Umass

The president of the University of Massachusetts will be in Baltimore on Friday where he’ll accept his new job as the chancellor of the University of Maryland System. During his four-year tenure at UMass, Robert Caret helped the UMass system achieve some financial stability during very uncertain times. For public college presidents, fundraising has emerged as a full-time job.

After just four years on the job, the president of the University of Massachusetts is leaving his post. Robert Caret is resigning to become the chancellor of the University of Maryland System.

Employers today want workers who are prepared to work in a global economy. One way students are gaining that exposure is by studying abroad. Today more than 289,000 American students go overseas during college. Still, that's just 10 percent of all students. Now, there’s a national push to make studying abroad more affordable and accessible.

It’s been 50 years since Massachusetts Governor Endicott Peabody signed a bill creating a Boston campus for the University of Massachusetts, a move that came after UMass Amherst turned down more than 1,000 qualified applicants from the city.

Don your cap and gown, it's graduation season. Colleges and universities across New England are preparing for their commencement exercises. Getting the message just right on graduation day, though, can be tough.

Three Massachusetts universities received poor grades in a national report that's adding fuel to the debate on how to teach America's school kids.

The report, which was issued by the National Council on Teacher Quality, is critical of how colleges and universities nationwide are training the next generation of teachers.

UMass-Dartmouth is one of three schools in Massachusetts for which the Council issued a consumer report alert. It found the state university is using course material for aspiring teachers that “often has little relevance to what they need to succeed in the classroom.”

Long before two bombs exploded under a bright blue sky on Boylston Street on Marathon Monday, English professor Richard Larschan would take the time at the beginning of the semester to look up students enrolled in his class.

“I made very active use of the student information system,” Larschan said.

Larschan wanted to know whether his students were ready to meet the expectations he had for them. Could they cut it? Did they understand the course workload?

In the past ten years, he noticed a disturbing trend at UMass Dartmouth: More and more of his students couldn’t cut it; they didn’t understand his expectations.

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College students today are struggling with the state of higher education. For instance, class size is up 25 percent in some courses on University of Massachusetts campuses. Then, with money tight, schools are adding administrators to their payrolls. And if paying tuition isn't tough enough for most students, they're forced to pay hundreds of dollars more in fees.

At UMass Boston, Patrick hosted a private roundtable discussion with UMass President Robert Caret and several students, including sociology student Farrah Bruny-Brown.

“Coming up with $600 extra is just another struggle," said Bruny-Brown. "It makes it hard because you lose focus when it comes to education when you have to pay the bills.”