Xyall

Xyall t1_izfovs4 wrote

UVM solves half of this problem with the Catamount Commitment fund. Any in-state student who receives any amount of funding from the Federal Pell Grant gets their tuition waived. This is about ~19k of the 33k a year cost from tution + room + board. There are also student support services groups at UVM (not the TRiO program though which they axed aimed at helping out for financial aid/scholarships.

Absolutely not going to take your argument that middle class/lower middle class students get shafted by UVM. It's fairly obvious from any high schooler's UVM financial aid package shows this issue exactly. A good portion of in-state tuition is offset by the high cost of out-of-state students since there are more out of state than in-state students. (Side topic but this data shows exactly how much and there's almost more MA students than VT students)

However, your point of the majority of the students here are high achievers due to coming from well-off families holds true at least from a personal observation standpoint. There's still the issue that UVM has to (partially!) have high tuition due to insufficient funding from the state/feds, but that's another argument I do not know enough about to make a comfortable analysis. Hope whatever I said here helps you argue how fucked the situation of inequality is for Vermont students where our only in state option for accredited STEM degrees is locked away behind a paywall which most of us cannot afford.

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