Dan Kennedy seems to think it’s too early to tell if Gov. Romney’s privatization and decentralization plan for the University of Massachusetts will improve things or not. There is the off chance that it might work by heightening the contradictions of higher ed in Massachusetts. Right now there’s no political impetus to improve the university system because a large swath of the middle class relies on private universities, but there’s equally no political impetus to retrench and cut back or reogranize either. Romney, using Bulger’s unpopularity as cover, may well shake this impasse up.
Still, I’m not optimistic. We need leadership to stick up for the idea of affordable public higher education, not someone who basically says, “I need to save a little money in the budget because of my campaign promises, so I’ll take this opportunity to turn the public university into a private one.” The last thing Massachusetts needs is another private school. Besides, examine the numbers in Romney’s plan: 15,000 more students for Amhurst and a tuition hike to $6,424 in-state /$17,841 out-of-state. This is supposed to bring in $50 million. Something has to give. If the price goes up, demand goes down. How do you bring in 15,000 more students? By lowering admission selectivity, which then further hurts demand among middle-class families shopping for universities. And what out of state family is going to want to pay that much for a not-so-hot state school? This is not the way to build up a prestige state school along the lines of a Michigan or Virginia. We should be taking a page out of Georgia’s playbook, whose Hope Scholarships have dramatically turned around the University of Georgia. Provide free state university education, and middle class parents will have to think twice about shelling out private college tuition. There is more to worry about than the student demand of course (faculty salaries, research grants, etc.), and getting middle-class kids into state schools doesn’t solve all the problems of educating everyone. But a hope scholarship would be the best way of turning around Massachusetts’ university system because it best utilitizes tax-dollar incentives in creating demand for public education. We may not be able to afford it this year or next, but instead of trashing the goal of a public state university, we should be reasserting it. It’s just a shame that Georgia has done something right with its lottery money, while we treat it as just another tax in the budget.
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