“UVM can’t be diverse—it’s in Vermont.”
When confronted with the reality of their overwhelmingly white student body, administrators and defenders offer what sounds like an airtight explanation. The argument seems unassailable. Vermont is 91% white. It’s rural. It’s isolated. How could a university possibly create diversity in such circumstances? This is the geography-as-destiny defense, and it has the virtue of sounding both reasonable and immutable. There’s just one problem: it’s wrong.​
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The Location Excuse sounds reasonable until you examine what researchers actually know about diversity in higher education. Dr. Rachel S. Franklin spent years analyzing American universities and discovered something remarkable: location matters far less than we think. “Institutional characteristics explain a lot of the variation in student body diversity,” Franklin found, “and actual location of schools matters less than the demographic composition of young people around that location.”
In other words, what universities do trumps where they are.
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The Vermont demographic defense also overlooks a crucial fact: most universities recruit students from far beyond their local area UVM receives applications from across the country, with 77% of undergraduates coming from out of state. The question isn’t whether Vermont has enough local diversity; it’s whether UVM chooses to actively recruit and accept students from more diverse backgrounds nationally.
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Furthermore, Vermont’s changing demographics challenge the idea that certain outcomes are inevitable. Vermont’s foreign-born population has grown significantly, and “New Americans” have established vibrant communities in Burlington and beyond. Vermont even had thriving Black communities in the 1800s before discriminatory practices pushed them out. The state’s current whiteness isn’t natural—it’s historical.
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Franklin’s research delivers an even more impactful blow to geographic determinism: “relative to suburban locations, both city and rural locations are associated with lower levels of undergraduate diversity”—but this relationship is “significantly mediated by institutional characteristics.” Rural location presents challenges, but it doesn’t determine outcomes. Institutions are what determine outcomes.
UVM isn’t cursed to mirror Vermont’s proportions. The school already possesses an undergraduate population that is 18% BIPOC in a state that is roughly 9% nonwhite. Yet this falls short compared to what other rural institutions have achieved through purposeful institutional efforts.
Michigan State University’s Geography Department implemented an “Advancing Geography Through Diversity” Program that “exceeded its own minimum recruitment requirement” for underrepresented minorities by focusing on “active recruitment, support, engagement, and retention.” The program proved that “departments can be ‘agents of measurable change’” regardless of location.
East Carolina University in rural North Carolina significantly enhanced diversity through comprehensive institutional reform. Their case study showed how “institutional research and introspection” allows universities to “craft policies and practices” that address geographic disadvantages.
Berkshire Community College in rural Massachusetts experienced a rise in diversity, with the percentage of students of color increasing from 18.4% to 30.7%, through “wraparound advising and coaching services” and “intentional recruitment practices.”
Multiple academic studies find that campus climate and institutional policies are the main factors shaping university diversity. Research on “faculty practices” indicates that specific institutional actions, from classroom discussions to recruitment strategies, significantly influence diversity outcomes. Geography sets the context, but it is the institutions that build the culture.
Rural institutions nationwide are successfully creating diverse communities through deliberate strategies, while UVM has adopted a marketing approach that actively reduces its demographic appeal. Its narrative, shaped by decades of strategic communications and cultural choices, has favored exclusivity over inclusion.
What, then, is the advantage of targeting such a limited demographic? The answer is what every college marketing team desires—money.​​ UVM has discovered they can charge premium tuition prices to families wealthy enough to afford Vermont’s lifestyle signaling, while simultaneously reducing their marketing costs by targeting a pre-qualified audience that already understands and desires the product.
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Diverse recruitment is expensive. It requires targeted outreach, generous financial aid, comprehensive support systems, and cultural change. Homogeneous recruitment is efficient. It relies on established networks, predictable yield rates, and familiar patterns.
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UVM’s granola culture acts as a perfect sorting mechanism that does the university’s work for them.
Students who thrive in this environment are typically from families with significant financial resources (outdoor gear isn’t cheap), social capital (they know how to navigate predominantly white institutions), and cultural alignment (they already speak the language of farmers markets and weekend ski trips).
For an institution that has spent decades making its brand utterly dependent around Vermont’s outdoor lifestyle, why risk diluting that formula by recruiting students who might push back against the cultural norms, demand different kinds of programming, or—worse yet—make the “granola” identity feel less authentic and more contrived?
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The Location Excuse isn’t really about location at all. It’s about economics disguised as inevitability. It’s about choosing the path of least resistance while maintaining moral cover.​ Because geography, it turns out, is just the perfect alibi—immutable enough to sound inevitable, reasonable enough to avoid scrutiny, and profitable enough to never question.
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The Green Mountains aren’t what’s keeping Vermont white—the green in admissions officers’ calculations is.