With university status — it became official last week — comes increased responsibility for Salem State which will be expected to provide both the access to higher education and enhanced research and teaching programs that will help drive economic development here on the North Shore.
Leadership and accountability are key to improving the perception of public education in Massachusetts, according to Richard Freeland, the state's commissioner of higher education, who spoke to the North Shore Chamber of Commerce in Peabody yesterday morning.
Freeland was clearly elated by Gov. Deval Patrick's re-election the night before, terming it an endorsement of the administration's effort to improve the status of taxpayer-funded colleges throughout the commonwealth. Indeed, it can be argued that the outstanding support Salem State, North Shore Community College and plans for a regional vocational school received from the region's legislative delegation in recent years, helped people like Senate Majority Leader Fred Berry and incumbent state Reps. Ted Speliotis, Joyce Spiliotis and Lori Ehrlich win re-election Tuesday as well.
Salem State and NSCC and their respective presidents, Patricia Maguire Meservey and Wayne Burton, have made clear their desire to fashion programs that will help grow the economy and allow local residents to obtain the training they need to fill the jobs that result from such growth.
Writing in these pages a week ago, Meservey observed, "We don't see the change to a state university system as a capstone, but rather a calling — to continuously improve the quality and rigor of our educational programs, expand learning experiences and opportunities for our students, hold ourselves accountable to the highest performance standards, and maintain our distinction as the most affordable pathway to a four-year degree in Massachusetts."
As Freeland pointed out yesterday, having such a pathway is increasingly critical in a state where fully 68 percent of jobs now require a college degree or better. And in order to retain those high-skill jobs, he rightly notes, Massachusetts has to be much better than average in terms of the education those public colleges provide.
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