A Political History of the University

UMass was built by a small handful of Irish-Catholic urban Democrats who controlled the state legislature until the 1970's (when the power base of the Democratic party in the state started shifting from the cities to the suburbs). Their agenda was to expand access to higher education to sons and daughters of working and middle class families and toward that end they poured tens of millions of dollars into the Amherst campus completely transforming it in about a decade. As the report notes, between 1959 and 1971 - 150 new buildings were built on the Amherst campus, enrollment tripled from about 6500 to over 18,000, and more than 700 new faculty were hired.

"In the post-War period, however, the traditional blue-collar Democratic constituency prospered. Those who were enjoying the benefits of this new prosperity sought to pass it on to their children, and a college education was an important and symbolic means toward this end. The Democratic leadership of the legislature therefore set about to make higher educaiton available at an affordable price.....Over a ten or twelve year period the campus was transformed almost beyond recognition, the product of hundreds of millions of new dollars and thousands of new students." (pp. 6-7)