University of Vermont President Marlene Tromp delivers her State of the University address in Burlington on Tuesday, August 25, 2026. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger BURLINGTON — The University of Vermont has closed its $12 million projected budget deficit, President Marlene Tromp reported jus t days before first-year students are set to arrive on campus.  Tromp delivered the first “State of the University” address to trustees and hundreds of staff Tuesday with one resounding message: “We will not be daunted in the face of the challenges before us.”  Her declaration of the university’s resiliency comes after the school warned in March that it projected a 15% decline in freshman undergraduate students this fall compared with last year and a 7% decrease across all undergraduate enrollment.  In Tromp’s presentation, she reported that about 10,800 students are currently enrolled at the university this fall. And, as expected, freshman enrollment is down.  Still, the university has been able to fully close its projected budget deficit by eliminating vacant staff positions and “operational inefficiencies,” Tromp said in an interview Tuesday.  READ MORE Along with declining enrollment, the university is facing a combination of “serious challenges,” including cuts to federal funding for research and a difficulty recruiting students from Vermont, Tromp said during her address.  Colleges and universities across the country have long anticipated that enrollment would decline as they face a phenomenon dubbed the “demographic cliff.” Fewer people are projected to attend college in part because Americans started having fewer babies around the start of the Great Recession in late 2007.  Universities, especially those in New England, have been hit the hardest, Tromp said, as they’re forced to compete for students.  “We are building a three-year planning process so we can think ahead, and instead of being reactive, we can be proactive in the face of the changes that are before us,” Tromp said.  About 2,600 first-year students are enrolled this fall, according to Adam White, a spokesperson for the university. UVM usually aims to enroll about 3,000, he said.  Vermont has its own demographic struggles. With fewer young people in the state and a small overall population, there are limited ways that residents can support the university, which increases UVM’s tuition compared with other public universities, Tromp said.  Amid sweeping cuts to federal grant funding for scientific research, Tromp said that UVM received $222.6 million in research funding for the 2026 fiscal year — an “extraordinary outcome” given the headwinds in the federal funding landscape.  “Some universities were really struck hard by those cuts, and we were very fortunate that we didn’t face as many as a lot of other universities did,” Tromp said in the interview.  In some cases, the university was able to provide short-term funds to keep research projects afloat while grants were paused, she said. In her speech, Tromp highlighted one professor who lost grant funding for a project that sent graduate counseling and social work students to work in rural schools. After losing her national grant funding, the professor crowdsourced money to keep the project going.   The university is also set to launch an aggressive fundraising campaign through the UVM Foundation, Tromp said, which raises money for the university’s endowment.  “I’m really excited about it because that will help us weather a lot of storms,” she said.  Read the story on VTDigger here: UVM president says school’s budget deficit is closed despite declining enrollment. ...read more read less