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UMass professors decry Mt. Ida competition

Say Amherst’s Mt. Ida campus offerings overlap with UMB courses

Yawu Miller
Yawu Miller is the former senior editor of the Bay State Banner. He has written for the Banner since 1988.... VIEW BIO
UMass professors decry Mt. Ida competition
UMass Boston Faculty Staff Union President Marlene Kim. BANNER FILE PHOTO

In 2015, UMass Boston professor Ken Reardon launched an ambitious effort to build a new Urban Planning and Community Development program, competing with similar programs at Harvard, MIT and Tufts Universities.

Four years later, the program has 34 students enrolled in a master’s degree program, two Ph.D. students and 19 alumni, all but two of whom are working in public or private planning and development agencies, according to Reardon.

UMass Boston’s Urban Planning and Development program also has unwelcome competition — not from the private schools in Boston, Cambridge and Medford — but from UMass Amherst’s newly acquired Mt. Ida campus in Newton.

“You can imagine how outraged I was when my students began receiving invitations from the UMass Amherst Geography Department to consider teaching in their Mt. Ida program, which they said would be offering a range of certificate and degree programs focused on spatial analysis and land use policy, which are programs that compete directly with our newly-established graduate program and our school’s Geographic Information System classes,” Reardon testified during a meeting of the UMass Board of Trustees meeting last Wednesday.

UMass Boston acquired debt from several ambitious construction projects, including its new science center. BANNER FILE PHOTO

UMass Boston acquired debt from several ambitious construction projects,
including its new science center. BANNER FILE PHOTO

When UMass Amherst acquired the Mt. Ida campus in 2018, university system President Marty Meehan said the move was necessary to enable students from the Western Massachusetts campus to have access to internships in the Greater Boston area. But UMass Boston professors say the many of courses offered at Mt. Ida compete directly with those offered at the Dorchester campus.

“The undermining of UMass Boston and its ability to fill its urban mission must not be allowed,” said UMass Faculty Staff Union President Marlene Kim, speaking during the Wednesday meeting. “President Meehan and the trustees have an obligation to operate the University of Massachusetts as a truly integrated system, rather than encouraging campuses to operate as separate competitive entities.”

Kim presented the trustees with a petition signed by 314 people demanding that the trustees establish a transparent process to coordinate course offerings between its campuses and that competing courses and programs at the Newton campus be immediately halted.

UMass spokesman Ed Blaguszewski disputed Kim’s assertion that the Mt. Ida campus is offering 35 classes that overlap with UMass Boston’s course offerings.

“The Mount Ida Campus of UMass Amherst currently offers one undergraduate program in Veterinary Technology, adopted from Mount Ida College, and three graduate programs that are distinct and non-competitive with UMass Boston,” Blaguszewski said in a statement. “The reference to 35 programs is presumably related to a list of potential programs, courses and certificates provided to the university’s system office as part of the already established university process for vetting potential programs at secondary instructional sites.”

Reardon said the UMass Boston Urban Planning and Community Development program is one of a few at the university in which a majority of the students pay a full tuition. He told the trustees the program generated $80,000 in revenue for UMass Boston last year and this year is expected to bring in $120,000.

“Despite our positive balance sheet and impressive program accomplishments, we have been forced to manage our program without a single dollar of general operating funds in the past five years,” he said.

Reardon and Kim said it’s unfair for the UMass Boston campus to have to compete with UMass Amherst. They point to UMass Boston’s debt from projects including repairs to its underground parking facility and the construction of a new science center and other buildings that have forced the campus to make cuts. A study released by the Pioneer Institute, a conservative Boston think tank, concluded the blame for UMass Boston’s $30 million budget deficit lay with Meehan and the Board of Trustees.

“We meet their needs as working students, as first-generation college students, as students with significant financial needs and as students committed to using their university experience to improve their community — in Boston,” Kim told the trustees. “Drawing away students who might otherwise attend UMass Boston, as well as recruiting instructors who teach at UMass Boston — on top of the stretch of budget cuts our campus has endured — will inevitably lead to shrinking services and opportunities for the very students for whom UMass Boston was established.”