If the Legislature approves, the University of Southern Maine will soon become the University of Maine at Portland.
The Board of Trustees approved the change last week, though not without misgivings. Trustee Patricia Riley said she’d prefer all campuses be included in marketing plans, and added, “I do worry that this has unintended consequences that could be significant.”
That prediction is almost certain to be borne out. The simple fact is that the University of Maine System has never worked as its designers intended, and the struggles between and among its various campuses – chiefly between Portland and Orono, but elsewhere, too – have often overshadowed the core mission of providing the best public higher education possible for Mainers, at a price they can afford.
USM President Glenn Cummings cited marketing to out-of-state students as the primary reason for the change; Portland is “hot” in the online surveys and “best places to live” sites, which presumably have some effect on where young people want to locate.
Yet the results of the university’s “flagship match” program show the limitations of this approach. Tuition rates in Maine are relatively high nationally, but low for New England. By allowing out-of-state students to attend Maine campuses for the same rate they’d pay in their home states, the system in 2017 attracted a healthy number of those hard-to-recruit students, part of a declining demographic pool.
By 2018, the impact was moderating, and this year there’s been a significant drop in first-year out-of-staters. Home state universities responded to “flagship match,” and renaming USM is unlikely to turn that around.
Changing names leaves some people in, and others out. “University of Southern Maine” was originally chosen because it represented an uneasy merger between the Gorham teachers college and Portland Junior College.
Even today, this history is relevant. The Gorham campus has 1,350 dorm rooms and Portland none, though USM is attempting to build some; Portland’s prices make it difficult for students to afford housing.
Since then, USM acquired a third campus, Lewiston-Auburn College, for which Cummings has an ambitious plan to move downtown from its current location in the industrial park – a more-than-adequate building, but not a great location.
The difficulty in all these plans is money, or lack of it. The state university system, which came later to Maine than most states, has never had the wherewithal to achieve its original goals.
At two moments, it seemed that could happen: In 1968, when Gov. Ken Curtis convinced a Republican Legislature to create – and fund – a seven-campus system, and in 1986, when Gov. Joe Brennan funded the report of a Visiting Committee that named Orono the flagship and Portland the site of professional schools, and rationalized programs throughout the system.
Since then, university appropriations have declined as a proportion of the state budget, and even more so by comparison to college costs; mortgage-size debts are the fate for many Maine graduates.
The LePage years were particularly tough for the university, but it’s not as if other governors made it a priority. The contrast with Maine’s robust funding for K-12 schooling is striking.
Public schools get about $1 billion a year from the state, and raise another $1 billion or more from property taxpayers. By contrast, state funding for public universities is about one-tenth that total, not much more than $200 million; community colleges get just $70 million.
At one time, Maine’s lack of interest in higher education was a function of its economy. There were many good blue-collar jobs, and one could earn a middle-class wage with a high school education.
Those days are long gone. Yesterday’s mill workers are struggling in low-paid service jobs – or leaving Maine altogether. Stemming that tide is going to take a lot more than better marketing.
The university system does have success stories. Its engineering programs and high-tech research could soon produce world-class offshore windpower platforms.
Tellingly, those programs are funded largely by private and federal grants. Those dollars aren’t available for creating better degree programs for nursing, teaching and journalism, among many others. Only lower tuition and higher state funding will make the difference for most jobs in the 21st century.
There’s nothing wrong with putting one’s best foot forward. But until the trustees again become advocates for a better, stronger system – and convince the Legislature to find the money – the fundamental mismatch between the university system’s potential, and its current achievements, will persist.
Douglas Rooks is a veteran Maine editor, opinion writer and author. He can be contacted at:
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