Gov. Maura Healey announced a plan Tuesday to pump at least $2.5 billion into facilities at the University of Massachusetts, state universities and community colleges by the middle of the 2030s.
The governor outlined her new plans after touring the Cyber Range at Bridgewater State University, a hands-on lab where she lamented that too many public higher education campuses don’t have the proper facilities to train students for cutting-edge jobs that can keep the state economically competitive.
Healey’s office is calling the planned outlay “the largest proposed infrastructure investments in Massachusetts’ public higher education system in decades.” She said her so-called BRIGHT Act (“An Act to Build Resilient Infrastructure to Generate Higher Education Transformation”) will modernize campuses to include labs, classrooms and training facilities that support in-demand fields like web development, robotics and automation, advanced manufacturing, and more. It will also focus on student health and wellness facilities.
The construction activity spurred by the spending contemplated under the bill would create approximately 15,000 associated jobs, the governor’s office said.
“Our public university and college campuses have suffered from historic underinvestment since they were built in the 1970s. We refuse to kick the can down the road any longer when it comes to educating our kids and training our workers of tomorrow,” the governor said, using the same idiom she has taken to using when talking about transportation financing. “With these transformative infrastructure investments, we will give students a cutting-edge education in our affordable public universities and colleges, create thousands of good-paying jobs for our workers and keep our state economically competitive for years to come.”
The fiscal 2026 budget that Healey will file Wednesday will propose to use $125 million of income surtax revenue to leverage an estimated $2.5 billion in new borrowing capacity for higher education infrastructure needs over the next 10 years. The administration said the BRIGHT Act “works in tandem with this proposal” by authorizing up to $3 billion in investments for campuses, leaving the administration with plenty of options when it comes time to borrow and spend for public higher education capital needs in the coming years.
“Our proposed strategy to borrow against Fair Share revenues is modeled on an approach we have successfully deployed in the transportation sector through the Commonwealth Transportation Fund,” Administration and Finance Secretary Matthew Gorzkowicz said, highlighting a budgeting strategy that the Healey administration has come to rely on recently. “The bill we are filing today puts these new resources to work to ensure our campuses can address their significant deferred maintenance backlogs and decarbonize their infrastructure while also modernizing to meet the needs of today’s students and workforce.”
Under a constitutional amendment adopted in 2022, surtax revenues are supposed to be used only for education or transportation purposes. The governor has said her budget filing Wednesday will call for at least $765 million in surplus surtax revenues to be put into the Commonwealth Transportation Fund with an annual commitment to maintain inflows. The state can then borrow against that funding, estimating that it will unlock about $5 billion in bonding capacity for transportation projects over the next decade.
The higher education announcement included statements of support from the presidents of Bridgewater and Salem state universities, as well as from the head of the Massachusetts Association of Community Colleges.
“Although we work hard to address the need as best we can by utilizing student fees and modest state funds, BSU alone still has more than $200 million in deferred maintenance. State support to modernize campus facilities is absolutely critical to enhance affordability, accessibility, and academic excellence for the students we are privileged to serve,” Bridgewater State President Frederick Clark said.
Healey’s office said her bill is informed by a report from the Higher Education Capital Working Group, a group created in the fiscal 2025 budget. The group’s report summarizing the capital needs of public higher education campuses “confirms the viability of leveraging Fair Share revenue to unlock new capital dollars,” the administration said. The report was to be released alongside the governor’s Tuesday morning announcement.
The governor’s office also said the higher education bond bill will support housing development by “providing for higher education institutions’ costs associated with the disposition of land and buildings.”