UMass law school decision Tuesday

The Fall River Herald News reports here that the Board of Higher Education will decide on Tuesday whether to accept the merger of the Southern New England School of Law (SNESL) with the UMass system. SNESL has offered to donate their campus and assets to the UMass system.
Arguments were presented by both sides of the merger question at a meeting of the Board of Higher Education this past Tuesday. The Herald News report on that session is at this link. One argument put forward by Former Attorney General Tom Reilly, who is representing a group of private law schools, is that the method proposed for funding the school is illegal. The proposal is that the new public law school would be largely funded by student fees rather than tuition. Mr. Reilly argued that all payments should be remitted to the state rather than be retained by UMass. If his argument was to be adopted, it would turn higher education funding at UMass on its ear. Fees are currently about 7 times the amount of tuition at UMass campuses and represent the bulk of the system's funding. If the colleges could not retain the fees, it would throw their entire budgets into question.
Massachusetts' financial support of our public universities is among the lowest per capita rate in the nation. The trend of that support has been downward as well. Well educated citizens have much higher earnings (and pay more taxes as a result) over their lifetimes than those without college degrees. I think it is in the best interest of the citizenry to support affordable public universities for that reason. What do you think?

And here is the rest.