Liz Knight isn’t your typical college student.
The Albany, Vermont, resident wasn’t interested in the traditional four-year university experience when she graduated from high school 20 years ago. Soon after that, she had her first child.
She did go to college at 30, aiming to get a graphic design degree, but then “life happened” and she had to drop out.
The next several years were a struggle. A mother of two, Knight says she took on dead-end job after dead-end job, living paycheck to paycheck and barely making ends meet. She was tired, overworked and felt like she “was not getting anywhere.”
At 37, though, she decided to enroll last May in Community College of Vermont’s online bookkeeping certification program. After taking several classes during the summer and fall semesters, she had only a few more left to complete for the spring — one of them being Professional Field Experience, which requires an 80-hour unpaid internship.
For many students like Knight, the internship is a barrier to completing their studies. Many are often single parents or are holding down jobs while taking classes, according to Anja Oulette, Community College of Vermont’s manager of career learning. It’s difficult for them to take time off without getting paid, and many have had to delay their graduations or drop out altogether, she said.
But a $50,000 Vermont Internship Program grant last year allowed Community College of Vermont to provide Liz Knight and 49 other students with $1,000 stipends to help them through their internships.
Most used the life-changing money to pay for transportation costs or child care, enabling them to complete their studies without added financial stressors.
That is exactly what Vermont Department of Labor leaders envisioned when they fielded applications from schools and employers for internship, returnship and apprenticeship opportunities over the last several years.
Now, the program is being expanded, aiming to entice more young people to stay in Vermont, which has one of the oldest populations in the country.
The new Work-based Learning and Training Grants combine previous Labor Department initiatives. It pools the Vermont Internship Program, the Vermont Returnship Program, the Apprenticeship Program and others under a $1 million umbrella.
The recently announced funding totals $400,000 and people have until June 30 to apply for the program. A second wave of funding, $600,000, will be available for applications this fall.
For Knight, the stipend afforded her supplies, attire and driving expenses — driving being something she does a lot of as a mother of two teenagers. She received her certification in May and hopes to be an accountant, citing the confidence she gained from her internship and coursework experience.
“Everything would have been a lot more difficult without the extra money,” she said. “I wasn’t employed (at the time) so it really helped ease the hardship and allowed me to take that time away from work.”
Battling the demographics
Previous grants mainly went to schools and industries in the hospitality, tourism and manufacturing sectors, according to Jay Ramsey, director of workforce development for the Department of Labor. But he hopes the increased funding will broaden that field.
“This allows us and schools and colleges and employers to more broadly apply funds to activities to serve different populations of people,” Ramsey said.
The impetus for these changes is Vermont’s unbalanced workforce demographics, which show an aging population, fewer total workers and a decline in participation among those eligible for employment.
“Vermont is one of the oldest states in the nation,” Ramsey said. “Baby boomers are retiring and, as they exit the workforce, there aren’t enough workers to fill those vacancies. Nor are there enough workers to fill any new positions that businesses are creating as they grow.”
In his inaugural address in January, Gov. Phil Scott said the state had 3,300 fewer workers in 2019 than in 2009.
“Unfortunately, our most recent data shows a gap of 22,500,” Scott said. “That’s right. The gap is nearly seven times what it was in 2019.”
The Labor Department’s Workforce Development Board also found that every one of Vermont’s 14 counties has fewer workers than in the mid-2000s, according to its strategic plan. Eight counties reported declines of over 15% while the other six reported over 10%.
“It was necessary from the Department of Labor’s perspective to have a program like this that connects workers of different ages to employers and introduces them in a low-risk (way),” Ramsey said. “So it creates more opportunities to connect people to employers and the jobs that employers have.”
Partnering with employers
Like Community College of Vermont, River Valley Technical Center in Springfield also struggled to place students in apprenticeships. But its problem was more on the employers’ end. Shops with only one or two employees were strained to take time training prospective welders, plumbers, HVAC technicians or electricians, according to Scott Farr, who directs the technical center.
However, since the center received $30,000 through last year’s Vermont Apprenticeship program, about a dozen students enrolled in the Industrial Trades program gained the experience they needed. The money was used to cover everything from student wages and reimbursement for commuting expenses to pre-experience training. The latter was the key resource saver for employers because they no longer had to spend too much time getting students up to speed.
“We had kids interested, but it was hard for employers to take the hit,” Farr said. “Now, it’s an excellent resource to partner with employers around the area. Anytime students are on the job site, it’s a success”
The 16 recipients from last year’s crop of grantees included Catamount Arts, a performing arts center in St. Johnsbury; Sunrise Family Resource Center, a child-care facility in Bennington; and Mack Molding, a manufacturer headquartered in Arlington.
Larry Hovish, Mack’s director of communications, said the company is welcoming 13 interns this summer, some of them funded by last year’s grant. Mack also recently hired two interns from last summer to become full-time employees, something he said was a direct result of the $25,000 it received last year.
“The state has been a wonderful partner in this,” he said. “They obviously share a common goal of promoting job opportunities and lifestyles here in southern Vermont, so we’ve been very happy to have their support and plan to seek it out again.”