BOSTON — Public higher education campuses around Massachusetts are on the verge of what boosters call the most significant capital investment in nearly two decades following the Senate’s passage of a major borrowing bill on Thursday.
Senators voted unanimously in favor of legislation (S.2962) that authorizes up to $3.28 billion in borrowing, with $2.5 billion of that dedicated for maintenance, repairs and major capital projects at the state’s 15 community colleges, nine state universities and five University of Massachusetts campuses.
The bill is in keeping with legislation filed last year by Gov. Maura Healey and a bill that cleared the House in November. Once legislative negotiators agree on a single bill, it will likely be on a glide path to the governor.
The three largest outlays in the Senate bill are the $1.25 billion to be allocated to the UMass system, the $1.25 billion that would flow to the state universities and the community colleges, and $275 million specifically for the Massachusetts College of Art and Design’s Huntington Tower, a building that lost a chunk of its facade in a December 2023 storm and one that state officials say is among the most costly in their portfolio.
Senate Ways and Means Committee Chair Michael Rodrigues said the bill is personal for him, recalling his time at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth when it was still known as Southeastern Massachusetts University.
“Now when I go on campus, as I do regularly, and I look around and I realize that those are the same windows, these are the same doors, these are the same roofs … this is the same broken concrete that was here when I was a student there last century,” he said. “I watched Bucky Dent hit his home run at the Rathskeller at SMU. It was October ’78.”
Rodrigues added, “I don’t remember the last time I was so excited about coming into session,” recounting that he was “waist deep in snow” when he left his Westport house Thursday morning and needed a ride to the State House from an aide.
Citing the work of a higher education capital working group, Sen. Jo Comerford of Northampton has said the cost of deferred maintenance, decarbonization and modernization across all public higher education campuses totals $25 billion.
At a press conference before the vote, Comerford, the Senate Ways and Means Committee vice chair and Higher Education Committee chair, framed the bill as the next step in expanding access to higher education.
“Right now, community college is free and students at four-year universities … 62% of them are going for free tuition and book supplies,” she told State House News Service. “We need to continue to invest in the system so that breaking down barriers allows these students access to an excellent, really excellent 21st-century education.”
Comerford said the working group took a “deeply nerdy dive” into higher education financing and sought to align long-delayed repairs with modernization and climate goals.
“Can the same dollar do that? The answer is yes, yeah, we can,” she said, calling the bill a “triple win” that tackles out-of-date infrastructure, promotes decarbonization through updating buildings, and takes financial pressure off of students and families by using state dollars to get it done.
At UMass Amherst, deferred maintenance totals $1.8 billion, and the 300-building campus accounts for about one-quarter of the fossil fuel consumption of all state buildings, Comerford said during the debate. Across the entire UMass system, deferred maintenance totals $4.8 billion and its 537 buildings account for 43% of total emissions by state-owned buildings.
The Senate bill includes $120 million to equip public higher education laboratories and bolster health facilities that promote student well-being, $100 million toward the creation of housing and mixed-use developments on campus properties, $80 million for campus energy efficiency and decarbonization, $30 million for campus master planning, and $20 million for technology improvements that support students and facilitate remote and hybrid learning.
College presidents said the measure would ease pressure on operating budgets and students at a time when many students are weighing the benefit of a degree against its cost.
“This makes the ability to go get a bachelor’s degree at the state universities … more affordable,” said Fred Clark, president of Bridgewater State University.
Clark said Bridgewater faces $250 million in deferred maintenance and already spends between 5% and 8% of its annual budget on upkeep.
“That’s too much of a burden on our students,” he said. Breaking it down, the backlog amounts to roughly “$25,000 per student at Bridgewater. If I was to try to break it out and do a bond on my own, it’d be $2,500 per student per year. That’s not affordable for our students. We lose students when we go up just $100.”
Mary Grant, president of the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, said the dedicated funding for her campus could allow the school to address a long-troubled legacy building that dates back to the era of the Ward Commission, the 1980 special commission that exposed widespread corruption and waste in state building projects.
“It’s been a building that for years we’ve tried to work on, to improve, to strengthen. It’s beyond our ability to do that without this kind of an investment,” she said.
“This is allowing us to deliver on that, and it’s allowing us to reimagine what an art and design school for the 21st century looks like and not handicapped by a building that is beyond our ability to tackle,” she continued, adding that addressing the “leaky building” would also reduce its climate impact.
In addition to the special obligation bonds authorized, the bill would also tie up $125 million in annual surtax revenues that lawmakers have warned are volatile. Similar to what the state has in place for transportation investments, the higher education investment bill proposes to annually use $125 million of income surtax revenue to leverage new borrowing capacity for higher education infrastructure needs. The Healey administration has said the plan could unlock $2.5 billion in borrowing capacity over 10 years.
Asked about any concerns that carving $125 million annually from surtax collections could limit spending elsewhere, Rodrigues said lawmakers are “very comfortable.”
“We model this after what we did on the transportation side,” he said, referring to the use of surtax dollars to capitalize the Commonwealth Transportation Fund. “The Fair Share surtax is continuing to outperform our estimates, so we’re very comfortable. It generates close to $3 billion a year. To carve out $125 million in order to capitalize and make all these investments within the next 10 years, it’s well worth it.”
Comerford agreed that there is sufficient revenue to make investments across the education continuum, saying lawmakers can invest in both K-12 education and higher education.
Healey proposed her version of the bill, called the BRIGHT Act, in January 2025, urging the Legislature to address campus infrastructure built in the 1970s that is “unable to meet modern demands.” She has said it is a key part of her economic agenda.
“Much of the core infrastructure at our public institutions of higher ed have reached the end of their functional lifespan, resulting in an estimated 10-year backlog of deferred maintenance,” former Education Secretary Patrick Tutwiler told lawmakers at a public hearing in June 2025.
Asked about how he sees the bill fitting into their economic plan, Rodrigues said Massachusetts has long relied on its “eds and meds” foundation.
“We need to have first-class, 21st-century higher educational institutions to attract and retain the students that are going to be part of our economy in the future,” Rodrigues said. “We’ve made lots of investments in our K-12 system. It’s time now that we made these investments in our higher ed system.”
Sen. Jacob Oliveira called the legislation an “economic jobs” bill during the debate, saying the investment will result in “good jobs and construction in the skills trade” for western Massachusetts and around the state.
The House took up its $3.275 billion version of the bill (H.4769) in November and passed it 148-5 after attaching a $370.5 million amendment packed with earmarks for college projects around the state. The House and Senate could move as soon as Monday to appoint three members from each side to negotiate a compromise version that would be sent to Healey’s desk if approved by both branches.