In a nutshell, they say the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) has a “structural” budget deficit. But budgets are planning documents with UVM’s budget planning “structured” to create a budget crisis and trigger downsizing, reorganizing, and intensified work for a leaner and cheaper workforce. Meanwhile, the net tuition revenue CAS brings and should be able to draw on more to support a robust liberal arts curriculum gets siphoned away. Some of those siphoned funds support other important units on campus, like the libraries or teaching and research in other colleges that depend on expensive equipment or intensive pre-professional training and mentoring (think nursing).  But students’ tuition dollars are also going to executive salaries and bonuses, debt service for the super-sized stadium, multi-million-dollar consultant contracts etc. Admin has a vision for campus that’s very expensive: big university amenities and sports, R1 research designation with an emphasis on corporate partnerships and “innovation” for the market. Hence the CAS budget squeeze which other schools and colleges at UVM are beginning to experience: undergrad education squeezed to cough up the cash for a different kind of UVM.