Massachusetts

Even middle-income families in Massachusetts struggle to pay for college – The Boston Globe

Published

2 years ago

April 13, 2024

Even middle-income families in Massachusetts struggle to pay for college – The Boston Globe

“Gig work is a blessing to people like me,” Strouth said. Still, her son graduated with about $90,000 in student loans.

While college tuition is broadly affordable for the rich, who have the wherewithal to pay the bills, and many poor students qualify for significant financial aid, especially at the wealthiest schools and state institutions, it’s a calamity for those in the middle. They face stratospheric prices but aren’t likely to get much help from colleges or the government.

The sticker price for a year at a private college in Massachusetts now exceeds the annual salary of most middle-income earners in the state. College officials say only the wealthiest families pay the full amount, but for those earning $150,000 to $200,000, which is at the upper end of the middle income range in the Boston area, the expected yearly contribution is often north of $30,000 a year, and can be much higher depending on the school.

“What the college thinks you need and what you think you need are often very different figures,” said Shannon Barry Vasconcelos, a college finance coach with Bright Horizons, the child care provider that also advises families on educational matters, including college admissions. “It can be a problem for those families who fall in the middle.”

New research from Phillip Levine at the Brookings Institution found price increases have made it especially difficult for families on the lower portion of the “higher-end of the income distribution,” Levine said in an interview.

“That is a range that has the most difficulty affording those increases,” Levine said. “They’re subject to the greatest extent of price increases, with income levels that can’t strongly support that.”

The high cost of living in Massachusetts also makes it hard for families to save when kids are young, as experts say they should. Day care costs are exorbitant, sometimes as much or even more than a year at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. College tuition and housing are costlier in the Northeast, too — families in the region spent an average of $33,668 on higher education last year, 20 percent more than the national average, according to a 2023 report from student loan provider Sallie Mae.

The Globe checked six popular universities’ online price calculators to see what each school would charge a hypothetical family of four earning $170,000 a year, the equivalent of two average public school teacher salaries, with a $600,000 home, roughly the average Massachusetts home value, and college savings of $20,000. The findings show they could expect to pay anywhere from $32,600 a year to attend Williams College to $45,800 a year for Boston College. UMass Amherst’s price, which falls in between, still costs close to $3,000 a month. And many families have more than one child to put through school.

To be sure, affording college can be even more challenging for some lower middle income and poor families, particularly if they attend colleges with less robust resources for aid. Financial aid for lower-income families is easier to come by at some of the most selective colleges, though, especially for strong students; those from households earning less than $85,000 a year do not pay anything at all to attend well-endowed schools in the region, including Harvard College. And last fall, Governor Maura Healey stepped in to help less affluent families afford public institutions; she expanded the state’s MASSGrant Plus program, which now covers tuition, fees, and books for students eligible for federal Pell Grants at public universities, and reduces the cost for middle-income families.

Still, many middle- and upper middle-income families have fewer options and often find themselves resorting to large loans.

Although Strouth wishes she and her son did not have to turn to loans, especially private ones with high interest rates, Strouth, whose parents were Cornell University graduates who emphasized the importance of higher education, gets frustrated when she hears people say “you shouldn’t go to a school you can’t afford.”

“That really shouldn’t be the deciding factor,” Strouth said. “If your kid is fortunate enough to get into the school of their dreams, that you know is going to lead to more success, if you can just get through the next four years … as a parent, you need to figure it out.”

Laurie and Tom Stanley in Medford tried to plan, but looking back, they say, their efforts to save were almost laughable. They put away $30 a week — $10 per child — for future college costs while their three daughters were growing up, plus whatever else they could scrape together, ultimately saving $16,000 for each of their daughters’ college educations.

“We saved every single dime that we could,” said Laurie Stanley, a nurse at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. “We collected bottles and cans, and we’d go weekly to the liquor store [to redeem them] … every penny we found, their birthday money — everything went into their education accounts.”

Two of their daughters decided to live at home for college to save money and commute to the University of Massachusetts Boston and the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

“We wanted them to come out with good jobs, but with minimal or no loans,” Stanley said.

The couple, who are nearing retirement, have spent $100,000 on sending their youngest daughter, Emily, to a much more expensive school, Embry–Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida, to study aerospace engineering. They had to dip into their retirement savings to pull it off, said Tom Stanley, a teacher at Lynn Classical High School. Emily, who is currently working as a substitute teacher at her father’s school, recently applied to finish her studies at UMass Lowell while living at home.

“My only regret is the money,” she said. “As cool as it was to go to school out of state, it’s just too expensive.”

