Project Mass

Project Mass: Resources For Public Education

BOSTON (CBS4) ― Ask any executive or entrepreneur and they will tell you that Massachusetts is an expensive place to do business.

So what keeps them here? A highly trained workforce.

But that raises the issue of how we educate those future innovators, the young people who will keep the state on the cutting edge.

Many people are worried that public higher education isn't given the resources it needs to get that job done.

When you meet Shane Hughes, in many ways, you are meeting the future of the Massachusetts economy.

The 35-year-old alumni of the University of Massachusetts started Pyxis Mobile in Waltham in 1998 with a handful of employees. Today, the company has a staff of 50.

"This is a mind driven economy. It grows based on innovation and it grows based on the talented and educated people we can put in the workforce," said Hughes.

Those types of workers are the state's greatest natural resource.

But as budgets have tightened over recent years, public higher education has taken a real hit, and that's where many of those future workers get their education.

"Our state funding is lower than it was five years ago," said UMass President Jack Wilson.

He says this problem is specific to Massachusetts.

"We don't have the history of support of higher public education that they do in other states, such as Michigan, or Virginia, or Texas, and frankly that's because there are alternatives here. We do have a very good private education system."

But schools like Harvard and MIT are not for everyone. A campus like Umass-Boston provides a real alternative.

"The other schools in the area were more expensive," said pre-med student Tamara Jette.

"We are the only four year public institution of higher education in the education capital of the world, Boston," said political science major Michael Metzger of Marblehead.

The entire UMass system is showing signs of neglect. A state senate task force in 2005 estimated that it would take $1.2 billion just in capital investments to get the campuses up to par.

"It's fair to say if you look at the structures that exist that this is a laboratory that you might have found in a 1970s high school structure, but it is certainly not something that you would see in a first rate public university," said UMass-Boston chancellor Michael Collins, M.D.

Chancellor Collins is dealing with surging enrollment and a decaying facility. Last year, the underground garage was deemed unsafe and is now permanently closed.

Collins said investing in UMass is investing in the future. "Over 80% of the students who graduate from the university stay in the Massachusetts workforce. The number would be about flipped for those that graduate from a private institution."

Those are people like Shane. He knows that UMass changed his life. "I got everything that I needed from the University of Massachusetts."

This isn't just about recruiting top notch students. Campus facilities are also important in attracting top faculty, people like Craig Mello who last year won the Nobel Prize for his work at the Worcester campus.

What's next years budget look like for UMass?

So far, they are encouraged by what they are hearing from Governor Deval Patrick. UMass officals also say there are more than 200,000 alumni and 60,000 current students -- and there's power in numbers.

They say people should call their state reps to let them know this is an imporant issue for them.

To find your state rep. or senator log onto www.mass.gov.

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