Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SENATE TASK FORCE ON HIGHER EDUCATION

Senator Steven C. Panagiotakos Senator Stanley C. Rosenberg

Co-Chair Co-Chair

SENATE HIGHER EDUCATION TASK FORCE UNVEILS

BLUEPRINT FOR “INNOVATION ECONOMY”

(BOSTON, MA-- March 28, 2005) The Massachusetts Senate’s Task Force on Higher Education today unveiled its recommendations to create an “innovation economy” driven by public higher education and job creation.

“We are in serious trouble if we continue down our current path,” Task Force Co-chairs Stan Rosenberg (D-Amherst), President Pro Tem of the Massachusetts Senate and Steven Panagiotakos (D-Lowell), vice chair of the Senate Committee on Ways and Means, said. “We are the only state in the nation spending less on public higher education today than 10 years ago. We now spend more on incarceration than we do on public higher education. And over the last two years we’ve set the national record for the deepest cuts to higher education funding. The consequences of this are severe and alarmingly real.”

For the past year, the seven-member Task Force worked to develop a multi year strategy to address the shortfalls in the state’s public higher education system. The Task Force 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. And innovation requires education.

Donna Cupelo, President of Verizon MA testifying at a Task Force public hearing said, “Skills change over time and the public colleges and university provide training that we cannot offer. While companies like Verizon look to public higher education for assistance, sometimes higher education lacks resources, such as available faculty. In Massachusetts, state investment is not what it should be relative to industry’s present and future needs. We want Massachusetts to be ahead in the tech race, but the feeling is that we are not keeping pace,” added Cupelo.

The Task Force’s plan is designed to build on the existing 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 and high-tech job creation. Here are just a few specific proposals:

More Money

Ø Investing $400 million, adjusted for inflation, over 5-7 years to fully fund the formula established by the Board of Higher Education in the 1990s to calculate each campus’ annual budget requests.

Ø Investing $1.7 billion for the UMass system over five years and $1.2 billion for state and community colleges over 10 years for capital improvements.

Ø Authorizing each public campus to establish a “rainy day fund” consisting of a minimum contribution from their annual budgets and 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.

Ø 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.

Minds and Muscles

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 Task Force proposes:

Ø Immediately investing $150 million to develop the facilities – laboratories, equipment, etc. – necessary to propel the “innovation economy.”

Ø Providing $20 million in matching funds for endowed professorships at UMass, focused on key science and technology areas.

Ø 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.

Ø Investing an initial $1 million to assist the University in creating economic development initiatives in under-served regions of the state.

Ø Creating regional economic development centers to help state and community colleges work more closely with the private sector.

Ø Investing an initial $1 million for additional degree and certificate programs in such growth areas as health care, education – especially early childhood – technology and tourism.

Access and Opportunity

Some of the Task Force’s plans for getting more students in the classroom include:

Ø 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.

Ø Expanding UPlan, a savings program administered by the Massachusetts Education Financing Authority, to encourage greater participation from low- and moderate-income families.

Ø Re-establishing the “Dual Enrollment” program to provide high school students at risk of dropping out an opportunity to attend community college.

Ø Tying increases in student charges – tuition and fees – to the Consumer Price Index as a way of avoiding the kind of sharp increases students have experienced during the last several years.

Accountability and Responsibility

The Task Force is requiring the Board of Higher Education and the UMass Board of Trustees to make annual assessments of each campus’ progress toward these goals.

“But we are also taking the concept of accountability to another level,” Rosenberg and Panagiotakos said. “We want everyone, everyone, to feel responsible for the success of our public higher education system. Sink or swim, fly or fall, no matter how you say it, our Commonwealth, indeed, our common future, is tied to the fate of public higher education.”

The complete text of the report can be found on-line at www.mass.gov/legis/

###