Last week, the Massachusetts Secretary of Education, Peter Nessen invited The Mass Media and newspapers from the other 28 state higher education institutions to a morning briefing on the governor’s reorganization project for higher education.
Let us state clearly: we are not buying what Romney and Nessen are telling us.
Lie #1: The Romney Administration shares no blame for massive fee hikes.
The Romney administration’s position is that when they cut the budget for the UMass system, it is the UMass administration alone that are to blame for massive fee hikes. The protocol should be for administrations to cut waste in “non-instructional” services first, not to immediately raise fees and put the burden on the student. Or, the best way to solve a revenue crisis is to cut services, cut jobs, and cut some more services and jobs – then repeat.
Lie #2: The goal of the plan is to make the higher education system more accountable to students.
This lie is directly targeted to win over the student who is upset with the declining services at UMass Boston – which are a direct result of several rounds of budget cuts on top of insufficient appropriations to begin with. The real goal of the plan is to avoid making big business pay for decades of tax cuts, breaks, loopholes and handouts that caused the revenue crisis in the first place.
Lie #3: The reorganization plan will be better for students.
Romney is proposing that UMB needs to overhaul its curriculum and mission to entice more donations from the private sector. UMB should limit its functions and lower itself to a vocational school status. The result will be to effectively prevent students from developing many talents they possess that do not correspond with the needs of maintaining a profitable private sector.
Lie #4: There is not enough money.
This is the decisive point. Somehow, one of the richest states- in the richest country in the world- cannot afford a public higher education system that is accessible to everyone in the state. This should be a crime. There is plenty of money. There are a dozen Fortune 500 companies in Boston that should foot the bill after receiving tax breaks and state welfare benefits from their back-pocket politicians on Beacon Hill.
Why the need to lie, Mr. Nessen?
The logic behind all these lies is rooted in the fact that the Romney administration is trying to ram through a plan that will be devastating to public higher education, and there is a bitter and significant opposition that is prepared to have it out with him.
In Massachusetts today, there is a mood for decisive change in government policy. Romney was elected with a mandate from the voting public to “clean up the waste on Beacon Hill” because of the apparent ineptitude of previous state administrations to deal with the real problems facing the Mass public today. The Romney administration will attempt to use this mood to push through a program starving higher education of necessary funding, causing layoffs, and cost hikes, and defending tax cuts, breaks, loopholes and handouts for big business.
Our own best defense is to unite behind the fact that there is plenty of money for the union contracts; for maintaining and creating university jobs; for new schools and liberal arts curriculums; and there is even enough money for a universal free higher education system. We must be decisive on this issue: there is plenty of money and its time to make big business cough it up.