Updated at 5:20 p.m.
Sterling College, an unorthodox, tiny school for students interested in the environment, will shut down at the end of this academic year and close its Craftsbury Common campus.
The college’s board of trustees announced the closure this week after concluding that Sterling could not attain stable financial footing. Classes will remain in session through the spring semester, the board said.
Trustees have made arrangements with several schools, including Champlain College, Community College of Vermont and College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, for students to complete their degrees elsewhere.
The wind-down plan provides “the most responsible way” for the college to honor its commitments while “preserving its values and legacy,” board chair Allison Hooper said in a statement.
Sterling College dates back to the 1950s but only became an accredited, four-year college in 1997. It is small and quirky by design, with a cap of 120 students who work in their field of interest and on a farm as they pursue their ecologically focused courses. In recent years, enrollment dropped, however. Fewer than 40 students are studying at Sterling this semester, president Scott Thomas said on Thursday, supported by roughly 30 faculty and staff. The college has only a small endowment to draw upon to support operations.
“We dug a hole, and it was an expensive hole for a small college,” Thomas said
Thomas, Sterling’s president since 2023, projected confidence in the school’s finances during an interview with Seven Days that year. “Sterling College’s future is not in question in my mind,” he said at the time.
But Sterling’s minuscule size and tightly focused academic mission have not spared the school from the pressures facing higher education nationally and in New England in particular. Vermont colleges are competing for fewer college-aged students while navigating increasing costs.
Several Vermont colleges have closed in recent years, including Green Mountain College in Poultney, Southern Vermont College in Bennington, College of St. Joseph’s in Rutland, Marlboro College in Marlboro and Goddard College in Plainfield.
Thomas said small, rural colleges — especially those that are highly dependent on tuition — face grave dangers.
“It’s exactly what we need, but it’s exactly what doesn’t work financially,” he said, adding that Sterling’s demise is “an artifact of our time.”
The closures have left voids in the small communities where they were long-standing economic and cultural institutions.
Sterling’s trustees said they have not yet determined what to do with the college’s remaining assets, including its 130-acre campus. Thomas said an effort to reincarnate Sterling in a different form isn’t out of the question.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if this plucky little institution got feet again somehow,” he said, “but it’s got to look totally different than it has in the past.”
Correction, November 13, 2025: An earlier version of this story misidentified Scott Thomas.