Despite years of work and more than $2 million spent, the Vermont State Colleges system announced it would stop working to create a dental therapy program.

“After nearly a decade of diligent effort, it has become clear that the dental therapy program is not a viable path forward to address our state’s acute and pressing oral health workforce challenges,” Elizabeth Mauch, Vermont State Colleges’ chancellor, said in a press release Monday.

“We are committed to investing where we can have the greatest impact — and that is in our highly successful and expanding Dental Hygiene Program,” Mauch continued.

Vermont State University offers the dental hygiene degree and would have operated the dental therapy program. The school runs an on-campus dental clinic in Williston.

A dental therapist is a position analogous to a nurse practitioner and allowed to perform more procedures than a dental hygienist. In Vermont, a shortage of dental professionals has contributed to insufficient access to oral care.

In 2016, the Legislature paved the way for the dental therapy initiative, which would have been the first of its kind in the northeast. Supporters argued the new professional certification would help address the state’s dental needs. The state allocated $400,000 to help establish the college course.

But the program struggled to get off the ground, drawing scrutiny in 2023 from State Auditor Doug Hoffer, who investigated its delayed launch.

The Vermont State Dental Society had opposed the dental therapy licensure, arguing it would lower the standard of oral care in Vermont.

In a statement, Jeff Blasius, the society’s president, said the group is glad the state college system “is committed to expanding its dental hygiene program and stands ready to assist in that effort any way we can.”

In a feasibility assessment of the cancelled program dated last month, Mauch wrote that the school couldn’t pay would-be staff enough to recruit them away from the dental field and into teaching. And if the college could pay market rate, the per-student cost of the initiative — estimated at $96,000 — would be too much. Plus, the state colleges’ budget problems — and the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic — further undermined development.

According to the assessment, the state college system needs to find $5 million in “structural budget savings” for the new fiscal year that began July 1 to fully balance its budget.

Kayla Dewey, an assistant to Mauch, said in an email that the cost of the program’s development is $2.3 million, but of that total, $1.5 million worth of equipment, supplies and facilities improvement would go toward expanding the state’s dental hygiene program.

That expansion, bolstered by more than $6 million in “newly secured” federal funds, will increase the dental hygiene program’s enrollment from 24 to 48 students starting in the fall of 2027.

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