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The case for public higher education By William M. Bulger
Today, as the evidence mounts that our knowledge-based economy is at long-term risk due to a chronic shortage of high-skilled workers, we need to ask ourselves: What now for these sons and daughters of Massachusetts? Will high quality higher education opportunities be accessible to them? That is the question that I have heard most often as I have traveled to over 60 high schools across Massachusetts. These students want to know whether they and their parents will be able to afford the excellent higher education that they know they need in order to thrive in the 21st century. Thanks to the landmark 1993 Educational Reform Act, $7 billion has been invested in the future of these students since they were in the fourth grade. Standards have been raised for them. Pressure, in the form of the MCAS test, has been applied to them. The promise has been made that their hard work will help them achieve the American dream of a college degree. These students and their schools, in most cases, are doing their part. In a knowledge economy-based state where high-level skills are a necessity to reach a middle class standard of living, these students understand the importance of higher learning to their futures as participants in both the economy and culture of Massachusetts. The Education Reform Act, passed when public schools were in a crisis, has dramatically reduced the educational opportunity gap between rich and poor communities. It has resulted in better training for public school teachers, modernized facilities and technology, and the purchase of up-to-date learning materials. The Legislature and the governor, as well as the business and education communities, all deserve praise for showing the determination to stick with the financial and accountability underpinnings of the plan. Eight years into the Education Reform Act's life, however, the role of public higher education in this noble enterprise needs to be recognized. Today, keeping the promise of educational opportunity requires unprecedented support of the public higher education system, not just by the Commonwealth but by the private business sector, whose success depends so heavily on the graduates of that system. Because the vast majority of public higher education graduates remain in Massachusetts to start careers, companies, and families - 200,000 from UMass alone - support of this system makes basic business sense for the Commonwealth. The innovation states identified as our top competitors by the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative - California, Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Jersey, and New York - have increased funding for public higher education substantially despite the soft economy because they recognize the long-term economic benefits of that investment. Aside
from the life-transforming education provided to the university's
60,000 students, every public dollar spent on the university generates
$5 in economic activity. Our five campuses in Amherst, Boston, Dartmouth,
Lowell, and Worcester are among the largest employers in their regions
and the largest purchasers of private goods and services. They attract
over $200 million in research funds to Massachusetts every year.
The Amherst campus is an economic powerhouse of western Massachusetts, a 30,000-person community unto itself, which sustains hundreds of businesses in the communities surrounding it. Its engineering, computer science, and other technology programs are sending hundreds of highly demanded new economy builders into the Massachusetts work force every year. The Boston campus, created in the early 1960s to give hope to a demoralized urban population, is now engaging its students and faculty in every major Greater Boston initiative, from improving public school classrooms to cleaning up Boston Harbor to providing high-quality adult education programs in Plymouth. The Dartmouth campus, located in a region of the state whose economy has suffered over the years due to the lack of education opportunities, is fertilizing the region with prosperity-building knowledge. This growing campus is the hub of a university-wide marine sciences research effort dedicated to preserving the Commonwealth's most important natural resource - its coastline - and a research center that is helping manufacturers remain competitive in the world economy. The Lowell campus has been a catalyst in the rebirth of that proud industrial city as a cultural destination and is leading the effort to excite middle school and high school students across the state about engineering and the sciences. Our top-ranked Medical School campus in Worcester is pursuing cures and treatments of our most dreaded diseases. It is the cornerstone of a burgeoning biotechnology sector in central Massachusetts, and is leading a national campaign to improve adoption and foster care services. And the five-campus UMassOnline initiative is using the Internet to shatter all remaining geographical and temporal barriers to quality higher education. This is the future of adult education in Massachusetts. Six thousand enrollees know this. The University of Massachusetts, along with the community colleges and state colleges across the Commonwealth, exist so that the people of Massachusetts may fulfill their need and desire to learn. John Adams, the author of the Massachusetts Constitution, expressed the value of education 200 years ago. ''Education makes a greater difference between (one person and another) than nature has made between man and brute,'' Adams said. ''It should be your care, therefore, and mine to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage, to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.'' We have been at the task of education for a long, long time. We know what we should do, and we set forth to do it with a renewed dedication in 1993. That is the course which must now be broadened and become our most serious business. William M. Bulger is president of the University of Massachusetts. This piece originally appeared in The Boston Sunday Globe (Jan. 27). |
