PRESIDENT OBAMA says America will win the future by “out-innovating,’’ and “out-educating’’ our global competitors. It is hard to see how when US colleges waste so much innovation on simply making college affordable.
Take UMass Amherst. In its efforts to escape stepchild status in a land bejeweled with private colleges, it has been on something of a roll. Last fall, it was ranked in the British-based Times Higher Education magazine’s top 200 world university rankings, with its strongest component being its research. Then, several doctoral programs were highly ranked in a National Research Council report. In January, Kiplinger’s ranked the university 83rd among best values in public colleges.
Although it did not make the Princeton Review’s 50 best-value public colleges released this week, it did make publication’s general list as one of America’s best 373 colleges. One student told the Review that the college has many professors who “show a passion for teaching. I have yet to see a professor who just teaches for money.’’
But just when things are looking up for UMass’ reputation, the money is disappearing. After years of rising state appropriations that went from $7,758 a student in fiscal year 2004 to $10,028 in 2008, the system estimates that budget cuts will send appropriations down to $7,121 for fiscal year 2012. Appropriations were already slashed to about that level two years ago, but federal stimulus funds maintained 2008 levels.
If the cuts hold, not to mention any ripple effects of proposed federal cuts to higher education being pushed by the Republican majority in the House, this means higher student fees and more debt. The average student at UMass already owes $23,614 upon graduation, according to both Kiplinger’s and the Princeton Review. If they end up owing significantly more, it will hurt the university’s competitiveness all over again.
State systems like those in North Carolina, Florida, and California make it so that students at their flagship universities face average debts ranging between $14,200 and $15,900 upon graduation. In fact, all three states have many of their other public universities on best-value lists. UMass Amherst is the only one to show up from Massachusetts on them. This is after eight years of increasing student aid, it announced last week, from $24.4 million to $85.3 million, to the point that two-thirds of its nearly 16,000 full-time students at UMass Amherst get some form of financial aid. The UMass system overall boosted financial aid over the last eight years from $35.6 million to $130.5 million.
Including the end of stimulus funds, UMass Amherst Chancellor Robert Holub says the cuts amount to nearly 9 percent. He claimed in a message to the campus last month that the school has already cut $19 million over the last two years and that “any further reduction in our base commitments will hinder dramatically our ability to maintain quality and to generate the revenues we need to fill some fraction of the funding gap.’’
As someone who has criticized the bloated costs of many universities, I feel some sympathy for UMass this time around. It is at risk of falling further behind. Because of their endowments and what they are able to get from more endowed parents, private universities in Massachusetts are able to graduate their students at significantly less debt than UMass. The average debt level for students at Williams College, Amherst College, Wellesley College, Harvard, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology range between $8,000 and $15,000. Hampshire College, Smith College, Holy Cross, Boston College, Emerson College, Clark University, Mount Holyoke College, and Tufts are all either lower or even with UMass.
This makes it imperative for the state to consider cuts even more carefully than before. With the economy on the upswing, at least for investors, the endowments of private colleges will allow them to better keep pace with financial aid needs. The last thing UMass needs is for panicking parents to think that a private school is priced competitively. If public universities are to remain an engine of innovation, the creativity starts with student affordability.
Derrick Z. Jackson can be reached at jackson@globe.com. 
