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Blueprint for “affordability, quality and job creation” endorsed by public higher education committee
February 13, 2006 - Last week, Senator Richard T. Moore (D-Uxbridge), and his colleagues on the Joint Committee on Public Higher Education, endorsed a bill that would help Massachusetts build an “innovation economy” by fulfilling a 7-year funding commitment to public higher education and establishing high-tech job creation and the preservation of access and affordability as higher education’s primary goals. The bill is scheduled to be debated by the Senate this week.
“The quality of our public colleges will determine our success as an economy, and as a society,” said Senator Moore. “We must invest in the education of our children who are the future of our Commonwealth.”
The bill, “An Act Supporting Access and Excellence in Public Higher Education,” is largely based on a blueprint created last year by the Senate’s Task Force on Higher Education. The report concluded that because Massachusetts has few natural resources, limited agriculture and an ever-shrinking manufacturing sector, and because every other state is focusing on public higher education, and, along with countries like China and India, are making great economic strides with high-tech innovations; the future prosperity of the Commonwealth depends on innovation.
The Task force further found that if we are to have the kind of workforce and society we want in the future, we must break down the obstacles that currently limit participation in quality public higher education.
The bill is designed to build on the existing public higher education system, to position Massachusetts at the vanguard of the world’s knowledge-based economies, and to fulfill the critical goal of wedding public higher education to workforce development and high-tech job creation. Here are just a few specific proposals:
Access and Affordability
Some of the bill’s proposals for opening the door for more students in the classroom include:
• Capping the annual growth in student charges to the three-year average in inflation.
• Allowing each campus to retain tuition. Under current law tuition reverts to the state’s general fund.
• Increasing need-based financial aid by $24 million, including $6 million to establish a new financial aid grant program for part-time or non-degree students in high-demand, low-pay training programs, $8 million for a loan forgiveness program for those who enter high-demand/low-pay professions, and $10 million in additional scholarship aid.
Investment
• Investing approximately $400 million, adjusted for inflation, over 7 years to fully fund the formula established by the Board of Higher Education and the UMass President’s office in the 1990s to calculate each campus’ annual operating needs.
• Authorizing each public campus to establish a “rainy day fund,” known as the Student Charges Stabilization Fund, consisting of a minimum contribution from their annual budgets.
• Allowing each campus to carry over to the next fiscal year any unspent state appropriations. Current state law requires campuses to return unspent appropriations to the general fund, contributing to the financial roller coaster the campuses have experienced the past several years.
• Investing $100 million over 10 years for the Endowment Incentive Program. The endowment incentive program provides a state match for money raised privately by the state’s colleges, community colleges and the University.
Economic Development/Job Creation
An “innovation economy” needs both. The Commonwealth must have professors in the classrooms and professionals in the private sector engaged in a coordinated effort creating the jobs and training the people to perform them. Toward that end, the bill proposes:
• Providing $15 million in matching funds for endowed professorships at UMass, focused on key science and technology areas.
• Authorizing the Executive Office of Economic Affairs to work with private sector leaders and the University to identify the research and development areas that hold the greatest economic promise for the state.
• Investing an initial $1 million to assist each University campus in creating business and high-tech incubators.
• Creating a workforce development task force within the Board of Higher Education to help state and community colleges work more closely with the private sector to identify job creation needs and workforce development trends.
• Investing an initial $3 million as seed money to add or expand degree and certificate programs in such growth areas as health care, education – especially early childhood – technology and tourism.
• Creating a 5-year pilot program that would allow the University of Massachusetts Building Authority to undertake capital projects regardless of the funding source, thereby expediting the building process.
Accountability and Responsibility
Some of the bill’s proposals for improving accountability and responsibility include:
• Requiring that vacant positions on boards of trustees be publicly advertised.
• Establishing a nominating council to make recommendations to the governor on the appointment of members to the Board of Higher Education and the boards of trustees of the state and community colleges.
• Establishing a set of qualifications the nominating council should consider when making recommendations.
• Establishing performance measurement and accountability systems to evaluate public higher education institutions and their progress toward the goals of the bill.
• Requiring the Board of Higher Education and the UMass Board of Trustees to make public annual assessments of each campus’ progress toward the goals of the bill.
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