MASSACHUSETTS HIGHER EDUCATION commissioner Noe Ortega has a delicate balancing act ahead: maintaining institutional values amid growing national skepticism of academia’s role in the development of young minds while confronting stark financial realities that threaten the system’s sustainability.
“I still think that many people believe that it’s only for the smart and for the wealthy,” Ortega said on The Codcast. “We’ve got to do a better job of making sure people understand that everyone has something to contribute to the institution. It’s not about what you’ve done to earn your way in there. It’s about what kind of experience and lived experience you have that can contribute to the knowledge and learning.”
The Massachusetts public higher education system – community colleges and state universities excluding the UMass schools – enrolled 151,878 undergraduate and graduate students in 2024, according to state data. That was a slight tick up after constant declines for roughly the past decade. (More than 200,000 enrolled in 2015.) Meanwhile, at the five-campus University of Massachusetts system, enrollment was basically flat, up by just 0.1 percent in 2024 to about 65,000 students.
Some of those gains are more complicated than they may seem. While the Legislature and the Healey administration championed expanding community college access by making the system free for all students who apply for federal financial aid, the surging enrollment in community colleges is straining resources and packing classes.
Public school facilities are creaking under deferred maintenance, which Gov. Maura Healey’s new proposed budget sets aside $2.5 billion to address, and Ortega notes the schools are trying to “do more with less” including relying more heavily on adjunct faculty.
Other recent initiatives – and the clear mission of the state’s public education system stating “racial equity is the top policy and performance priority” – could face a headlong collision with President Donald Trump’s current anti-diversity and immigration actions. State leaders in 2023 extended public in-state tuition rates to all eligible students regardless of their immigration status.
Rules targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives were among the wave of executive orders signed in the first week of the new administration.
Roughly 60 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Trump said in announcing the orders, “critical and influential institutions of American society, including … institutions of higher education have adopted and actively use dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences.”
The order directed the federal Department of Education, which Trump said he would like to abolish during the campaign, to terminate its DEI programs and discourage such programs in private institutions.
For Ortega, the terminology is a trap. The state’s public school system, unlike the initially male-only and clergy-focused Harvard or agricultural trade schools, was an effort to educate populations being left out of traditional higher educational options, he said.
“We’ve all of a sudden forgotten that institutions at their very premise are places that create belonging for folks,” Ortega said. “That’s what results in success. And that’s how we’re kind of approaching this conversation. If we’re hung up on nomenclature that over time has been appropriated by the media in a number of ways,” referring to DEI, “then let’s shift the focus and start thinking about the mission of our institutions in terms of places that people belong.”
The state is also in the position of protecting its tuition equity program, which is a policy used by Massachusetts and about 10 other states including Ortega’s home state of Texas that allows in-state tuition rates regardless of immigration status. In the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 policy document, laying out plans for a potential second Trump administration, it suggests denying federal loan access to students “at schools that provide in-state tuition to illegal aliens.”
All of the state’s public institutions “remain fully committed, as does the department and this administration,” Ortega said of the program. “Now we find ourselves in an environment where we have to protect it.”
That involves both ensuring the continued funding for the in-state tuition guarantee, but also efforts to head off the “chilling effect” that Ortega says is likely when the federal government targets particular diversity policies. When the Supreme Court struck down race-conscious admission policies, Ortega said the state began explainer campaigns for schools and students alike on what kinds of policies would run afoul of the new rules and which could work as proxies for race. Similarly, he expects expanded “know your rights” efforts around immigration status and schooling.
Doug Howgate, president at the business-backed Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, describes the Healey administration’s approach to the Trump administration’s “target on higher education” as one of “cautious pragmatism.”
“Higher education, both public and private, is uniquely integral to the Massachusetts economy,” he said, “and the reality is that our state is more diverse now than it has ever been before. As we continue to grow the labor force and economy, it’s going to be more diverse, so higher ed needs to connect with communities it has historically not connected with well.”
At the same time, he noted, the state can’t ignore the national context or federal policy changes. Given higher education’s central importance to Massachusetts competitiveness, he said, “we should all be on the same page doing everything we can to protect and support that sector.”
That will require innovation and a clear focus on mission, Ortega said. Changing school admissions policies to focus on need rather than race, aiming to hire more people of color in staff positions, and pursuing active outreach and recruitment to certain schools and students can all help diversify student bodies.
People who have benefited from higher education, like the president and vice president, can be among the loudest to downplay its role as an essential resource, Ortega said. When Trump and J.D. Vance question who should get help to attend college, Ortega said, they “are often talking about somebody other than themselves, which in many ways are the people who we’re trying to serve at our public institutions: historically underrepresented individuals who have not had an opportunity to go there. And it bothers me when I hear people raise that question, because in many ways they’re talking about a particular segment of the population – often those people who look like me.”
For more from Commissioner Ortega – on maintaining institutional values, growing reliance on adjunct faculty, and what higher educational trends keep him up at night – listen to The Codcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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