‘This isn't a real school': Online university UMass Global could be a financial liability for the state

Boston Globe

5 hours ago

It was part of a slew of colleges pushing to expand online. 'Schools are struggling,' says Persis Yu, the Boston-based deputy executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center. What's striking, she says, is 'the willingness of schools to basically sell their own name to these for-profit companies — or nonprofits, at least in name or in tax status.'
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So far, it's not clear whether the investment has paid off for UMass, or its students.
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In 2022, UMass Global chancellor David Andrews announced plans
UMass Global now
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Meanwhile, UMass Lowell, UMass Amherst, UMass Dartmouth, and UMass Boston have their own, separate online offerings. All of their online bachelor's programs are
But UMass Global has a slightly different mission, said Colleen Quinn, a spokesperson for the UMass president's office.
'UMass Global is a long-term endeavor for the university to reach a different segment of students, especially adult learners, veterans, and other underserved populations,' she said in an email. 'UMass Global is managing its operations very well and the university has confidence in its direction and success to date.'
So has the state's bet been worth it?
'I think that there is something that doesn't feel right about labeling something 'UMass' that is not, as far as I can tell, accountable in any way to the people of Massachusetts,' says Eileen Connor, president and executive director of the Boston-based Project on Predatory Student Lending.
The Brandman acquisition, Connor notes, 'involves [sending] a lot of money to entities in California that are supposedly nonprofit.' Now, she says, 'Our flagship public university is on the hook for things... in a way that could cost taxpayers and could also destroy this institution that we have all collectively invested in.'
A June 2024 audit found that UMass Global
Andrews says that payments to Chapman start in the 2028 fiscal year and extend to 2031. But he emphasizes that UMass Global is 'fully prepared to make those payments.' And he notes that 'if we have to stretch that period out, we would look at refinancing it.'
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Quinn agreed. 'UMass Global's debt is on a repayment schedule,' she said in an email. 'The university has confidence in the management and leadership of UMass Global to repay its debt to that schedule.'
Andrews spoke with me from the offices of UMass Global, which are neither in Greater Boston nor in Amherst. Instead, they're part of a nondescript office park in Aliso Viejo, Calif.
When I visited the office park in late December, there was no sign of UMass Global. Next door was a Microsoft office and a chiropractor, but no indication that this strip of Orange County holds a piece of a big
East Coast university.
Online platform UMass Global's headquarters building in Alisa Viejo, Calif.
Kara Miller /
Robert Shireman, a deputy undersecretary of education during the Obama administration, believes concerns for Massachusetts taxpayers are twofold. The first is 'potential financial liabilities.' In its
The other concern, Shireman says, is reputational risk. 'To the extent that efforts to offer a cheap degree at a high price sometimes don't make a university look good. And that can undermine the reputation of the ground campuses as well.'
Andrews acknowledges that the University of Massachusetts would have to repay the outstanding debt if UMass Global couldn't, but he feels confident that it will not come to that. With the board, he says, 'it's not a major conversation for us at this point.' Long term, he says, the plan is to add an additional revenue stream for the UMass system.
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Just over half of UMass Global's board has no employment relationship with UMass, says Andrews, but the board also includes UMass officials such as Nefertiti Walker, senior vice president for academic and student affairs and equity.
The National Center for Education Statistics reports that of full-time, first-time 'bachelor's degree-seeking undergraduates' who enrolled at UMass Global in the fall of 2023,
During the last couple of years, Andrews says, enrollment has been growing between 4 and 7 percent per year. 'We need to grow a little faster than that to meet our obligations, but we feel pretty comfortable with where we are.'
But calling the school UMass 'almost feels like it's false advertising,' says Sydney Robichaud, who is pursuing a master's degree in clinical counseling at UMass Global. She lives in Groton and stumbled upon the program while researching online options from UMass.
Because the school is based in California, Massachusetts students can suffer. Robichaud says that 'the class times are based on West Coast times.' So she has been in classes that stretch until 11 p.m., when she's exhausted. She has mostly liked the classes but has been surprised that a student in Massachusetts — the state in the school's name — would be so inconvenienced.
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A similar problem popped up when Robichaud tried to secure a practicum for her counseling program. She says the list of recommended sites had lots of names in California and very few in Massachusetts. 'It was such a pain in the butt,' she says. 'They really don't help at all.'
Another student I spoke with, who is based in California and has been attending UMass Global for over a year, has deep concerns about the quality of the education. He is aiming for a bachelor's degree in business administration and spoke on the condition of anonymity because he works in government and is not authorized to speak publicly on this topic. He has had much of his tuition covered by the military.
'I've never had a lecture,' he told me. He says that sometimes professors 'barely engage with class on discussion boards, if at all. As far as I can tell, they just grade homework and papers. ... I just feel like this isn't a real school.'
I asked him if he ever has live, online class sessions, and whether his teacher enters his life in any way (apart from grading). 'No,' he said. 'And there's no office hours.' He says he has taken eight classes and only once met one of his teachers online; he never met the others.
A good chunk of students, he says, work at large corporations, which offer employees an opportunity to take classes at UMass Global. Those students come via
In 2023, The Student Borrower Protection Center
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That year, UMass Global also spent more than $10 million on advertising and paid more than $1.2 million — including $103,846 for housing — to the outgoing chancellor/CEO, Gary Brahm, who spent decades at Chapman and Brandman before managing the transition to UMass Global. (That's similar to the
In tax forms
Shireman believes that the appeal of having institutions like UMass Global 'that are not quite part of the public institution but are part of the public institution, is that they can operate outside of the usual norms of a public institution.'
'I can see why the head of a university would like that,' Shireman says, 'but I also would agree with a legislator who might have concerns about a public institution behaving in that way.'
A view of the UMass Amherst campus in 2023.
Lane Turner/Globe Staff
Indeed, this is a much broader issue in higher ed. The morphing of Brandman into UMass Global came three years after Purdue University made a splash by acquiring the for-profit, online
Kaplan University and renaming it Purdue University Global.
When Purdue bought Kaplan, it touched off what Phil Hill, who writes the
Purdue Global attracted criticism for the amount of money it spent on marketing and its complex finances. Though it
is still operating, it
Long term, Andrews feels confident that UMass Global can help UMass capture more adult learners across the country and across the world. It has launched programs in India, South America, and Asia. ' Our value to the state and the institution is in pushing some of this innovation,' he says.
I asked Robichaud whether she would recommend UMass Global to other students. She said she would tell them the good and the bad, and let them decide.
The California-based student was less ambivalent. 'I would say that if you could attend online with UMass Amherst proper, go for it,' he said. 'But UMass Global? Stay away.'
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