL master’s degree, or Test of English as a Foreign Language, to take on the competition that has grown over the years.
Meanwhile, SIT is also seeking accreditation to start a low-residency doctoral program – its first doctorate – in international education in 2021.
SIT’s programs are expensive, and right now the school can’t provide meaningful scholarship assistance, which runs counter to Howlett’s hopes to make SIT more sustainable in several areas.
Last year, SIT started a one-year master’s degree program in climate change and global sustainability, with students spending three months in Iceland and then three in Zanzibar. Tuition for that three-semester program is $43,500, with room, board and other expenses adding another $15,000.
A semester abroad through a SIT program called “IHP Climate Change: The politics of land, water and energy justice” includes stays in California, Morocco, Vietnam and Bolivia and costs nearly $30,000, including room and board. The carbon footprint of this climate change-related master’s degree is not lost on Howlett. The school plants trees to try to offset its environmental impact, but doing more in that area is another of her goals.
Howlett sees SIT as a pioneer in international education that must modernize in order to meet the competition.
“We have people in study abroad offices who are our graduates,” she said. “We were so successful that many other places started master’s degrees in international education. Now we have to think, ‘OK, how can we make sure SIT remains at the forefront?’”
A low-residency campus
SIT’s campus is busy about half the year with a wide array of programs. Next May, SIT expects up to 100 scholars to visit for a symposium on critical global issues such as climate change and migration. In June, graduate students taking part in low-residency programs will visit, and SIT will also host students earning certificates in mediation. Staff from around the world will gather in June to talk about undergraduate programs, and then academic directors will meet in August for discussions. Next December, about 50 Thai high school students will arrive for a vacation stay, she said.
Despite this activity, the school has had a low profile in the community for years, say economic development officials and local residents.
“I thought they had gone completely under,” to be honest, said Mark O’Maley, an educator in nearby Wilmington who has written about the future of Vermont’s small alternative colleges. O’Maley moved to Vermont in 2011 and said he used to hear about SIT more back then.
“Then it just sort of disappeared,” he said.
Adam Grinold, the executive director of the Brattleboro Development Credit Corp., said SIT met with his organization when it eliminated jobs.
“They brought us in when they made their recent changes and explained them to us,” said Grinold, who added that the school is still a major local employer.
“It’s part of the culture of Brattleboro,” he added. “A lot of people who came to the region for that school continue to live here.”
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Howlett, who grew up in England, has spent her career working in international education, including 16 years in Budapest. She’s also an academic who just completed a book on Renaissance philosophy, and she worked more recently as an associate vice president of academic affairs at Kean University in New Jersey. Since arriving in Vermont in 2017, she’s jumped into the educational community, with a seat on the executive committee of the Vermont Higher Education Council, which manages certification for Vermont’s colleges and universities.
Apart from a few broad demographic changes ahead for all entities that cater to young people, Howlett sees no comparison between SIT and the southern Vermont colleges that have closed.
“It’s apples and oranges,” she said. “Our focus on international education makes us very different, and also our international scope means we’re not limited to some of the forces that other schools are.”
All college programs face a big reduction in the number of 18-year-olds in a decade or so – the result, Howlett said, of a drop in the birthrate after the recession got rolling in 2008.
“How can we prepare for that?” she said. “That is the big conversation in higher ed. It’s very, very important to keep innovating and moving ahead.”
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2020-01-05 15:00:00Z
https://vtdigger.org/2020/01/05/school-for-international-training-knows-it-must-adapt-to-survive/
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