The Globe Magazine had a great cover story this weekend about the rising costs of UMass Amherst. I was impressed by its bridging of anecdote and politics/policy analysis:
What began as an affordable ticket to a higher standard of living for anyone who was willing to work hard enough is now, according to a recent USA Today survey, the fifth most expensive of the country’s 67 public flagship schools.
While tuition remains relatively low, steep increases in student fees (which cover everything from sports to health benefits to course fees) and room and board have put a UMass-Amherst education out of reach for many lower-income families. More than a decade of budget cuts has whittled the state’s contribution from a hearty half to barely one-third of the university’s total funds. Long among the stingiest states in per-student spending on public higher education, Massachusetts is effectively forcing its most prestigious teaching and research institution to rely more heavily on private fund-raising, student charges, and research dollars, putting it on the road to privatization.
Though this pattern is playing out around the country, it has so far generated little controversy, because it relieves a bit of the overwhelming fiscal pressure burdening states and dovetails neatly with the conservative mood for self-sufficiency and free-market fixes. The trend is healthy insofar as it stabilizes and strengthens public universities by keeping them focused on their mission and lessening their vulnerability to the whims of state lawmakers. But the impact on access is troubling. Without strong state support, public higher education, the time-honored pathway to opportunity, looks more and more like the private system it was meant to counteract.
One quibble: the South, despite a more conservative ideological bent, is putting more commitment to their public universities than their Northern counterparts. The factor The Globe leaves out is the fact that the middle class in New England is far more inclined to send their children to private university (or to want to); whereas a tradition of public university remains strong in the South, the Midwest and the West, in Massachusetts, there is a much smaller natural constituency for state funding of higher ed, hence political support has become beleaguered as the strength of political machinery has waned.
I’d say Massachusetts’ real crime is not in having a selective state school, but in getting less quality for students’ buck. As the article notes, "While UMass-Amherst may be toying with exclusivity, it’s a long way from becoming a public Ivy - an elite school like Rutgers in New Jersey or the University of California, Berkeley." Yet UMass Amherst is just as expensive as these prestige public schools. Just because the state hosts a lot of quality private schools should not keep us from asking how we can strengthen our public university system.
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