The request encapsulates UVM’s strategy to withstand the forces hammering higher education: Schools are closing; federal support is going away; and the shrinking population of college-aged young adults is leaving all but the most elite schools fiercely competing for students. This “demographic cliff” is a five-alarm bell higher education insiders have been ringing for decades, and UVM, the flagship school of a greying state, is feeling the heat. It is suffering through a $12 million budget deficit and expects the incoming class of freshmen students to decline by 15 percent this fall.

At this ominous moment, UVM is betting that athletic amenities, such as a bouldering wall, hydrotherapy pools, and a new basketball court, will help balance the scales.

Tromp ultimately got the state money and says donors have lined up an additional $51 million. (UVM still needs another $32 million for the renovations.)

Once completed, the project will transform the school’s athletic complex and create the largest indoor venue in Vermont, a 5,000-seat space for concerts, events, and sports games of all levels. There will be more gym space for students, shinier offices for coaches, and a hospitality suite for athletics donors. University officials estimate the improvements would double use of the facilities and serve both students and everyday Vermonters.

Yet more than anything, the project is a not-so-secret admissions ploy, as sports and the social culture around it become ever-bigger factors in where applicants decide to go to college.

“A lot of this is about enrollment needs,” said Dominique Baker, a higher education policy expert at the University of Delaware. “It’s about trying to ensure that if a student is admitted to both UVM and another institution, that Vermont has a fighting chance.”

This is not exactly a new phenomenon. Even in the ’80s, the so-called Flutie effect — named for Boston College football great Doug Flutie — illustrated how a single star athlete can drive a bump in applications. Sports powerhouses, including Alabama and Michigan, draw eyeballs and multimillion-dollar profits from athletics. And smaller local schools, including Stonehill, Nichols College, and the University of New Haven, have beefed up sports programs to lure students.

UVM is not expecting to challenge the powerhouses of the NCAA. It does not have a varsity football program, by far the richest of college sports, but is known instead for hockey and basketball. Its men’s soccer team is highly ranked, winning the NCAA Division 1 national championship in 2024, and skiing at nearby mountain resorts is a bonus for many applicants. A high number of UVM students, about 2,500 of 14,000, also play club sports.

But Katelyn Figueiredo, a member of the women’s soccer team, said fans at UVM games are mostly other athletes.

“The study body is less interested in traditional sports,” said Figueiredo, who is also a marketing intern for UVM athletics.

In a state with an aging population, UVM has long relied on recruiting students from outside Vermont. Currently, almost 80 percent of UVM students come from out of state, the highest share of any flagship public school.

But prospective students from elsewhere in New England are increasingly drawn to the tailgate culture and lower tuition costs of Southern schools. And losing them would be a crisis.

With little state funding, UVM already ranks among the most expensive public universities nationwide, at $70,000 a year for out-of-state students. Most of its revenue is from tuition, although nearly half of current students who are Vermont residents attend school tuition-free. Before 2024, the university had not increased tuition for five straight years.

While many universities have emphasized new amenities over the years, the expense of gyms and climbing walls inevitably adds to the ever-higher price for families, research shows.

But at UVM, the recreational areas for students are a key weakness. Admissions tours skip the athletic facilities, and with just 7,500 square feet of fitness space, UVM lags other New England public universities. Students in surveys blast the facilities for being “antiquated” and “too crowded.” Some prefer to pay for private, off-campus gym memberships instead, according to a UVM student government resolution.

In a statement, university spokesperson Adam White called the renovation of the multipurpose center “essential to the high-quality campus experience today’s students expect.”

Strategically investing in recreational facilities is a way for UVM to attack its challenges, rather than give in, said Krista Trofka, a government and education expert at commercial real estate firm JLL.

“That being said, we are in something of an arms race related to athletic investment,” she said. “Is it fully sustainable?”

When Tromp, the UVM president, lobbied state lawmakers, she cited the small facilities in a recent decision to limit participation in a high school robotics competition. The Harlem Globetrotters told the school it may no longer be able to play there, she said.

Tromp recalled even musician Sting once joked that playing at UVM gave him a weird tinge of nostalgia.

“It’s been a long time since I played at a high school gym,” she quoted him saying in 1991.

Upgrading the facilities has long been on UVM’s agenda. The school began construction in 2019, but the COVID pandemic interrupted the work. Steel beams for new buildings went unused, although UVM has completed some piecemeal updates in recent years, including revamping the locker room for hockey and adding training facilities.

In the May legislative hearing, UVM director of government relations Wendy Koenig estimated that, once the funding is in hand, the construction would take three years to finish.

“You can tell by what we’re saying this morning that we are motivated to get this done,” she said.

Until then, a banner near the existing basketball court that reads “the wait is almost over,” put up five years ago, is “a running joke on campus,” said UVM student government president Kennedy Connors.

“Like, when is the wait over?”

Meanwhile, UVM is cutting costs elsewhere. It reduced its annual budget by 3.25 percent this spring and chose to forgo raises for senior leaders. The university is also reevaluating its vast real estate portfolio in Burlington and rural Vermont. It had previously eliminated low-enrollment humanities classes.

