Prof. Nancy Folbre, author of 'Saving State U: Fixing Public Higher Education' discusses how to fund public higher education in Massachusetts.
UMASS Economist – Saving State U: Fixing Public Higher Education from WGBY on Vimeo.
There are rising concerns as to the fate of public higher education as state funding continues to be cut and low and middle income students are finding it more difficult to afford college.
University of Massachusetts Amherst economics professor and author of “Saving State U: Fixing Public Higher Education,” Prof. Nancy Folbre, spoke with Connecting Point’s Jim Maddigan about her ideas to fix and fund public higher education.
“I think we really need to reverse the trend of defunding public higher education,” she said.
Folbre also said that it is a “cruel paradox” that in an education hub such as Massachusetts, funding for the UMass system is not as good as it could be.
“We’re a state that really values education a lot but perhaps because our private institutions are so well known and so immanent we haven’t done a very good job of funding out public system,” Folbre said.
While there are obvious financial pressures and problems in the state, Folbre thinks legislators need to refocus how they view public higher education.
“We need to think about shared sacrifice,” she said. “But, public higher education is an investment in the economic future of the Commonwealth.”
UMass has resorted to private funding and recently reached $500 million endowment goal.
“On the one hand they’ve had their state funding cut and have put a lot of energy and effort into private funding and also raising tuition and fees,” Folbre said. “The response to that is you don’t need our money and to cut the public funding further.”
As far as fixing public higher education, Folbre has many solutions but what she sees as most important is “to address some of the long-run fiscal pressures that are operating on states.”
To hear the entire interview, see video above.
Connecting Point airs weeknights on WGBY at 7:30 p.m.