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Vermont college aims to keep tuition low with no gym, meal plan, or sports teams
A group of innovators is launching a new higher education model for engineering with the Greenway Institute in Vermont, as many Americans believe the cost of college is becoming unaffordable.
Set to launch in Montpelier, Vermont in the fall of 2027, the institute’s goal is to give engineering students a well-rounded education with limited costs. This includes leaving college with hands-on experience in their chosen field and no student loan debt.
Hannah Root, the institute’s chief of staff, explained more about Greenway’s approach in a recent interview with The College Fix.
“The model combines research-backed, proven practices in education to meet a need that the founders saw when they looked at the higher ed landscape: a cost-effective education that is connected to the real world and aligned with what young people and employers want and need,” Root said.
The institute’s founders are Mark Somerville, former provost of Olin College of Engineering, along with entrepreneur Troy McBride and former Vermont Secretary of Education Rebecca Holcombe, according to a fact sheet.
The institute is located on the former Vermont College of Fine Arts campus, which closed in 2022. The funding comes, in part, from two National Science Foundation grants.
Already, Root said the college has “heard from hundreds of prospective students, parents, and school counselors across the country.”
She told The Fix that yearly tuition will cost less than $25,000.
According to the institute’s website, the founders plan to keep the price of tuition low by reducing overhead costs. An NPR article in September listed some of these plans: no gym, no meal plan, and no sports teams.
Additionally, Root said students will only live on campus and attend classes for their first two years. The remaining two years will be spent in the workforce where students will earn both college credit and hands-on experience in their field.
Greenway’s website explains why the institute is prioritizing experience-based education: “Research is clear on how people learn engineering best: by practicing it, not by attending a lecture on it. Instead of 20% of students leaving engineering in their first year, more young people will see themselves as engineers through hands-on, project-based education.”
The institute is a participant in a larger initiative to reform higher education called the Future Universities Alliance. Formed in January, the alliance is focused on “reimagining liberal education, strengthening interdisciplinary learning, expanding access, and developing new institutional models.”
Noah Pickus, a professor at Duke University and the founder of the alliance, told The Fix about why Greenway was chosen to be part of the alliance’s first cohort.
“Greenway is important because it’s redesigning several parts of the university at once,” Pickus said. “It places project-based learning at the center of the student experience, integrates work more deeply into the educational pathway, and experiments with an economic model intended to reduce debt and expand opportunity.”
The alliance and Greenway aim to address Americans’ growing frustration with the cost of college. A survey published in July by Gallup and the Lumina Foundation found that only 12% of Americans believe a four-year degree is affordable.
Preston Cooper, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute specializing in higher education, spoke with The Fix in a recent phone interview about how college affordability can affect students and families.
“Families often have to save for decades in order to afford a college education, sometimes putting a lot of strain on family budgets,” Cooper said. “Sometimes it means that students have to take out loans in order to get a college education, and that can also lead to problems down the road when students have trouble repaying their loans.”
He believes that while traditional models of higher education will not be completely replaced anytime soon, newer models could draw in students and put pressure on existing institutions.
“New models that come in and offer an education for a much lower price point than what other colleges are offering could potentially do very well and draw many students away from the existing incumbent institutions,” Cooper said.
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