Forecasting “a transformative impact on the economic landscape of our state,” Gov. Maura Healey detailed plans Tuesday to pump at least $2.5 billion into campus facilities at the University of Massachusetts, state universities and community colleges by the middle of the 2030s.
The governor outlined her new proposal after touring the Cyber Range at Bridgewater State University, a hands-on lab where she lamented that too many public higher education campuses don’t have the proper facilities to train students for cutting-edge jobs that can keep the state economically competitive.
Healey’s office is calling the planned outlay “the largest proposed infrastructure investments in Massachusetts’ public higher education system in decades.” She said her so-called BRIGHT Act (“An Act to Build Resilient Infrastructure to Generate Higher Education Transformation”) will modernize campuses to include labs, classrooms and training facilities that support ifields like web development, robotics and automation, advanced manufacturing, and more. It will also focus on student health and wellness facilities, and will include an emphasis on decarbonizing campuses.
The governor called it a “jobs bill” and her office said construction activity spurred by the spending contemplated under the bill would create approximately 15,000 associated jobs. The public higher education universe in Massachusetts includes 29 campuses: 15 community colleges, nine state universities and five UMass campuses, according to the Department of Higher Education.
“Our public university and college campuses have suffered from historic underinvestment since they were built in the 1970s. We refuse to kick the can down the road any longer when it comes to educating our kids and training our workers of tomorrow,” the governor said, using the same idiom she has taken to using when talking about transportation financing. “With these transformative infrastructure investments, we…