SAC (Strategic Action Committee)

For statewide distribution...

The following Boston Globe story provides a good overview of the governor's proposal for higher education. It pretends to do many things, including promoting quality and "making [higher ed.]
affordable for every Commonwealth resident". The plan is in fact a thinly veiled attempt to privatize public higher education. It proposes privatizing U.Mass at Amherst (in four years!) while
consolidating three of our community colleges, stripping away most of the power of our local trustees, and pairing our community colleges with other institutions with which we may have little in common.

The governor's proposal pretends to streamline higher ed., making it more slim and efficient.  In reality it creates a new layer of bureaucracy known as "Regional Coordinating Councils". The proposal promises some $90 million in cuts to college personnel. The proposal pretends to be about improving responsiveness to local communities when in fact the plan's focus centralizes control more than ever in Boston. The proposal and the just-released House I budget does away with individual college line items. The plan promises only a 11 percent budget cut for FY '04 (after our colleges absorb a 30 to 40 percent cut and then are allowed to keep tuitions and increase tuition by 4 percent). The list of horrors goes on and on.

This proposal is a study in smoke in mirrors. Its centralizing and privatizing focus appears to have been crafted in the bowels of some right wing think tank. This union will lobby the legislature to reject this proposal. While this will be the greatest challenge this union has faced in many years, we will prevail.
In solidarity,
Joe LeBlanc and Sandy Cutler
MCCC SAC co-chairs


PS In case you cannot read the Powerpoint document sent out last night, i'm attaching it as a PDF file.


PPS The union is moving quickly on this issue. Rick Doud will be the BHE meeting today. HELC will meet next Monday. The MCCC's Strategic Action Committee will meet next Wednesday. The MCCC's Executive Committee will meet next Friday to begin to draft our response to this proposal. Stay tuned...

Higher tuitions, merger of six colleges proposed

By Patrick Healy and Jenna Russell, Globe Staff, 2/27/2003

Governor Mitt Romney yesterday proposed dramatically reshaping the state's public higher education landscape, increasing college tuition by as much as 28 percent, merging six colleges into three, and significantly expanding the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

He also would eliminate UMass President William M. Bulger's $309,000-a-year job and his $14 million office budget.

While some UMass-Amherst professors praised the plan, envisioning their future at a ''first-class'' elite university, several education leaders - including Bulger - said the proposals were radically misguided, treating most of the state's 29 public campuses like worker-training centers instead of educational institutions.

The plan's most immediate effects would be on students and their families: Under the proposed tuition rates, Massachusetts residents would pay $6,424 a year to attend a UMass campus and $4,415 for a state college, both increases of 15 percent. Out-of-state students would see UMass tuition jump 22 percent to $17,841 - essentially the rate at many private colleges.

These increases would net about $50 million, Romney said. Yet higher tuition also could revive Massachusetts' reputation as home to public colleges that are exceptionally expensive for both in-state and out-of-state students, while only average academically. For most of the last seven years, state officials have fought this perception by cutting or freezing tuition rates while raising admissions standards.

Among the campuses, UMass-Amherst would undergo the greatest change. Romney proposed adding 15,000 more students over the next decade, bringing its enrollment to 38,000 - closer in size to the University of Michigan or the University of Florida. Amherst's prestige and national reputation should rival those two elite public flagships as well, state officials said, pledging hundreds of millions of state dollars for new dorms, classrooms, and facilities, and to raise the caliber of science research and other programs.

Romney's plan aims to cut the state's higher-education spending by $150 million. Increased tuition would bring in $94 million, a gain partly offset by $44 million in new financial-aid spending. The other $100 million would be saved by cutting campus administrations and some big-ticket items.

At UMass, officials predicted that the plan would lead to 1,500 layoffs out of 13,000 employees, and a $61 million cut from a total state payout of $436 million.

There were no savings estimates for the campus mergers, which would consolidate the administrations of six small schools in Central and Western Massachusetts into three.

Romney said the thrust of his plan was to decentralize the UMass and state college administrations to save money, spur campuses to work more closely together by region, and collaborate with local businesses.

''This is my opportunity to be bold,'' Romney said of his plan. ''We want our higher education system - not just UMass, but our state colleges and community colleges - to work together to get our kids ready for great jobs and for the opportunities of the future.''

The Republican governor also tried to head off a legislative battle over eliminating Bulger's office, an idea that has drawn criticism from House and Senate leaders and mixed reactions on the campuses. Romney hinted yesterday that he was willing to negotiate on the UMass presidency with legislators, but emphasized that he was not attacking Bulger personally but trying to make UMass campuses less centralized so that they could focus on local needs.

''The closing of the office was not a political calculation or a personal one - the same decision would have been reached regardless of the occupant,'' he said.

In an interview with the Globe yesterday, Bulger said that while he understood the severity of Romney's challenge - cutting $3 billion to close a state deficit - he was disapppointed in the governor's proposal.

''It's my belief that anytime you're elected, there's an overwhelming responsibility on your part to exercise good, sound, prudent judgments,'' Bulger said.

Bulger defended his 68-member office, saying it carried out crucial budgetary, fund-raising, and legal duties that the five campus chancellors might not easily perform on their own. Bulger said he did not feel mistreated by Romney, but said he was disappointed that neither he nor other top UMass officials were consulted.

He was not surprised by the snub, he said, because he had been told by others that ''the general attitude [of the Romney administration] was, `we'll do it ourselves, we'll not let the people who will be advocates for something else obstruct us.''

The Romney plan - which was crafted chiefly by education adviser Peter Nessen and the governor's former associates at Bain Consulting  - would notably reshape the public higher education system, now made up of the five-campus UMass system, nine state colleges, and 15 community
colleges.

The 29 schools would be divided into seven geographic sections, from a ''Berkshire region'' in the far west to a ''Southeast region'' dominated by Fall River, New Bedford, and Cape Cod. Each region would have an all-volunteer ''coordinating council'' made up of local business leaders, campus trustees, and others from nearby communities. Each campus would have its own board of trustees, which would work with the councils. The whole system would be run by a revamped state Board of Higher Education and a new Executive Office of Education.

Romney said these newly formed boards and councils would ''ensure colleges have their curriculum linked to the needs of employers in
their region.''

Six campuses would be consolidated, though all would remain open, operating under merged administrations. The six are: Berkshire Community College and the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts; Greenfield and Holyoke community colleges; and Mount Wachusett Community College and Fitchburg State College.

All campuses would keep their own tuition money. Under the current system, the state collects tuition money and distributes it.

Three other state colleges, meanwhile, would be quasi-privitized - UMass Medical Center; Massachusetts College of Art; and Massachusetts Maritime Academy. They would see funding withdrawn over four years, although they would continue to use state buildings.