VTSU Nixes Dental Therapy After Nine Years Of Planning

Lawmakers wished it, but nine years and millions of dollars spent could not create a new academic program to ease the state’s dentist shortage. The Vermont State Colleges system, which oversees Vermont State University, announced Monday that it was scrapping long-floundering plans to create a dental therapy degree.

Chancellor Elizabeth Mauch cited high costs as the death knell for the project. Vermont State University couldn’t offer competitive wages to prospective administrators and faculty, while small class-size requirements would further prevent the offering from being cost effective.

In 2016, Vermont became one of the first states to create a new category of licensed dentistry provider with a level of training that splits the difference between a full-fledged dentist and a dental hygienist. Almost every county in Vermont needs more options for oral health care, and state leaders reasoned that “dental therapists” could help.

Lawmakers tasked what was then Vermont Technical College — now Vermont State University — with creating a degree program in the nascent field. The college is the only one in Vermont that offers degrees in the oral health sciences.

Yet, by 2023, little progress was evident. Vermont Auditor Doug Hoffer issued a report that criticized college leaders for not doing more to advance the project, despite $2.6 million in federal, state and private funds that had already been spent on it.

Mauch, who took over as chancellor last year, put together an internal “feasibility assessment” that concluded the program was “not sustainable under the present model.”

“It is unfortunately no longer prudent to dedicate scarce institutional and public resources to a model that is not financially or operationally viable,” Mauch wrote in a letter to deputy auditor Tim Ashe.

The internal report represents the state colleges’ explanation of how its effort went awry. It notes that the market wage for a practicing dentist is $260,000, compared to a faculty contract at VTSU that caps salaries at $70,000. The disparity made dim the prospect of recruiting faculty for the program. VTSU has further “struggled mightily” to recruit program directors.

And the cost to educate each graduate could run between $83,000 and $144,000, which Mauch described as “a level far beyond the resources of a tuition-driven institution like VTSU.”

At the same time, the Vermont State Colleges system is still trying to close a budget gap. It must trim $5 million in recurring costs by next fiscal year.

In a statement Monday, Hoffer referenced his earlier finding that the program’s development was also hindered by leadership changes and lack of consensus about how to integrate it into an existing dental hygiene program, among other problems.

“While the parties struggled through the process, requests for funding from the legislature may have misled the committees of jurisdiction about the status of and prospects for the program,” he wrote in an email. “In the end, some of the funding bore no fruit.”

Vermont State University instead plans to double the size of its dental hygiene program from 24 to 48 students by Fall 2027, the state colleges system announced Monday.

The expansion will be enabled by a $6.2 million funding boost from the federal government.