By
State House News Service
The Republican
on November 29, 2012 at 10:51 PM, updated November 29, 2012 at 10:53 PM
Brought to you by
University of Massachusetts President Robert L. Caret.
BOSTON – University of Massachusetts President Robert L. Caret Thursday warned of the UMass system potentially “becoming private” should government subsidies continue to decrease.
“We are becoming private, we’re just not there yet, and we may be forced in that direction,” Caret said.
Following an address to a Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce breakfast Thursday, Caret said if UMass goes in the direction of a more private university “a lot of people are going to suffer” due to decreasing government subsidies that force the university to put more financial burden on students through tuition and fee increases.
“We’re taking on things public universities never paid for and if we’re going to pay for them, we need revenue, so it changes the whole structural model,” Caret said, singling out expenses such as debt service and tuition discounts and subsidies.
“It would be a long time, but what will happen, particularly if you become privatized – what that means is that tuition goes up and up and up – at some point, enrollment has to go down, down, down. You just can’t get enough students who can afford it, who want to come, to come at the level we’re running today without a subsidy,” Caret said.
The university system announced in September a record high for enrollment for the fall 2012 semester, with 70,874 students across the five campuses. Enrollment system-wide has risen by 16 percent over the past five years, according to UMass.
Caret on Thursday announced that the university plans to issue an accountability report by the spring of 2013 to “shine a bright light on what we are doing and how we are doing.”
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