Re: Rename the MASCAC
Wow! This is a major change in how Massachusetts defines Universities! Up till now, they were in a minority of states (of which New York in also included) which required Universities to grant research based Ph.D. degrees in several disciplines.
In New York the current definition of a university is:
"University means a higher education institution offering a range of registered undergraduate and graduate curricula in the liberal arts and sciences, degrees in two or more professional fields, and doctoral programs in at least three academic fields."
Here doctoral programs refer to research based doctoral programs, an not professional doctoral programs such as DPT--Doctor of Physical Therapy.
New York (and formerly Massachusetts) views its position on the use of the term "University" as superior to the other 45 or so states that allows that term to be used by any school with masters programs.
The recent change of name of Neumann College to Neumann University would not have occurred in the state of New York. (For the record.....Colgate University is considered a college by the state of New York; their use of "University" has been grandfathered and allowed since Colgate called them selves a university prior to the state adopting the current definition of the term university.)
This very rigid definition has been challenged by a group of independent colleges in the state. That group claims that limiting the term "University" to institutions with research based Ph.D. programs hurt schools which would be called universities in most any other state. They claim:
"Fully 80% of all “master’s colleges and universities” in fact carry the university name, where that title reflects the breadth of their graduate offerings and distinguishes them from purely undergraduate colleges. Within the “master’s – large” subset, 87 percent are universities. Of those that remain colleges, the majority are in the states of New York and Massachusetts, the only ones that still require the presence of doctoral degrees for an institution to adopt the university name. That constraint limits the ability of public and private comprehensives in these states to compete successfully with peers elsewhere for students and financial resources, especially in the international context where “college” typically refers to a secondary school."
It will be interesting to see if New York re-visits their definition of university in light of this change in Massachusetts.
- I thought the Kennedy's were from Massachusetts 