The Stanleys said they spoke with their kids candidly about the high costs of college — something families today are increasingly doing, compared to past generations, said Karen E. Van Voorhis, a financial planner based in Norwell.

“It’s become much more of a collaborative process,” Van Voorhis said.

David Thibault-Muñoz, a Gardner resident who works at Mount Wachusett Community College, said his daughter took a practical approach in her college search. She enrolled at Framingham State last fall as a junior after completing a dual enrollment program in high school, graduating with an associate degree. The family is taking out loans to pay for the two years at Framingham State, which is about half the price of UMass Amherst, where she was also accepted.

“When a student graduates with a lot of debt, they’re several steps away from being able to save money to purchase a first car, to purchase a home,” Thibault-Muñoz said. “It’s harder for young people to get on their feet because they have this debt.”

Some Massachusetts parents continue to make big sacrifices to pay for college.

Juraci Capataz recently left a job she loves working for the Massachusetts attorney general’s office after just a year to earn a higher salary in the private sector so she can afford her son’s college tuition next year. Capataz, a Portuguese immigrant, said her son is hoping to study health care finance at the University of Connecticut next year, a program not offered at UMass.

The family is still waiting to receive their FAFSA information, but Capataz is not expecting much aid beyond loans based on their six-figure income level. UConn currently charges $58,092 for out-of-state students.

Capataz hopes her son could qualify for a lower regional price for residents of the Northeast outside Connecticut in a couple years if he commits to the program, which is not available at UMass.

“We aren’t poor enough for financial aid, not rich enough to write out a check,” Capataz said. “If I didn’t have this opportunity of a job that happened to fall onto my lap, the stress would be so much more.”

Liz Polay-Wettengel’s oldest son is heading to college in the fall but she doesn’t yet know how they will pay for tuition.
Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff

Even families that seem to be doing pretty well financially are worried about paying for college. Liz Polay-Wettengel works in public relations, earning about $130,000 a year; her husband David’s job at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt pays $90,000. The reality, though, is that the cost of living in Greater Boston is high, and most of their money goes to paying the bills, she said, not luxuries, and they have a high debt load.

They are still waiting for the financial aid information to come through, but they’re not likely to get much based on their salaries, Polay-Wettengel said. They’ve already decided they can’t afford one of their son’s top choices, Syracuse University, which posts a sticker price of $85,214 a year and has offered him no scholarships. Instead, he has committed to UMass Amherst, which will likely cost more than $140,000 over four years.

“We will figure it out somehow,” Polay-Wettengel said.

Hilary Burns can be reached at hilary.burns@globe.com. Follow her @Hilarysburns.

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Massachusetts

Massachusetts gas prices slightly declined from last week. Here’s how much.

Published

4 hours ago

January 11, 2026

Press Room

Massachusetts gas prices slightly declined from last week. Here’s how much.

State gas prices slightly declined for the second consecutive week and reached an average of $2.86 per gallon of regular fuel on Monday, down from last week’s price of $2.88 per gallon, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The average fuel price in state declined about 8 cents since last month. According to the EIA, gas prices across the state in the last year have been as low as $2.86 on Jan. 5, 2026, and as high as $3.11 on Sep. 8, 2025.

A year ago, the average gas price in Massachusetts was 3% higher at $2.95 per gallon.

>> INTERACTIVE: See how your area’s gas prices have changed over the years at data.southcoasttoday.com.

The average gas price in the United States last week was $2.80, making prices in the state about 2.3% higher than the nation’s average. The average national gas price is slightly lower than last week’s average of $2.81 per gallon.

USA TODAY Co. is publishing localized versions of this story on its news sites across the country, generated with data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Please leave any feedback or corrections for this story here. This story was written by Ozge Terzioglu. Our News Automation and AI team would like to hear from you. Take this survey and share your thoughts with us.

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Massachusetts

Massachusetts police watchdog decertifies five former officers

Published

16 hours ago

January 10, 2026

Press Room

Massachusetts police watchdog decertifies five former officers

The state commission charged with oversight of Massachusetts police decertified five former officers from around the state, including a former deputy police chief convicted last year of raping a teenage girl while serving as a school resource officer.

Former Hopkinton Deputy Police Chief John “Jay” Porter was convicted in June of conducting a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old student off-campus between 2004 and 2005. He was sentenced to seven years in prison.

Porter’s decertification last month by the Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) Commission means he, along with the other four decertified officers, will be permanently prohibited from serving as police officers in the state. The decertifications bring the total to 75 since the POST Commission was created in 2020.

The woman in Porter’s case did not come forward to report the assaults until 2022, MassLive previously reported. The Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office said previously the student often sought support from Porter when she was in the 9th and 10th grades, but their relationship changed when she was 15, “going from a trusted adult and student to a flirtatious, then sexual one.”