Brit Williams, an associate professor of education at UVM, said she supports using state money for forward-thinking moves. She also noted the athletics complex will benefit Greater Burlington, which “does not have as many spaces and places to host events, to build community.”

“We can’t cut our way to a successful financial future,“ Williams said. “I cannot confidently say that [athletics] will be the solution. Not one thing will change the trajectory of our institution. But a bunch of small changes could help move the needle.”

And Vermont and its colleges need to make bold moves to galvanize shrinking cities and retain residents, said Kevin Chu, executive director of the Vermont Futures Project, a nonprofit think tank that promotes economic growth in the state.

Green Mountain, Goddard, and Sterling colleges all closed recently, and the Vermont towns around them are struggling in their absence. The school-age population in the state is also declining at an alarming rate.

In that sense, Chu said, $12 million is an investment in the next generation of Vermont talent. Given the state’s small size, even a small amount goes a long way.

“Part of the pitch is that the investment would yield returns for Vermont,” Chu said. “We’re either going to be a leader for what to do or what not to do.”

In the meantime, students such as native Vermonter Oliver Szott are excited for the changes. The success of men’s soccer boosted pride in Vermont sports, and games for Vermont Green FC, a pre-professional team that has its home matches at UVM, sell out “practically immediately,” Szott said.

For applicants to UVM, Szott can see how athletics would be a “differentiating factor” against other options, he said.

“Whether it will be successful in increasing enrollment,” he said, “that is yet to be seen.”

Diti Kohli can be reached at diti.kohli@globe.com. Follow her @ditikohli_.

BOSTON (AP) — A Delta Air Lines jet was roughly 300 feet (90 meters) from an American Airlines plane during a close call at Boston’s airport that forced the Delta aircraft to abort a weekend landing attempt, an aviation expert said Sunday.

The Federal Aviation Administration said it was investigating the incident between two commercial flights that happened Saturday at Boston Logan International Airport.

Todd Curtis, a former safety engineer at Boeing, estimated the distance between the two jetliners using Flightradar24, a website that tracks flights. Curtis now coproduces a podcast about flight safety issues.

“This is a significant incident,” Curtis said, adding that it was particularly concerning because it involved two professional airline crews.

He said federal aviation officials have been concerned about such runway incursions for a while now and will scrutinize Saturday’s close call.

Near-misses and runway incursions at U.S. airports will be the subject of a hearing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. The Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Aviation, Space, and Innovation will seek ways to strengthen safety across the national airspace system.

The Delta flight from Dallas had to execute a go-around, or aborted landing, to avoid the American plane departing from an intersecting runway, according to the FAA and flight logs.

The crew of Delta flight 2351 coordinated with air traffic control to perform the go-around, an airline spokesperson said. The plane, which had 129 passengers and six crew members on board, landed safely and deplaned normally, according to the spokesperson.

Go-arounds are safe, routine procedures performed at the discretion of the pilot or air traffic controllers, according to the FAA.

The 2026 Juneteenth celebration in downtown Pittsburgh came to an end Sunday with no additional major issues reported following the large group of juveniles fighting Friday night in Market Square.

The group of 40-50 juveniles fighting toward the end of Friday’s celebrations led to police using pepper spray and clearing the square, according to Pittsburgh Public Safety.

Event organizer William “B” Marshall responded with a chaperone policy starting Saturday, requiring kids to be joined by adults in Market Square.

Pittsburgh Public Safety told KDKA-TV that they don’t know of any issues with groups of kids on Saturday evening, and Marshall called the policy—and the event—a success.

“It’s been fantastic,” Marshall said. “We’re getting a lot of parents coming down with their children. We don’t want to stop anybody from coming and enjoying some Juneteenth.”

KDKA-TV still saw groups of kids unaccompanied in the square on Sunday, but none were disruptive. Marshall said they didn’t have to remove any kids from the square, which had programming aimed at older adults.

“I’ve been seeing a lot of adults. I haven’t seen a lot of groups of kids,” said Zhane Wilds, a mother who brought her kids to the celebrations on Sunday. “Everybody’s getting along, which is great.”

A big crowd gathered in Point State Park for an evening of music, helping to wrap up another year of Juneteenth in Pittsburgh.

“It’s been a vibe down here. Everything is going very good,” Wilds said.

Other attendees said the event was nice and fun.

“The festival has been great, we’ve had great weather, people are happy, and I’m happy,” Marshall said.

It’s hard to say if the lack of fights was directly due to the police. Marshall said that overall, there weren’t too many issues.

Pittsburgh Public Safety Director Sheldon Williams told KDKA-TV on Saturday that they weren’t enforcing this chaperone policy, that it was Marshall’s idea, but they would be on standby inside the square in case they needed to step in.

At the same time, Williams said they support the idea and Marshall’s efforts.

Looking ahead to next year, Marshall said they plan to kick off the celebration with an indoor performance from the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.

More than 150 vendors took part in the event this year.