Battle of the higher ed systems
COMPETITION IN higher education is fierce, and not just for students. States are also chasing first-class status for their public colleges and universities. Massachusetts has to pay close attention to keep up with its neighbors.
New York's Governor Eliot Spitzer stirred the pot yesterday in his state-of-the-state address, in which he called for hiring 2,000 more faculty members over five years and creating a $4 billion endowment. "Higher education funding should no longer be a budgetary pawn or a yearly battle. It must be a permanent priority," he insisted.
If New York actually makes that commitment, it could race ahead of Massachusetts. The public higher-education system here needs some of the same improvements that Spitzer is seeking - more faculty and more permanent funding, better community colleges, college programs that also help strengthen cities.
Spitzer's ideas come from a report released last month by a state commission that warns that New York is "losing ground in an intensifying global competition for preeminence in the knowledge economy."
The commission also mentions New York's "peer states," Massachusetts as well as California, Florida, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas, and looks for solid practices in other states. In this analysis, Massachusetts gets praise for having a "governing structure" that is more attentive to the various tiers of its higher-education system. But few other Bay State successes are mentioned.
The struggle to have world-class public colleges shows how much promising common ground states share. Across the country, public higher education is good for people's hearts, minds, and economic future.
But it's also true that the race is on. States are competing against one another, and other countries. In this heated contest, Massachusetts has to win early and often. "We think of it as needing to run as fast as we can," Robert Connolly, spokesman for the University of Massachusetts, says about progress at the five-campus university.
Specifically, Massachusetts has to catch up on faculty hiring. Community colleges need to improve their students' outcomes. And the state needs new science buildings that can house research and attract federal research dollars. This is money that New York and others are also competing for, because the funds translate into jobs and innovation. This progress is also why the Legislature should act on Governor Patrick's $1 billion life sciences bill - which would fund collaborations among education, business, and healthcare - as well as a capital-projects bill that would pay for repairs and new construction.
It's a marathon for public campuses. They need public and legislative support so they can race along with advances in knowledge, teaching, and technology.