Why a Public Flagship’s Acquisition of a Private College Made So Many Upset in Massachusetts

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The University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s decision to buy Mount Ida College and assume the private institution’s debt has prompted questions from government officials and state agencies, and frustration from students and their parents. But the loudest question has come from vocal critics on the UMass system’s Boston campus: What about us?

Under the acquisition, announced on April 6 after its unanimous approval by the system’s Board of Trustees, Mount Ida students will be offered automatic admission to UMass-Dartmouth, about 60 miles from the campus. Newly admitted students at Mount Ida will have to enroll elsewhere, and all of its 280 faculty and staff members will be laid off.

Weeks after the deal was announced, the Boston campus — just 10 miles from Mount Ida — is still upset.

In a state filled with prestigious private colleges, funding for public higher education has long taken a back seat. Frustration has been brewing at UMass-Boston for decades over perceived government underfunding and unequal treatment of the five UMass campuses, with the flagship campus, in Amherst, coming out on top.

Amherst’s new campus, in Newton, a suburb of Boston, is about a 35-minute drive from the system’s Boston campus, the only public four-year college in the area. Mount Ida’s campus will be a branch of the flagship, a satellite campus for Amherst students who are pursuing internships in Boston.

“This is a strategic investment that will expand career opportunities for our students and help drive the Massachusetts economy while strengthening the flagship campus’s position in the competitive national higher-education marketplace,” said Kumble R. Subbaswamy, chancellor of UMass-Amherst.

But for critics at UMass-Boston the new campus signals empire-building by UMass-Amherst at its own expense. The critics want the system to rebuild Boston’s aging campus, not purchase a new one.

The rhetoric has echoed in the statehouse as well. Some Massachusetts legislators said the deal had been struck too quickly, and they compared the new satellite campus to “a country club where alumni could be entertained,” according to local media reports.

No Favoritism, President Says

UMass-Amherst’s purchase has no effect on UMass-Boston’s operating budget, and no state funds are involved in the transaction, wrote the system’s president, Martin T. Meehan. “There is no aspect of this transaction that represents a discretionary use of resources that favors one campus over another.”

Although Amherst will take out loans to acquire the college, he said, its capacity to borrow “is wholly unrelated to UMass-Boston’s capacity to borrow or fund its priorities.”

“We had the opportunity to be part of the Mount Ida venture and still do,” said Barry Mills, interim chancellor of the Boston campus, but “our focus should be on what is right for UMass-Boston.”

“Amherst has the right to come to Newton if it so chooses,” Mills acknowledged. “It is spending its own money to do so. Amherst sees this as the best way to serve its students and the commonwealth, and is willing to take on the risk that comes with this project.”

Still, some UMass-Boston faculty, staff, and students said they’re upset with the effects of anemic funding, like crumbling substructure, faculty and staff cuts, fee increases, and the closing of centers and institutes. “Or maybe we’re angry because this was done behind our backs, in our own backyard, with system lubrication which is somehow unavailable to us,” said Tom Goodkind, president of the campus’s professional-staff union.

The deal was a surprise for many at Boston, said Rajini Srikanth, dean of the Honors College, who spoke on behalf of the campus’s 14 deans. Most faculty, staff, students, and even leaders learned of the deal only from news-media reports. Frustration grew because of the surprise, she said, “but had it been a process that was at least in the consciousness of people at UMass-Boston over a period of time, it probably wouldn’t have taken on so much weight.”

The flagship may have used its own money, but the fact that it could do so speaks to the inequality among the system’s campuses and how it is run, said Marlene Kim, president of the faculty union.

“Is it fair that UMass-Amherst can buy Mount Ida because it receives the lion’s share of state revenue, when we get a puny amount and can’t rebuild our campus as a result?” Kim said. “We need to rebuild campuses like ours that need rebuilding before adding campuses for luxuries like internships.”

