UMass President Warns: “We Are Becoming Private”
While taking questions from the audience after addressing a Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce breakfast Thursday, University of Massachusetts President Caret warned of the system potentially "becoming private" should government subsidies continue to decrease.
"We are becoming private, we're just not there yet, and we may be forced in that direction," Caret said.
Caret said if UMass goes in the direction of a more private universities "a lot of people are going to suffer" due to decreasing government subsidies that force the university to put more financial burden on students through tuition and fee increases.
Caret elaborated on his comments to the News Service after the event.
"We're taking on things public universities never paid for and if we're going to pay for them, we need revenue, so it changes the whole structural model," Caret said, singling out expenses such as debt service and tuition discounts and subsidies. "It would be a long time, but what will happen, particularly if you become privatized – what that means is that tuition goes up and up and up – at some point, enrollment has to go down, down, down. You just can't get enough students who can afford it, who want to come, to come at the level we're running today without a subsidy," Caret said.
While enrollment could recede in the future under the "privatization" scenario of the more self-sufficient UMass Caret described, the university system announced in September a record high for enrollment for the fall 2012 semester, with 70,874 students across the five campuses. Enrollment system-wide has risen by 16 percent over the last five years, according to UMass.
Caret on Thursday announced that the university plans to issue an accountability report by the spring of 2013 to "shine a bright light on what we are doing and how we are doing."
The report will measure progress in six areas: student experience and success, producing an educated citizenry, world class research and development enterprise, enhancing social well-being, good stewards of resources and telling and selling the "UMass story."
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