Scorpions in a Bottle
Columbia Point is a bleak spit of land that juts into the harbor three miles from downtown Boston. A huge housing project, largely black, is located there, and near by are the heavily Irish working-class neighborhoods of Dorchester. Thus the point seems an appropriate site for the new University of Massachusetts campus, a $130 million, 121-acre complex that will primarily serve students from these and lower-income neighborhoods in the Boston area.
But even before the new campus opened last month, it had become the enter of a local controversy that has nationwide implications. The crux of the issue in Boston: Why should taxpayers money be poured into a new public-university center with a planned enrollment of 12,500 when there is space for some 20,000 students in nearby private institutions-- several of which are on the brink of financial disaster.
To the 6,100 enrolled students, most of whom had been attending classes in temporary quarters in downtownm Boston, the controversy is entirely academic. They are delighted with the well-equipped red brick buildings; the chemistry and biology labs rival those Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the fancy new sqush courts simply outclass their counterparts at Harvard. Futuristic steel and glass catwalks with spectacular views of Dorchester Bay colleges, a science center, library and administration building. Says Carlo Luigi Golin0,61, chancellor of the new Boston campus-- and an Italian immigrant who got his own undergraduate education at New York's City College, "Just because this is an institution for poor kids does not mean that its not be as good as those places across the [Charles] river."
Over the years, the state legislature has been fairly generous to the University of Massachusetts, which has itsmajor campus at Amherst, 91 miles west of Boston, a medical school in Worcester and a total enrollment of nearly 30,000 students. Indeed, as long as there were students and money enough to go round, the powerful and influential private universities in Massachusetts did not object to seeing their public step sister flourish with state funding. Now,faced with a dwindling supply of students and costs that have pushed their tuition charges alone to $3,000 and more, the "privates" can no longer watch with equanimity as the "publics" siphon off students at a mere $300 a head--the basic tuition charge at the University of Massachusetts and other state colleges.
Earthquake Effects. As a result, many private-university officials have been pressing the legislature to call a moratorium on construction on public campuses and to increase public tuition charges. With those charges as low as they are now, says Boston University President John Silber, "we have to offer something so good that a student is willing to pay ten times as much to get it." Silber favors low public tuition, but he is indignant about the additional $200 million in capital funds still needed to complete the Columbia Point campus. He points out that theinterest alone on such a sum could supply the educational costs in perpetuity at private institutions for the 6,000 additional students the new buildings will accommodate. "The issue was to provide educational opportunity for kids who could not find places," he says. "The places are available, but the kids don't have the money. And yet the money is being spent to build more places." Like many others, Silber predicts that by the time the Columbia Point campus reaches its full enrollment, several more local private colleges will follow those that have recently had to close their doors. * Silber fears, however, that no significant action will be taken until the possibility becomes real that major insitutions like Northeastern and B.U. could fold. Then, he reasons, the legislature would have to take action because the closings would have "earthquake effects on the local economy."
University of Massachusetts President Robert Wood and Chancellor Go- lino are pressing equally hard to keep public tuition down and construction funds up. Golino scoffs at the contention that spaces for 20,000 students are going begging in private institutions: "Spaces? Where? In what specialty? Places in a curriculum are not like seats in a theater." Wood points to his experimental College of Public and Community Service--which is developing individual training programs for professionals in public service agencies--as the kind of pioneering project that private institutions cannot easily match
Both sides have powerful advocates in the legislature. Says State Senate President Kevin Harrington: "We are seeing the very first major confrontation between public and private here this year. But they are like two scorpions in a bottle, each afraid to strike first be cause each is afraid to die. They also know there should be a marriage of convenience." Indeed, like many crises, the Massachusetts confrontation is fostering a hesitant dialogue between the warring factions. About a year ago, Wood and Silber made a quiet pact to talk less and compromise more. Silber and other private administrators agreed not to push for a raise in public tuition. This paved the way for a significant agreement recently reached by key representatives of public and private institutions: Wood and other public officials will join private educators in pressing hard for $40 million in state scholarship aid, which would enable more students to fill empty spaces in the private colleges.
This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.