Making sure qualified students have access to the world-class education UMass provides is not a default position for me — it’s a defining cause. It’s something that drives and inspires me, because I have an acute appreciation for the transformative power of a UMass education.
What I learned at UMass Lowell changed my life. It set me on a road that took me to Congress and to the UMass presidency. So it matters to me personally that students have the opportunity to set out on their own journeys — without building up stifling debt.
When I was a student, it was possible to pay your way with a summer job and part-time work during the school year. That’s no longer the case, and we have to fix it.
For those of us in public higher education, the biggest single factor governing cost and affordability is state funding. Because of that, we’re concerned about the impact that fiscal policies in states across the country — including Massachusetts — are having on public colleges and universities.
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Some facts:
■ According to the Delta Cost Project “Trends in College Spending: 2001-2011,” state funding for public research universities in the United States has dropped significantly, from $10,983 per student in FY 2001 to $7,902 in FY 2011. At the same time, tuition paid by students and their families rose from $5,556 to $9,194.
■ In Massachusetts, the story was much the same, with state funding for the UMass system dropping from $483 million to $429 million during that period, and tuition and fees at our flagship campus in Amherst rising from $5,212 to $11,732.
■ More recently, according to information compiled by Illinois State University, state funding for public higher education across the nation slipped from $78.5 billion to $76.9 billion between fiscal years 2009 and 2014 before bouncing back up to $80.9 billion last year.
■ A new study from the Pew Charitable Trusts showed federal funding for higher education recently surpassed funding from the 50 states, which traditionally have been the prime funders of public colleges.
Clearly, states are spending less on public higher education because of the demands they face in areas such as health care, K-12 education, and transportation, but if we want to have our public colleges and universities available to all, more state money will be needed.
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There are, of course, other important factors in the affordability equation. Everyone in higher education — public and private — has to spend wisely and keep costs as low as possible.
Looking at the data, we see a story that reflects well on public higher education — and may surprise those who reflexively believe “public” always translates into “less efficient.”
The Delta Cost Project report — produced by the Washington, D.C.-based nonpartisan American Institutes for Research — found public research universities were remarkably efficient during the period the group studied, spending $27,348 to educate each student in FY 2001 compared with $28,339 a decade later. The per-student expenditure at private research universities rose much more — from $42,114 to $51,418.
At UMass, per-student costs have been consistent — rising modestly from $21,292 in FY 2007 to $22,575 in FY 2014.
We are able to do this while still providing 73,000 students a year with access to a university that has been named one of the world’s best. We also maintain a research and innovation portfolio that is crucial to the state’s economic future and places us alongside the leading universities in the nation in terms of quality and impact.
UMass has been efficient and effective partly because of a cost program that has achieved or identified $281 million in savings since it was put in place in 2011. Savings have been realized across the five-campus system as a result of projects that reduced energy consumption and lowered energy costs, streamlined procurement practices and IT services, and lowered debt costs through refinancing and improved borrowing practices.
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I intend to give all of these issues — debt, affordability, efficiency, and effectiveness — my full measure of attention.
States will always find it difficult to allocate the funds needed for public higher education, and maintaining efficiency is never easy, but these two components are mandatory, along with strong support from the federal government and from key constituencies such as the business community, friends, and alumni.
My family grew up in a poor section of Lowell, in a neighborhood where streets bore the names of the places immigrants had come from. We lived on London Street, near Montreal, Manchester, and Canada streets. The Tsongas family’s dry cleaning business was around the corner, and the tiny, wooden elementary school where I learned that John F. Kennedy had been killed was footsteps away. No one in our family had gone to college, yet the presence of UMass Lowell meant a college education was readily available to my parents’ seven children — and that’s where most of us went.
My journey was perhaps an unlikely one for the son of a Lowell Sun newspaper compositor, but because we have institutions like the University of Massachusetts, it’s the kind of a trip many before me took and countless others will embark on.
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While serving in the US House, I was acutely aware that I was following in the footsteps of giants. One of them was Justin Morrill of Vermont, author of the Land Grant Act that created many of our nation’s great public universities. Morrill’s bill, advanced during the darkest days of the Civil War, is considered one of the most significant pieces of legislation in our nation’s history.
I often thought of Morrill during my nearly eight years as chancellor of UMass Lowell. Now, in my first school year as president of the University of Massachusetts system, I feel awed by the fact that I was able to walk the halls he walked. His vision for a public education institution, like UMass, changed my life, and it will help change the lives of 73,000 more students this school year.
It’s a vision worth fighting to sustain. Because Justin Morrill believed unlimited opportunity was essential to who we are as a people and what America means. I do, too.
Marty Meehan is president of the University of Massachusetts.
Related:
• Steven R. DiSalvo: How to fix the college debt crisis
• Dante Ramos: Has inequality doomed small, private colleges?
• Debra Spark: Why do you have to be so accomplished to get into college?
• Hindsight: Justin Morrill, the man behind America’s higher education
• Ideas: Bringing a charter-school approach to college
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