When Jane Sanders was in charge of a small private college in Vermont for seven years, it sank deep into debt while trying to expand its campus. Many students took out tens of thousands of dollars in loans to attend, but their investment was questionable: Only a third of former Burlington College students earn more than the average person with a high school diploma.

Jane Sanders’ husband, presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, has offered a higher-education plan that would make tuition at public colleges free. But it would do little to prod colleges, public or private, to keep costs down or ensure that a college degree is worthwhile for graduates.


Jane Sanders, who led Burlington College from 2004 to 2011, spent millions on a new campus — 33 acres along the bank of Lake Champlain — to attract more students and donations from alumni. It didn’t work: The college failed to recruit enough students or donations to repay its debts and even came close to losing its accreditation.

It’s a formula that has failed colleges and universities across the country.

“ The idea is very common: We’re going to create a new campus, that’s going to drive interest and alumni giving will go up, ” said Alexander Holt, policy analyst at New America. The problem is that , as small, private colleges compete for prestige and students , they may take on too much debt and wind up worse off, Holt said.

Bernie Sanders’ higher-education plan focuses on an issue that’s most palpable for college graduates and dropouts: their debt, which has ballooned in recent years to $1.2 trillion. In addition to making tuition at public colleges and universities free, he would lower rates on student loans for both new borrowers and graduates with student debt.

“ When we need the best-educated workforce in the world, yes, we are going to make public colleges and universities tuition - free. And, for the millions of Americans struggling with horrendous levels of student debt, we are going to substantially ease that burden,” Sanders said Tuesday night during his speech celebrating his New Hampshire primary win.

But the focus on bringing down debt could backfire, experts say, because it doesn’t address the costs that are the root of the problem: Colleges and universities could continue spending money on programs and amenities that help attract students, while not doing enough to keep costs down and provide students with a valuable education. Sanders estimates his plan would cost $75 billion a year, which would be paid for by a tax on Wall Street speculation. But experts fear that in the long term , rising college costs could become unsustainable and wind up being shouldered by taxpayers, too. Some research has found that student loan and Pell Grant expansions can lead to more expensive tuition. Hillary Clinton’s college plan addresses this issue, at least in part, by putting more responsibility on colleges to keep costs down and make sure students graduate and can eventually repay their debt, an idea gaining traction in Washington.

The average Burlington student pays $25,569 per year in tuition after scholarships and student aid, according to the federal Education Department. That’s significantly higher than the average for other students at private , nonprofit colleges of $15,000, calculated by the College Board for the 2015 academic year. The college accepts more than four out of five applicants, according to U.S. News and World Report. However, 76 percent of Burlington students failed to graduate in six years or less. But 73 percent are paying down their student loans, a rate that is higher than the national average and an indicator that many students are not in financial trouble, despite low earnings after college.

Debates over what to do about rising tuition, struggling colleges and ensuring graduates are prepared for jobs are raging among policymakers, who see these issues as the underpinnings of the student debt crisis. In Congress, lawmakers are increasingly discussing getting public and private colleges to put “skin in the game,” in which they have a financial stake in whether their students are successful after graduation, as Clinton proposes. And small, private colleges like the one Jane Sanders ran grapple with these issues daily. Some 1,600 private , nonprofit colleges serve about 13 percent of students . The vast majority of the schools are not prestigious institutions , like Harvard or Yale, but more obscure places like Burlington College that can often be more expensive for students than top colleges, since they offer far less institutional aid. (For-profit colleges make up another 13 percent of the market, and public institutions enroll 73 percent.)

Last year , Sweet Briar College , a small, private, all-female school in Virginia , abruptly announced it would close its doors at the end of the year due to “insurmountable financial challenges,” citing growing scrutiny on small liberal arts colleges as a reason for closing. Alumni successfully campaigned to keep it open for at least one year, using fundraising and the college’s endowment to pay expenses. Across the country , reports continue to surface that suggests such colleges — which rely heavily on tuition — are having a hard time recruiting the number of students they need and fundraising from increasingly skeptical donors.

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At Burlington College, where many young people are fans of Bernie Sanders and alumni remember spotting the senator ambling around Burlington on weekends, Jane Sanders’ well-intentioned survival plan quickly went awry.

The college was founded in 1972, in the living room of its first president, a man named Steward LaCasce. (The college’s website notes that back then “it had no financial backing, paid its bills when they came due and paid its president when it could.”) The college catered to non traditional students, such as veterans and adults. It grew from its original 14 students to about 200 in recent years, finding appeal with its small student-to-faculty ratio and degrees in unusual fields including woodworking.

