Massachusetts is a state that prides itself on its smarts and its history, but when it comes to the debate over the future of Boston’s only public university, memories are maddeningly short and intelligence is unapparent.
There’s been a steady stream of stories and opinion columns over the past year about the budget challenges facing UMass Boston, which racked up a $30 million deficit amid a desperately needed renovation and expansion of its crumbling 1970s-era campus.
To read the overwhelming majority of the coverage, though, would be to come away with the impression UMass Boston’s challenges are the result of bum decisions made by former Chancellor J. Keith Motley as he forged ahead with his campus overhaul plans.
“It’s now or never for UMass Boston” the Globe declared in a December editorial, apparently weary that the underfunded commuter school, despite years of talk about its potential, has yet to miraculously morph into Harvard on the harbor.
In a curious display of victim bashing, the Globe all but blamed the beleaguered university for the financial straits it finds itself in. No mention was made of the 16 percent drop in state support for the UMass system.
“After a year of fiscal chaos and unsettled leadership, UMass Boston still must prove itself worthy of such commitment,” the paper opined.
Indeed.
Devil in the Details
Understanding the context can make a huge difference when it comes to a big news story. Sometimes it can change the meaning of the story altogether. And such is certainly the case with UMass Boston. A modest understanding and appreciation of the university’s back story, from the 1970s construction corruption scandal that all but doomed its harbor campus the day it opened to years of tepid, mealy-mouthed support by the Legislature supports a very different conclusion.
UMass doesn’t need to prove itself worthy of state support – it has done that in spades. Amid crumbling buildings the university’s dedicated faculty has delivered a quality, relatively reasonably priced education to generations of students while also striving to help UMass Boston live up to its potential to become a leading urban public research university.
I proudly count myself as a graduate, class of 1990.
In an era rightly obsessed with diversity, the student body at UMass Boston is nothing if not diverse, not just racially, but also in terms economic background and age. And it’s nothing if not serious, with many students working their way through college at a time when too many college campuses are awash with frivolity and binge drinking.
If there’s a player in this mess who needs to prove themselves worthy in this situation, it’s the state Legislature, which effectively knee-capped UMass Boston before its harbor campus even opened by leaving the door ajar to a cesspool of construction corruption.
Nearly 50 years ago, an understaffed and obscure New York firm bribed its way through the Legislature into one of the biggest construction management contracts in state history. The resulting scandal landed two state senators in jail and eventually led to the formation of the Ward Commission, which spent two years looking at corruption in public construction across the state.
Within a few years of the opening of the UMass Boston campus in 1974, buildings had already started to fall apart thanks to the shoddy concrete that was used to save a buck and pad the pockets of the corrupt construction team.
Show Me the Money
The biggest challenge UMass Boston faces in the long term is not a budget deficit but rather a political playing field dominated by private universities in which public higher education is perpetually the poor stepsister.
It’s worth asking why Beacon Hill has done so little to adequately support the UMass system, and in particular, UMass Boston, over the years.
A fully-funded public university in Boston would pose a significant competitive threat to Northeastern, Suffolk and other private colleges and universities.
If anything, the competition for students is only getting fiercer, with the number of college-age students on a steep decline in the U.S. even amid a drop-off in enrollment by foreign students in the Age of Trump.
That doesn’t mean there’s some nefarious lobbying on part of private universities, some of which, like Northeastern, have already done what UMass Boston is now trying to do – make the jump from commuter school to research university.
But given the strong ties many legislators have to the city’s private universities, especially Suffolk, public higher education in Boston faces an uphill battle rallying the support it needs.
Why care? An UMass Boston on strong financial footing and with the public commitment it needs to pursue its rightful place among the nation’s top public urban universities could be the key to redeveloping the Morrissey Boulevard corridor, lately vacated by the Globe and ripe for redevelopment.
Moreover, a strong UMass Boston can provide the kind of local, focused research that Harvard and other private universities just aren’t all that interested in.
Despite their press pronouncements, Harvard, Boston University, MIT and other behemoths see themselves not so much as Greater Boston institutions as players on the global stage.
More than one mayor has had to hold their feet to the fire to get the Boston area’s big private colleges and universities to act like true corporate citizens rather than treating their local environs as simply a colorful backdrop for their global ambitions.
Boston needs a strong public university. And it’s high time for the Legislature, and for that matter Gov. Charlie Baker, to show they truly do support public higher education by something radical here in private-college dominated Massachusetts: Pay for it.
Scott Van Voorhis is Banker & Tradesman’s columnist; opinions expressed are his own. He may be reached at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com.
