Dive Summary:
- The full details of Mass. Gov. Deval Patrick's education spending plan won't be revealed until he releases his full budget today, but some details of his proposals for higher education have already been made available.
- The state currently pays 43% of the cost for educating a UMass student, but if funding--an expected annual investment increase of $50 million--brings that amount to 50%, tuition and fees in the system could be kept around $12,000 through 2015.
- Patrick, who linked education to the state's economic future in his State of the Commonwealth address last week, wants to add over half a billion dollars to education spending at all levels during the next two years, and he plans to fund that with an increase in transportation fees and a 1% income tax hike.
From the article:
Gov. Deval Patrick’s ambitious new spending plan includes hundreds of millions of dollars for a broad array of public education programs, from pre-school through Ph.D. Gov. Patrick releases his full budget Wednesday, but some details of his higher education proposals have filtered out already. ...