The case also implicated former Hopkinton Police Sgt. Timothy Brennan, who was fired from the department for not reporting Porter to law enforcement after the victim confided in him about the assaults. She first informed Brennan of her inappropriate relationship with the former deputy chief in 2017 and told him not to report Porter, saying she would deny the information if he did so. She ultimately came forward to the district attorney’s office at his encouragement.

According to the decertification order released Dec. 19, Porter did not respond to mailings from the commission or defend himself against its allegations.

The commission redacted information from its decertification order detailing the misconduct allegations against Porter. In past cases, the board has redacted information covering criminal charges against officers or their personal information.

State Police Trooper Calvin Butner

Retired Massachusetts State Police Trooper Calvin Butner of Halifax was also decertified in December after he pleaded guilty last year for his role in a bribery scheme to provide Commercial Driver’s License credentials to unqualified applicants.

Between May 2019 and January 2023, authorities say, Butner and three others within the State Police Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) Unit, which is responsible for administering CDL skills tests, agreed to give passing scores to at least 17 applicants, regardless of whether they passed the test. In exchange for the passing grades, the troopers involved in the scheme received thousands of dollars in gifts and services, MassLive previously reported.

Authorities say Butner gave passing scores to three people who failed the test and five who did not take the test at all. He was sentenced in August to three months in federal prison followed by one year of supervised release, with the first three months in home confinement.

Butner did not respond to the POST Commission’s communications or defend himself.

Hull Police Sgt. Scott Saunders

Scott Saunders, a former Hull Police Department sergeant, was also decertified in December, and the related decertification order was redacted. Saunders was charged in 2023 with assaulting his 72-year-old neighbor, with whom he had a reported history of disputes. The case in Plymouth District Court was continued without a finding in August, allowing it to be dismissed if Saunders meets the conditions of probation.

The neighbor told the media at the time that Saunders hit his car with a paddleboard as he drove past him that day. When the neighbor got out of the car to confront the sergeant, he said Saunders pushed him down and punched him.

The Hull Police Department immediately placed Saunders on leave after the incident.

Saunders did not respond to the POST Commission’s communications or defend himself. MassLive was unable to contact Saunders for comment.

Greenfield Police Officer Christopher Hewitt

The reasons behind the decertification of former Greenfield Police officer Christopher Hewitt are unclear. Much of the commission’s December decision was redacted.

The POST website cites a section of Massachusetts General Laws that says, “The commission shall immediately suspend the certification of any officer who is arrested, charged or indicted for a felony.”

Hewitt also did not respond to the commission’s allegations against him. MassLive was unable to contact Hewitt for comment.

Peabody Police Officer Gerald Fitzgerald

The final officer decertified last month, Gerald Fitzgerald, formerly of Peabody Police Department, signed an agreement with the commission to have his certification permanently revoked and waive his right to contest the facts of his decertification in the future.

Fitzgerald was accused of falsifying an incident report from a November 2023 armed robbery by writing that a female suspect had assaulted two people at the restaurant where the robbery took place.

After being instructed by a supervisor to review the surveillance footage from the incident to verify his account, Fitzgerald said he had done so and added more information to the report.

Another detective who later viewed the footage determined the allegations that led to the assault charges against the female were false. Fitzgerald admitted he had not watched the entire footage as instructed, and the assault charges against the suspect were dropped.

According to the decertification agreement, Fitzgerald had previously faced disciplinary action on four occasions since 2015 for missing court dates, not completing required training and showing up to firearms training while intoxicated.

Stoughton Police Deputy Chief Robert Devine

The POST Commission voted last month to decertify Robert Devine, a former Stoughton deputy police chief accused of misconduct involving Sandra Birchmore, MassLive previously reported.

Birchmore, who was 23 and pregnant, was found dead in her Canton apartment on Feb. 4, 2021. Her death was initially ruled a suicide, but on further investigation, it was ruled a homicide. Former Stoughton Police Officer Matthew Farwell has since been charged federally with killing Birchmore to hide a sexual relationship they began after she joined a police youth program as a teenager.

The commission accused Devine, who oversaw the program, of coordinating a “sexual encounter” with Birchmore while he was on duty in December 2020. He has not been charged criminally in connection with the case and denied the POST Commission’s claims against him.

State lawmakers established the oversight commission in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

The nine-member board, appointed by the governor and attorney general, has broad power to set standards that all law enforcement agencies and officers in Massachusetts must abide by and to investigate and decertify police officers accused of misconduct.

