UMass grads tell Globe writer where she can stick her article about their alma mater

Between 1989 and 1990, I decided not to apply to the Ivy League schools. I applied to eight colleges and got accepted to all eight.

The schools? Framingham State College (now Framingham State University), University of New Hampshire, University of Massachusetts of Boston, University of Massachusetts Amherst, University of Rhode Island, University of Hartford, Brandeis (well, one high-level college) and Southeastern Massachusetts University, which became University of Massachusetts of Dartmouth.

I graduated from Umass Dartmouth in 1994. The four years I spent at UMassD totaled about $40,000 - and that included in-state tuition, room, board and fees - but that was 1990's money. I had the loans through MEFA and they were paid off March 2005. It took me 10 years at $225 per month, but you can imagine my pure, unbridled ecstasy when I got the letters telling me my payments were over.

Then there was the one semester of graduate school (long story short: it didn't work out) at UNH that cost $9094. I paid $100 per month from 1996 to 2008.

The Pioneer Valley-sized chip on my shoulder reacted poorly to that story. There must have been a better way for her to report this topic without sounding like she didn't want to get her opera gloves dirty with state school dirt. Aren't there cheese farms and mall condos to cover?

And to the UMass grads that have replied to the story: Capitalize the M. This isn't "massachusetts." Maybe that story did have a point...

My brother goes to UMass Amherst and I go to BU. I have to say all this talk about UMass versus high ranked school is there are kernels of truth.

Unless she is just outright making up the statistics, they hold weight that have to addressed. Some can be disputed, one can debate on the importance of tenured professors or the number of professors in the English department. The size of the endowment, graduation rate (seriously, 50 percent?), state cuts to the university budget, and lagging SAT scores are much harder to ignore.

UMass should go after the best professors, increase the endowment to help achieve such aims, and something is very telling if only half the student body graduates 4 years after matriculation. For those who defend Amherst by talking of how well you done since, well what about the other half who didn't graduate in 4 years. Perhaps it is the student, but something's off when you compare numbers like that against other schools. Problems like that must be addressed.

Now, I'm not saying Amherst is a bad school. I'm damn sure that my brother will do just fine after college, maybe even better than me. For most careers and aims in life, you won't find too much of a difference by the school itself.

I need to also point out by those who are ripping into high ranked schools by talking about debt, many schools do offer a great amount of scholarships and financial aid. Now if one have a choice between 200k of debt or 0 debt at Amherst, I would have to say Amherst, but there's plenty who will not be 200k in debt.

Every school have its bright kids and the not so bright ones. Thousands graduate each year, so of course you'll find those who do just fine after and those who didn't. It's up to each individual student in the end.

I have to confess that while it is definitely not in my nature to see the glass as half-full, I read the article as the Globe trying to draw some attention to the problem of underfunding the state colleges and universities (or are they all universities now? This is what the Legislature spends its time on - what entities can call themselves - rather than finding ways to make sure they are properly resourced). In that respect, I saw it as a decent story.

I can also echo Mr. Copeland's account. While I am not an instructor, I am a professional in my early 30s who has been taking science classes at one of the community colleges over the past year. I will be the first to admit that I have not seen what I expected, which was a bunch of kids who did not like to be in school and were there solely because their parents told them that if they didn't go, they had to move out.

The kids or young adults in these classes (most range in age from 18-24) are for the most part very dedicated and driven. They are sequencing DNA rather than sending IMs to each other (really). After getting to know a little about many of them, I discovered that they are are also making a very good financial choice - getting and associates degree at $151 a credit (plus the fees, which are, btw, more than than tuition number), which credits MUST be accepted by the UMass system (under the community college compact that the state set up) so long as they do well enough to meet the entrance requirements. I must also say that the level of instruction and the dedication of the professors, adjunct and tenured, has surpassed my expectations.

We will never keep all of our local students local, because, frankly, they are in demand at places like Michigan and the like (remember, our public school systems are pretty much the envy of the rest of the states). We shouldn't want to, either. A lot of those kids will go to Michigan or wherever, and come back having been exposed to people with ideas and worldviews different than those that predominate around here. Considering that we (on UHub) often grouse about the parochialism in and around Boston, this is not a bad thing.

So let's make sure UMass is properly resourced and is the institution that it should be, but lets not worry if Ashley from Ashland, Winnie from Wayland and Nathan from Newton go to Michigan for undergrad. Let's just do what we can make sure that they come back for their graduate work and then start companies here.

The backlash to this article reminds of the vitriol usually reserved here for those elitists who suggest that Dorchester or Mattapan might not be the best places in the area to live and raise a family. But can you really blame people who look at the map of where most of the murders happen, or look at some of the statistics in this story ($181 million endowment vs. Michigan's $6 billion, for example) and decide to make a different choice?

The financial aspect is a huge concern, but we're not always comparing $0 vs. $200K over four years. UMass is far from free, and private colleges and elite state schools can make up some of the difference by offering significant scholarships and grants, especially to those top-tier students so coveted by UMass.

I used to be one of those students, and as the first person in my family to attend college I wanted to aim high. So with my parents' support, I took on some debt to attend the best school that accepted me. But I'll admit there was some intellectual arrogance at play, too -- did I really belong at ZooMass with the guys from high school who spent every weekend trying to put down a 30 rack of Bud Lights?

Of course this was idiotic reasoning on my part, but reputation still counts for a lot. The challenge for UMass is to bring its reputation in line with the quality of its education and the success of its grads.

I'm always a little stunned by the local politics of resentment - both by the depth of the vitriol directed at local private universities and their graduates, and by its ultimately self-defeating nature. Howie Carr and the Herald have built a whole business-model around tapping this passion; it not infrequently bubbles to the surface in local politics, as well.

Here's an entire thread, largely devoted to debating the relative merits of public and private universities in Massachusetts, with innumerable accusations of elitism and snobbery. But the article to which this thread responds isn't about private education. The entire point of the story is that those Massachusetts residents born without trust funds, or who choose for reasons financial or personal not to attend private schools, are getting a raw deal. It's an anti-elitist article, and it's getting bashed for elitism.

The comparison that it makes is not between UMass and Harvard, but between UMass and UMichigan. Or UVA, or Cal, or UNC. And the list it offers could have been considerably longer. Our flagship campus doesn't measure up to those of other states that share our profile - liberal and heavily urban. So that's one group of students we're failing. Then there are the state colleges, which have recently chosen to rebrand themselves as universities. That's nice. But it's not substitute for a meaningful investment that would produce a real upgrade in quality. And our community colleges are chronically overenrolled and under-resourced.

Yes, most of the students at these campuses are bright and hard-working. Yes, they deserve our respect. And that's precisely why we should be outraged that our political leaders are consistently underfunding higher-education in this state. Our students are as good as anyone's, but they're not receiving the support they should. Our faculties are excellent, but stretched far too thin.

But instead of applauding Tracy Jan for shining the spotlight on the endemic failures of public higher education in this state, it seems bloggers and commenters would rather excoriate her for having the temerity to criticize the way things are around here. Her sins, as best I can make out, are not being a local, and not having the proper blue-collar credentials. It's impossible for me to understand how her degree from Stanford invalidates the indictment she offers. If she'd attended UMass Lowell, would the article be easier to swallow? Why?

What this whole conversation reveals is an important reason why the status quo has prevailed for so many years. There's a feeling in this state that pursuing a quality education is akin to putting on airs; it's the modern version of putting up lace-curtains in your windows. Nevermind that better public universities are the shortest and most reliable path to ensuring that our children have the opportunity to succeed in life. In Boston, we've always known how to treat the lace-curtain crowd.