There’s no single profile of “the University of Southern Maine student”: They are working adults, recent immigrants, first-generation collegians, returning veterans, transfer students, busy parents, continuing professionals – even recent high school graduates.

My own story is characteristic of the journey made by so many USM students. To begin with, I was a transfer student, in my late 20s, coming to USM from what was then St. Francis College in Biddeford. I was a single parent with kids in the Portland public schools, and I went to work in a restaurant while I pursued my degree.

Like many USM students, I was navigating a complicated arrangement of school, work and family, while focusing my eye on the prize of a college degree as a means to make my life in the world.

What my classmates and I found at USM was a humane and inspiring community, deeply embedded in all aspects of Portland life. We studied with an outstanding group of faculty who were effective, caring and very, very dedicated to helping all their students. These teachers supported us both inside and outside the classroom. In fact, I owed my waitressing job to one brilliant – and very practical – English professor who convinced the restaurateur to take me on staff.

After graduating from USM, I went on to receive my doctorate from Johns Hopkins University. I applied for many faculty positions across the U.S. and had several offers. Fortunately for me, one was from USM, and I was delighted to stay in my community, with family, friends and neighbors.

Many of my students are just like I was (and I hope I still am): curious, hardworking, serious, hopeful and tied to southern Maine by both practical considerations and love. I expect a lot from them; they expect no less from me.

We all rely on the presence of a public comprehensive university in the economic and cultural heart of Maine to make our lives better – to provide economic mobility, intellectual enlightenment, cultural enrichment and community service – the kind of social glue that holds our region together.

Because our university makes these connections possible, I urge the people of southern Maine to support a robust and expansive USM, not a “right-sized,” diminished university determined by bureacratic fiat. USM students work and pay for courses taught by accomplished and dedicated faculty. Each faculty member draws on years of teaching and scholarship to create courses and majors that our students want. As students fill these courses – and they do, right to the brim – they pay for the faculty who teach them.

Yet the outrageous fact is that only a quarter of the University of Maine System’s entire budget goes to direct instruction, which includes faculty salary and benefits. The rest of the budget is allocated to non-teaching functions, including the money to run the system office in Bangor and fund the “university services” (support for “common university needs,” such as human resources and administrative services) that the university system office oversees.

Students and alumni, as well as legislators and community members, are shocked to learn that nearly three times as much money is spent on something other than teaching undergraduate and graduate students the courses they want and need.

Many people in the broader southern Maine community realize that a strong higher education system cannot function well with such budget priorities. In contrast, a flourishing and expanded USM will offer students courses based on what they want to study, on their practical needs and, crucially, on their own aspirations. Their educational choices must not be restricted by destructive policies that are designed by unaccountable bureaucrats and implemented by out-of-touch, revolving-door administrators.

USM made it possible for me to achieve my own aspirations to become a teacher and a grateful, productive member of the southern Maine community while raising my children in a place they love, too. Current and future USM students deserve an education that’s of no less quality than the one I received and no less a foundation for their success than the one on which I was able to build. And building that foundation by investing in USM is the best option for all Mainers.

— Special to the Press Herald

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