Our special thanks to Fred Clark, Executive Officer, MA State College Council of Presidents, Janice Motta, Executive Director, MA Community Colleges, and the University of Massachusetts President's Office, who have gone to great lengths to reply to every request. They have provided invaluable assistance to our staff and to Task Force members.

For their input and advice, we thank Dr. James Martin, Professor of English at Mount Ida College, and Dr. James E. Samels, President and CEO of the Education Alliance.

We would also like to thank Bryan Harvey, Paul Marion, Jim Arciero, DJ Corcoran, Emmanuel Flaris, Keith Finch, Mary Lou Hubbell, Paul Shilale, Jason Weaver, Mark McCaffery, David McCloud, Tim Weeks, and Lynda Wik for their work researching, writing, editing, designing and printing this report.

Introduction
Part One

Massachusetts at the
Turning Point

Having no other mines to work, Massachusetts has mined into the human intellect; and from its limitless resources, she has won more sustaining and enduring prosperity and happiness than if she had been founded on a stratification of silver and gold, reaching deeper down than geology has yet penetrated.

Horace Mann
First Massachusetts Secretary of Education (1837-48); founder of public education in America