Derek Bok, a former president of Harvard has written a book UNIVERSITIES IN THE MARKETPLACE about the commercialization of higher ed. He is 
quoted as lamenting
the encroachment of the marketplace on the work of hospitals, cultural institutions, and other areas of society that have traditionally been thought to serve other values
Massachusetts is an odd state. In Michigan, the Great Universities were public universities: University of Michigan and Michigan State University. Although there were places in Michigan where many people were educated, the state overall did not see itself as particularly intellectual. In Massachusetts, I think there is an greater sense of intellectualism, but a much increased sense of class and when people think Great University, they think "Harvard" and "MIT" -- not UMass. Thomas Finneran, the Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, for example, sends his daughter to College of the Holy Cross. Increasingly, there seems to be a perception in Massachusetts that you deserve the best higher education you can afford and public higher education should be limited to job training. Massachuetts is the only state where more students attend private rather than public institutions of higher education.
Why should the state invest in public higher education? Why should the state invest in UMass in particular? I think because a public university has a much better
opportunity for changing the trajectories of people's lives. If you look at someplace like Harvard, they accept 11% of students who apply (18,693 applied, 2,082 admitted). Most of the people who apply to Harvard have already had many affordances that increase the likelihood of their success. They are already on a successful trajectory. By constrast, UMass accepts 67% of the students who apply (19,499 applied, 13,126 admitted). This is a much more diverse group of people. Many of them aren't going succeed -- only 57% succeed in graduating within 6 years. But they got a chance. And I think among these folks are people who start with a substantially lower trajectory and leave with their trajectory substantially raised.
I believe that the potential for a real education, and not just job training, should be placed within reach of everyone. Thomas Jefferson recognized the importance of education of the populace as a whole with the maintenance of democracy
those persons, whom nature hath endowed with genius and virtue, should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens, and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth or other accidental condition or circumstance [...] It is better that such should be sought for and educated at the common expense of all, than that the happiness of all should be confided to the weak or wicked [from A Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge]
Education is critical for the engine of business. An educated population will also support a more advanced economy. An educated population is also more flexible: more able to adjust to change. When business is retrenching, finding resources to sustain education is difficult, but those communities that continue to make these investments will be the ones that recover first and go farther. It reminds me of when I first started looking for a job: no-one would hire me, even though I was certain I could learn whatever they needed me to do. I realized only then that employers wanted me to to have already learned whatever they needed before they hired me. We, as a state, need to make that investment in ourselves to make the case to business that our state is worth their investment.
Most importantly, however, it empowers people to create their own engines of economic development. Someone who is "trained" learns a skill and once that skill is out-of-date, the person needs to be retrained. People with an education have the potential to train themselves for whatever they need to do.
Today, I took a picture of a botanist. I've been taking pictures of all of the faculty in the department -- part of our on-going efforts to maintain the department's webpages. The botanists, interestingly, have all wanted their pictures taken either in the greenhouse or (in the case of one rebel) in front of greenery outside. While I was in the greenhouse, the Welwitschia was blooming. Fascinating plants, Welwitschias...