Many of the officers it has decertified have been convicted of criminal charges, automatically leading to the loss of their certifications. However, the commission can also decertify officers it finds liable for egregious but noncriminal misconduct.

The commission reports the names of decertified officers to a national registry, a move intended to alert departments in other states to their troubled histories.

If you are a victim of sexual assault, you are not alone.

Rape Crisis Centers in Massachusetts offer free, confidential services for adolescent and adult survivors as well as their loved ones.

Crisis centers operate a 24/7 toll-free hotline for phone counseling, questions and referrals. For a full list of regional crisis centers, click here.

SafeLink offers a 24/7 toll-free hotline:
- (877) 785-2020
- (877) 521-2601 (TTY)

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Massachusetts

A 5,000-square-foot solution to the Massachusetts housing crisis – The Boston Globe

Published

1 day ago

January 10, 2026

Press Room

A 5,000-square-foot solution to the Massachusetts housing crisis – The Boston Globe

Andrew Mikula is chair of the Legalize Starter Homes ballot committee.

I came across Baxter Village after a Google Maps perusal of one of the country’s fastest-growing regions. Completed in 2014 and billed as a “traditional neighborhood development” with a walkable town center and intimate, tree-lined residential streets, the village is downright idyllic. The architecture is clearly inspired by early 20th-century New England — a Norman Rockwell-style vista of homes with raised front porches, wood clapboard siding, steep roofs, and dormer windows.

But Baxter Village isn’t located in New England. It’s in South Carolina, about 15 miles south of Charlotte.

The reality is that 15 miles outside of Boston, Worcester, or Lowell, Baxter Village would almost certainly be illegal, for a variety of reasons. First, the development’s home lots are small, often only slightly larger than a basketball court. Local zoning codes in suburban Massachusetts frequently preclude such small lots, and New England in particular has high minimum lot-size requirements for new homes, compared to most of the country.

Given that Massachusetts has the nation’s toughest home buying market for young adults, many voters are open to reducing these lot-size minimums. A May 2025 Abundant Housing Massachusetts/MassINC poll found that 78 percent of Massachusetts voters support “allowing homes to be built on smaller lots,” and 72 percent support allowing the subdivision of large lots into smaller lots. Doing so would open up more housing options in the suburbs, creating opportunities to build smaller, lower-cost homes suitable for first-time buyers and downsizing seniors, colloquially called “starter homes.”

That’s why 12 housing experts — urban planners, academics, land use attorneys, and advocates — and I recently filed a petition with the Massachusetts attorney general’s office that would make it legal to build on lots about the size of a basketball court (5,000 square feet) statewide. As long as the lot has access to public sewer and water service, as well as a 50-foot border with the street, the site could host a single-family home, although it may be subject to other regulations like wetlands protections and limits on short-term rentals.

Our committee — Legalize Starter Homes — cleared the first signature-gathering hurdle needed to place this measure on the ballot this year, and Secretary of State William Galvin’s recent certification has advanced this potential ballot question to the next step in the process.

Research has shown that Massachusetts’ large minimum lot-size requirements increase home prices and reduce new production. One Harvard study found that in Greater Boston, a quarter-acre increase in the minimum lot-size requirement was associated with 10 percent fewer homes permitted between 1980 and 2002. Separately, a 2011 study found that Eastern Massachusetts minimum lot-size requirements can increase home prices by as much as 20 percent or more and that these price effects tend to increase over time.

Other states have acted on such facts amid a nationwide housing crunch. In June, Maine capped minimum lot sizes in “designated growth areas” statewide at 5,000 square feet when served by public sewer and water systems. This is remarkable given that Maine has both a less severe housing shortage than Massachusetts and a much larger volume of undeveloped, inexpensive land.

The Massachusetts Legislature has tried to enhance the production of starter homes before, offering incentive payments under Chapter 40Y to municipalities to adopt new zoning districts that allow for them. But more than three years after Chapter 40Y was enacted, the state has yet to finalize regulations that would allow for these zoning districts to be created. Meanwhile, builders struggle to justify much new construction given high interest rates, tariffs on building materials, and labor shortages in the trades.

Our ballot petition creates a framework for allowing starter homes that is more easily implemented and doesn’t require municipalities to adopt new zoning. And unlike the MBTA Communities Act, it would solely allow for the creation of single-family homes, most of which would probably be owner-occupied.

Recent public polling data, research findings, precedents in other states, and the urgent and extreme nature of Massachusetts’ housing shortage all suggest that now is the right time to limit minimum lot sizes in places with sufficient infrastructure for new housing. The result could be a far-reaching expansion of opportunity for a new generation of homeowners in Massachusetts.

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