Roots of Discontent

While some faculty, staff, and students feel disregarded now, the frustration at UMass-Boston has its roots in a 1970s corruption scandal. The campus was built with low-quality materials, and two state senators were later convicted and jailed for accepting payoffs connected with its construction. Since then, the infrastructure has rapidly deteriorated, and the university has had to undertake significant reconstruction — and foot the bill.

Boston’s campus is falling apart, said Katie Mitrano, president of the undergraduate student government. Students and faculty members describe the campus as a construction zone. Roadways are closed, there are heaps of dirt, underground parking garages have been condemned, and a few buildings need to be demolished, Mitrano said. The construction has also been costly. Deferred-maintenance projects have accumulated, and their expense has added to Boston’s operating budget and debt service, Srikanth said.

“A $30-million deficit was put on the backs of students, people lost their jobs, and the Board of Trustees for the UMass system nor President Meehan assisted in any way, shape, or form,” Mitrano said.

The deficit is still a moving target, but the campus has been told that “UMass-Boston has to figure it out,” she said. “But when a private institution is going under, they become a top priority, and the president and UMass-Amherst swoops in and saves the day.”

“Some have speculated that we are witnessing a majority-white campus trying to gain advantage over a majority-minority campus in this episode,” Mills wrote in a statement defending the Amherst campus and its chancellor, and dismissing such speculations as “unattractive and incorrect.”

UMass-Boston was created to provide an affordable university education to students in a city with expensive private colleges, and it serves first-generation, working-class, minority students and adult learners, Goodkind said. It is a majority-minority campus with 61 percent minority students in 2016, while Amherst is only 38 percent minority.

“People believe that UMass-Boston is forgotten and viewed as this charity case because we are a majority-minority campus,” Mitrano said. “And people feel like the president’s office and the Board of Trustees don’t take us seriously because of that.”

UMass-Boston students empathize with their peers at Mount Ida, Mitrano said, but it is difficult to understand how the board and Meehan could allow one campus to acquire a new branch, while another one is falling apart.

“That’s just so disheartening and so sad that they would rather save students not even in their own system than students in their own system,” she said.

The Value of Public Higher Ed

At the foundation of the Boston campus’s dissent, however, is how higher education has been treated statewide. “A lot of times I think people in Massachusetts feel that the public higher-education system isn’t valued,” Srikanth said. “Because there are such remarkable private institutions here, that kind of brand the city of Boston and the state of Massachusetts, the public higher-education system seems not to be given that kind of status of carrying the intellectual weight of the state.”

Because the system is perceived to be underfunded owing to “slow enrollment growth, limited state aid, and rising expenses,” tuition is rising, said Anneta Z. Argyres, director of UMass-Boston’s Labor Extension Program, who co-wrote the report “Crumbling Foundations: Privatization and UMass Boston’s Financial Crisis.” Many on the Boston campus view raising tuition as privatizing their public university by relying on students’ “private dollars” — a trend that ultimately restricts who can afford to attend.

“What used to be a publicly funded social good is now depending on private money in order to operate,” Argyres said. “And the vast majority of that private money is individual student tuition payments. So that’s one of the biggest forces of privatization as you starve these public institutions of public funds.”

“It makes us angry to witness the erosion of public higher education,” Goodkind said. “As every program and department becomes a cost center, the university becomes a massive retail-sales operation, a board of businessmen decides our future with the governor’s silent blessing, and many legislators look the other way.”

It’s not a matter of feeling inferior to Amherst, Srikanth said. Funding patterns are just another way the university has been thwarted from realizing its full potential.

“We have an amazing faculty, really devoted staff, fabulous location, and great programs,” she said. UMass-Boston successfully operates with its limited resources, she continued, but with more support and resources, the campus could be restored.

Correction (4/24/2018, 12:22 p.m.): This article originally misstated the distance between Mount Ida College and the University of Massachusetts at Boston. It is about 10 miles, not about 20 miles. The article has been updated to reflect this correction.

Correction (4/26/2018, 12:15 p.m.): This article originally presented a statement by Barry Mills without the appropriate context. Mills was dismissing speculations about the Amherst campus’s motives, not supporting them. The text has been updated.