In the spring of 2025, college campuses aggregated their data to report the most diverse class of undergraduates in nationwide history. Nationally, only 39% of college students were white—less than four in ten. Hispanic students comprised 18% of enrollment, Black students 11%, and Asian students 6%. For the first time in American history, white students no longer hold an absolute majority in higher education.
​​
29%: that’s the percentage of American college undergraduates who are Black or Hispanic in Spring 2025. Nearly one out of three students walking across college campuses nationwide. It’s not a majority, but it’s substantial enough that you’d notice if they all suddenly vanished from a lecture hall. You’d see the empty seats. You’d feel the silence where their voices should be.
​
And yet, in this same moment, on a hill in Burlington, Vermont, the numbers tell an entirely different story.
​
Here's another number: 9.2%. That’s the percentage of UVM’s applications in Fall 2022 that came from Black and Hispanic students combined—just 2,789 applications out of more than 30,000. If Black and Hispanic students had applied to UVM at the same rate they do nationally, the school should have seen about 9,000 applicants in Fall 2022. What it actually got was fewer than 2,800. That’s not a statistical anomaly—that’s 6,200 missing applications. A missing population the size of a small college, vanished before they ever filled out a single application.
​​​​
The most remarkable thing about UVM’s exclusion machine is its consistency. In Fall 2013, Black and Hispanic students submitted 8.4% of applications. In Fall 2018, it was 8.7%. In Fall 2022, it reached 9.2%. Not a leap, not even a stir—just the slow, almost imperceptible seep of the Arnold Palmer effect which has been systematically slowed to a crawl.
​
This isn’t the story of an institution gradually becoming more inclusive; it’s the story of a system so perfectly calibrated that it produces virtually identical results year after year, regardless of national demographic shifts, diversity initiatives, or cultural movements. The absolute number of Black and Hispanic applicants grew—from roughly 1,900 to 2,800—but only because the total applicant pool expanded dramatically. As a percentage, the exclusion rate holds steady with clockwork regularity.
​​​​​​​​​​​​
But here’s where the story takes a turn that even the most astute observers of higher education rarely see coming. Because UVM’s exclusion machine doesn’t just sort by race—it sorts by class with the same ruthless precision.
​​​
But here’s where the story takes an unexpected turn. Because when you look closer at who is walking across UVM’s campus—at who fills those lecture halls where thousands of Black, Hispanic, and other BIPOC voices are conspicuously absent—you discover something even more revealing about the precision of this exclusion machine.
​
Let me give you another number: $121,500. That’s the median family income of a UVM student. To put that in perspective, if you lined up every American household by income, the typical UVM family would be standing in the 76th percentile—ahead of nearly four out of five families in the country.
The national median family income for college students? $58,500. UVM students come from families earning more than twice that amount.
​​
More than half—55%—of all UVM students come from families in the top 20% of American income distribution. And from the bottom 20% of American earners? Just 3.8%. This imbalance is staggering. For every one student at UVM who comes from the bottom fifth of the scale, there are fourteen coming from the top fifth.​
Most UVM students cluster in the nation’s highest income brackets, with representation tapering off steeply below the wealthiest fifth of U.S. households.
​The picture becomes even starker when you reach the very top. UVM ranks fourth nationally for the highest concentration of students from the top 1% of family incomes. Not the top 10%. Not the top 5%. The top 1%. Nationally, Black and Hispanic students may be 29% of undergraduates—but at UVM, students from families earning more than $795,000 a year are as common as Black and Hispanic students combined (6.9% vs. 6.94%).
​​
​Walk across UVM’s campus on any given day, and you are as likely to pass a student whose family earns three-quarters of a million dollars as you are to encounter a Black or Hispanic student.​
UVM ranks in the top five of 400 peer institutions (shown in yellow) for enrolling students from the wealthiest 1% of families while simultaneously ranking at the bottom among these same peers for access by students from the bottom 60%, illustrating how Vermont’s flagship university paradoxically excels at serving the economic elite while underperforming in its public mission to provide broad access to higher education. Source: New York Times
And this debunks the “we’re not diverse because we’re saddled with Vermont” argument—UVM’s economic homogeneity cannot be explained by state demographics at all.
​​
And this debunks the Location Excuse once and for all. Because this is not Vermont. The statewide median household income sits at $78,000—and UVM has more students from families earning over $112,000 than from all families earning under $70,000 combined (55% vs. 21.8%). This isn’t Vermont geography shaping UVM demographics. This is UVM demographics rejecting Vermont geography entirely. ​​​​​This isn’t Vermont—this is a national wealth magnet that happens to be located in Vermont.
Where is the real culture at UVM? It’s in the silence echoing through the halls where economic and cultural diversity should have been.