Jane Sanders took the helm in 2004 after having a successful year as interim president at Goddard College, in rural Plainfield, V ermont , and working in various roles for her husband. In an interview with the Burlington Free Press at the time, she cited building enrollment and expanding the school’s small endowment as priorities. The college adopted a plan to offer more majors and graduate - degree programs, renovate its campus and grow enrollment a couple of years later. And in 2010, Sanders and the board went further: She brokered a deal to buy a new plot of lakefront land with multiple buildings from the Roman Catholic Diocese to replace the college’s cramped quarters in a building that used to house a grocery store. The college used $10 million in bonds and loans to pay for the campus, according to reports by the Burlington Free Press.

“ People are worried about student debt, but this is one of the reasons that college costs go up, ” Holt said. “ Because every college wants a new campus — and students get charged for that. ”

Sanders and the board of trustees hoped alumni donations and expanding the student body would help pay off the debt. But enrollment in the years that followed didn’t rise much, and fundraising efforts fell short.

Sanders resigned in 2011 after months of debate about the college with its board, but neither Sanders nor the college gave a specific reason for her departure. Her successor, Christine Plunkett, was tasked with figuring out how to pay back the college’s debts. Plunkett tried recruiting new students from China but had little luck. In 2013, key faculty had their hours and benefits cut, and some resigned. In 2014, the college’s accreditor placed the school on probation because of its shaky finances. Students formed a union that demanded Plunkett’s resignation. She resigned — but problems remained. The Sanders campaign declined to comment for this article on behalf of Bernie or Jane Sanders, who works for the campaign.

The college was most likely “not being as careful as it needs to be,” said Ben Miller, senior director for higher education at the Center for American Progress. Sanders reportedly took a $200,000 severance package, and the college was attempting to attract students with new master’s degree programs — a signal to analysts that it was desperate for revenue.

Before Jane Sanders’ grand expansion plans, there were a number of things Burlington College did well that policymakers may want to inspect more closely, said Seton Hall University a ssistant p rofessor Robert Kelchen. The college was angling to help hard-to-serve students like veterans and adult learners, who might not fit in at traditional four-year colleges. Unusual degree programs helped the college stand out to prospective students. And housing the college in a single building helped keep costs in line with revenue.

The lessons Kelchen and others draw from Burlington College can apply more broadly to public higher education, too. Costs for educating students at public colleges and universities have ticked up faster than inflation in recent years, and public institutions have become more reliant on tuition — especially from out-of-state students, who typically pay far more than those from in-state — over the p ast 25 years. The question facing all of higher education is how to keep costs down and provide students with the best education possible.

In 2015, Burlington College sold most of the lakefront property acquired under Jane Sanders’ tenure, keeping 6 acres and the main building where it holds classes. As the sale was being negotiated, the college was $11.4 million in debt and its interim president told independent newspaper Seven Days that Burlington College had $300,000 in unpaid bills — many of them more than 90 days old — and wasn’t in a position to meet the payments on its debt for the year. Enrollment has not grown as prior presidents hoped, and the college recently froze tuition, then announced it will reduce it.

The problems at Burlington College, especially with the school’s accreditation, left students wondering whether their degrees would be worth much when they graduated, several former students told POLITICO. Burlington College did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

Burlington alumnus DeWolfe Morrow remembers working on his final project in film while trying to tune out the turmoil around the college’s leadership and accreditation in 2014 and 2015. He borrowed about $20,000 to pay for Burlington College so he could get his bachelor’s degree — “which is honestly not as bad as most people” in college, Morrow noted.

“I didn’t know how long the college was going to last. I thought, ‘I hope I get my degree before it shuts down,’” Morrow said. He graduated in spring 2015 and says he’s still interested in pursuing film, though he doesn’t have a full-time job in the field. He said he supports Bernie Sanders, in part because of Sanders’s plan for eliminating public school tuition.

“Maybe I would have gone to a free school” had there been one available, Morrow added.

Clinton has criticized Sanders’ proposal on the grounds that it would ignore the cost problem and give a free education to students who don’t need it. In other words, Clinton has said she’s “not in favor of making college free for Donald Trump ’ s kids.”

During one of the Democratic debate s, Sanders’ retort to Clinton focused on the symbolic right to a free college education.

“This is 2016,” Sanders said. “When we talk about public education, it can no longer be K through 12th grade.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version misstated the outcomes for former Burlington College students. Only a third who attended, whether or not they completed a degree, earn more than the average person with a high school diploma.