01:00 AM EST on Friday, January 16, 2004

Chancellor Jean MacCormack of the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth is keenly aware of the difficulties of offering a quality education at a price that students can afford.

Chancellor MacCormack spent 2003 roiled in the punishing task of finding realistic finances on which she could balance her dreams of improving higher education in the region -- and so its civic life and economy -- and an $8 million cut in the school's base state budget last year.

Undaunted, she recently expressed optimism for the success of her university in 2004. Chancellor MacCormack said she plans to make the university "a regional education powerhouse" by strengthening satellite campuses, such as the Continuing Education Center in the old Cherry, Webb & Touraine building on South Main Street in Fall River; its College of Visual and Performing Arts in the former Star Store in downtown New Bedford, and its Advanced Technology and Manufacturing Center on the Fall River-Westport town line. Threatened cutbacks in funding for these campuses had made their future bleak, but the threats have been withdrawn.

Governor Romney, who seemed in danger of letting his very public attack on former University of Massachusetts President William Bulger cloud his understanding of the needs of UMass-Dartmouth, appears to have done his homework and now seems committed to the public university system, including at Dartmouth.

In 2003, UMass-Dartmouth staff and faculty worked for the third year in a row without a raise. That is being corrected with a raise this month, which should help improve morale.

Chancellor MacCormack said the Dartmouth campus this year will have more students and more professors. Enrollment rose to 8,500 last year, and she hopes to bring that up to 10,000 in the next few years. There were 24 new professors hired last year; the school plans to hire 43 more this year.

A new building to house the Charlton Business College is slated to open in the fall, and the university is still pursuing talks on a merger with its neighbor, the Southern New England School of Law. Such a merger would give the state its only public law school.

For the past four years, Chancellor MacCormack has been engaged in a Sisyphean attempt to push the university up the academic hill. We are pleased she finally might be liking the view.