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A record of achievement clouded by a fog of political innuendo
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FORCING THE resignation of University of Massachusetts president William Bulger may have been good politics for Governor Mitt Romney and Attorney General Thomas Reilly, but it was bad public policy for the citizens of the Commonwealth. By almost every objective measure, the university and its students are better off today than when Bulger first assumed leadership of the four-campus system and its Worcester medical school. SAT scores among accepted students are up a system-wide average of 36 points, with the most dramatic results coming from Boston, Lowell, and Dartmouth — which draw less-affluent, commuter-oriented students. At those three campuses, SAT scores rose by between 43 and 50 points. At the Amherst flagship campus, combined SAT scores for this fall’s entering class are up 19 points, to 1139. The goal of enrolling at least 3700 students in the class of 2007 will most likely be exceeded by several hundred. These days, the number of accepted students who plan to enroll is up from 28 percent to 33 percent. The number of out-of-staters enrolling at UMass Amherst is now holding steady at the historic rate of 20 percent. And, perhaps in part as a result of the tight economic times, applications are up at Boston, Dartmouth, and Lowell. During Bulger’s tenure, annual private support has grown by more than $79 million to reach $113.5 million. The university’s endowment has grown by $100 million to reach $146.4 million. And the number of endowed professorships has risen from four to 46. Funding for research has increased, and so has the revenue generated by licensing UMass research: from $754,000 in 1996, to $14.9 million in 2002, to $20.2 million this year. Bulger, of course, didn’t accomplish all this single-handedly. It was his ability to recruit and retain talent that helped to achieve these goals. That is what leadership is all about. As surprising — and galling — as it may be to Bulger’s past ideological foes and political enemies, he has done a first-rate job at UMass. He channeled his vaunted macro- and micro-political skills into the service of a single cause — public higher education. It is hard to imagine anyone doing it any better. But you wouldn’t know that from recent headlines. Thanks to skillful and cynical spinning by Team Romney and the usual sloppy and unsophisticated reporting by the dailies, you’d think the governor had ridden to the university’s rescue. Nothing could be further from the truth. Romney has called for an open search for a new president. Well, that’s just how UMass conducted its past searches for new chancellors at the Boston, Dartmouth, and Amherst campuses — with input from a broad range of constituencies. Romney has said he’ll help sell candidates on the new job. Well, he’d better, after just months ago suggesting that the system be dismembered. It was Bulger himself who recruited the blue-ribbon committee that will steer the selection process for his successor. In a single afternoon, Bulger — not Romney — was able to persuade two prominent UMass alums, former General Electric chair Jack Welch and former General Motors chair Jack Smith, to serve. Perhaps most important of all, he was able to enlist the help of Northeastern University president Richard Freeland, who began his distinguished career as a scholar and administrator years ago when UMass Boston was still located in largely rented space in Park Square. Massachusetts is blessed to have perhaps the world's greatest concentration of educational institutions clustered inside its boarders. But that hasn’t always worked to the advantage of those with limited financial means. Almost 40 years ago, House Speaker David Bartley and Senate president Maurice Donahue began building a constituency for a system of public higher education that might one day equal that of California or the Midwestern states. Former housing-and-urban-development secretary Robert Wood was selected by the trustees to develop that system. And he did. Years later, Bulger tried to repair the damage that years of political indifference subsequently inflicted on UMass. If Wood was the father of the modern UMass, Bulger has been its salvation. Like Father J. Donald Monan of Boston College, John Silber of Boston University, and John Curry of Northeastern, Bulger has been able to apply his particular talents at a particular moment in time to make the institution he led all that it could be. Let’s hope his successor is up to the task. What do you think? Send an e-mail to letters[a]phx.com
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