The Senate Education Committee met on Thursday to discuss marketing our higher education institutions.

Heather Pelham (Commissioner, Department of Tourism and Marketing) talked to the Committee about the Vermont brand. She sees tourism and marketing’s economic impact on Vermont every day:

The State Colleges Transformation Committee launched a student advisory council in September because they feel that student input is essential to how they provide academic programs, student services, advising, athletics, residence life etc. The transformation team will also begin exploring different ways to design new programs, etc.

Wow, it has been a year, hasn't it?

Between major federal costly government initiatives, the delta wave, workforce shortages, historic inflation, and supply chain nightmares I think it is safe to say we are all exhausted. And that was just the last six months. It almost seems like 2020 never ended, it just continued right on through 2021 and will end... who knows?

At the state level we are not immune to the national headwinds, we feel all of those developments here as well. In fact, we have a few of our own to add to the list: our waterways continue to degrade while our attempts to eliminate point-source pollution fail to find meaningful success, we have spent another year debating pension reform after the deficit in our pension obligations grew by $1B in 2020, affordable housing is impossible to find, emergency measures to connect rural Vermonters to broadband internet have ended long ago but the need is still painfully apparent, and our state college system is still in financial crisis and needs transformation into a vibrant educational ecosystem.