Mount Ida College sinks in debt as UMA swindles internships in Boston

I am all for the acquisition of new internships and job opportunities for college students, however, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst should be focusing on open seats available in the areas surrounding their campus. The University of Massachusetts at Boston has been dealing with a lot of debt surrounding their new construction projects, as well as funding research, and new innovations, etc. Now they must deal with a lack of jobs available for their students that were redirected towards students who don’t go to school in the area?

Why fix a campus that isn't broken?

A lot of my peers and fellow students, at Umass Boston, have expressed anger and disappointment in the UMass system.

Aaron Lecklider, an associate professor at UMass Boston, expressed his concern about this merger saying, "UMass Boston has been dealing with a debt crisis for years, owing to the cost of repairing the bad substructure on which our campus was built by Whitey Bulger almost 50 years ago. Yet rather than helping us with our debt, the same system that is taking over the debt of a tiny suburban campus told us we need to lay off dozens of employees, enact austerity measures, close centers, and institutes, etc. So today we learned that the system doesn't mind taking on debt -- in fact, they are eager to assume [someone else’s debt] -- as long as it's the right kind of debt."

Umass Amherst is going to be a much bigger campus, already having 1,463 acres of land, and the Mount Ida campus’ 72 acres.

UMass Boston has only 120 acres of land, and now an apparent job deficit for their students. This shows that the UMass system does not care if it has to sacrifice faculty for the sake of UMass Amherst students having access to internships in Boston. Despite this hail mary to rescue Mount Ida, wouldn’t it make more sense for UMass Boston to acquire a campus that is relatively close to it, so that its students have a choice in their campus, and a funnel for jobs that they are in the area for?

What are UMass Boston students supposed to do?

Mount Ida students are taken care of, with guaranteed admission to UMass Dartmouth to complete their degrees at the same or even lower cost. UMass Amherst is reported to have wanted a presence closer to Boston, and their wish was fulfilled leaving UMass Boston students to scramble for a job or an internship if that.

UMass Amherst is planning to navigate through Mount Ida College earning the classy sobriquet, “UMass Newton (since the University of Massachusetts at Amherst at Boston sounds like a run-on sentence),” as a career pipeline for their students that seek a job in the Boston area. Their self-entitled name of “Mount Ida Campus of UMass Amherst,” sounds redundant.

Logistically speaking, it would make sense that if students wanted a job in Boston, that they would have enrolled in a public state university in the heart of Boston instead of on the other side of the state? I don’t see any rhyme or reason behind this merger, only as an escape button for Mount Ida College to go bankrupt with grace and have the UMass system pick up the broken pieces and renovate it in standard UMass fashion.

I hope that Massachusetts voters and students take action in expressing their concerns and dislike towards this merger, and to reconsider the hastily made decision made by UMass consortium faculty and staff members.