AMHERST — When it comes to the future of public higher education in the commonwealth, candidates for Ellen Story’s 3rd Hampshire District state representative seat agreed during a forum Aug. 11, it’s a fight for state funding.
Rising barriers for students and issues of state funding were touchstone topics of the forum, attended by all six candidates. Voters will choose among Vira Douangmany Cage, Solomon Goldstein-Rose, Sarah la Cour, Bonnie MacCracken, Eric Nakajima and Lawrence O’Brien, all Democrats, in the Sept. 8 primary election.
The district comprises Amherst, Pelham and part of Granby.
“The role of public higher education in our country has never been more important,” said University of Massachusetts Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy at the top of the evening.
In his opening remarks, high school history teacher O’Brien said he was “dismayed” by reductions in state support that have led to “commensurate increases in student tuition and fees” — a situation “exacerbated by shameful income disparities in the state.”
Several candidates made references to the role public higher education should play in reducing income inequality in the commonwealth, which according to the Economic Policy Institute boasts the sixth-worst income disparities in the country.
To make higher ed more accessible, said la Cour, an adjunct landscape and architecture professor at UMass, legislators need to look at better ways of offering merit and need-based aid to students.
“Affordability is the keyword here,” la Cour said. “We have to get a handle on how we’re putting packages together for our students.”
Skyrocketing student debt is “an issue of economic justice” that arose out of mismanagement, Nakajima said.
“This has happened as a result of public policy,” he said. “We need to have the goal of making (public higher education) debt-free like it used to be.”
Nakajima and O’Brien agreed that, to some extent, higher education should be available for free.
O’Brien said associate degrees from the state’s community colleges or the first two years of a bachelor’s degree at a state school should come at no charge to state residents.
Any such improvements, MacCracken said, can’t be made until the stability problem surrounding state funding is tackled.
“This instability is the true factor,” MacCracken said. “We can never just set a budget and move forward.”
Douangmany Cage said many of the issues facing public higher ed could be solved by divesting from incarceration.
“If we instead built schools and provided education I think that would be a good way to re-invest in people,” she said.
Asked about how they’d convince the Republican administration to put money back into higher education, the candidates said it’s a matter of rallying together.
“I continually support other good Democrats,” MacCracken said. “By investing in them I’m investing in the entire state.”
Goldstein-Rose and la Cour both emphasized the high cost of higher education in the commonwealth is a drag on the economy.
“Investing in public higher education is an investment in your economy,” said la Cour, referencing how many graduates remain in Massachusetts. “That is our major economic generator.”
Goldstein-Rose said these issues particularly impact the western part of the state.
“Being in debt reduces economic activity,” he said. “The budget is always a fight. I also think there’s an opportunity to make this a western Mass. issue.”
The administration, said O’Brien, needs to feel a push from the people.
“By nature I’m an organizer,” O’Brien said. “We have to build a movement, and the movement has to apply pressure.”
The right candidate, Douangmany Cage said, won’t back down.
“It is about our collective action and leadership,” she said. “We need to fight for the thing that we want, and I will be a fighter at the Statehouse.”
As funds for higher education remain tight, candidates discussed the ways in which institutions are increasingly turning to adjunct professors to fill the classroom ranks.
“UMass, as the biggest employer in the region, is setting a really bad precedent,” MacCracken said, “by not giving adjunct professors benefits.”
Adjunct professors, said O’Brien, an adjunct professor at Holyoke Community College, are “cobbling together” a living in a way that must be addressed.
“Certainly we can find the money there to start paying faculty a decent wage,” he said.
Goldstein-Rose said adjunct professors should get more notice and uniformity from state institutions, “so at least in the short term there’s some certainty.”
“If you grew up in Amherst, (UMass) is sort of like the factory,” Nakajima said, to laughs from the crowd. “Income inequality — this is higher education’s role in that.”
Another way UMass and other state institutions are bridging the budget gaps is by increasingly recruiting out-of-state and foreign students, who pay higher rates than in-state students.
“Maybe it looks like a bit of a shell game,” la Cour conceded, while acknowledging the bottom line. “The state has not been funding us sufficiently, so we need those funds.”
Douangmany Cage, MacCracken and Nakajima said that UMass does well to bring so many international students to campus.
“Part of being a world-class university is having diversity in your student body,” Nakajima said. “It will only improve your ability to compete in the world.”
The forum was held at the UMass Campus Center, sponsored by the Public Higher Education Network of Massachusetts (PHENOM), the Massachusetts Society of Professors and the Center for Education Policy and Advocacy.
The proceedings were moderated by PHENOM treasurer Max Page and co-founder Ferd Wulkan.
Amanda Drane can be contacted at adrane@gazettenet.com.