“The perception is that the financial burden of this transformation has been borne by the student-facing faculty and staff, and specifically, the bargaining unit faculty members and staff members,” Sebastion Lury, the Vermont State Colleges United Professionals’ co-president, said in an interview.
Factoring in inflation since 2019, Lury and other labor leaders wrote that full-time faculty and staff salaries decreased by more than 20%, while administrative salary spending increased by 15%.
Meanwhile, from 2024 to 2025, the five highest-paid positions within the system collectively received $129,188.34 in annual raises, with some increases exceeding 20%, or more than $35,000, they wrote.
These expenditures, the union leaders wrote, “stand in contrast to ongoing hiring freezes and staffing reductions affecting student-facing roles.” | 
