Dannel Malloy, a former prosecutor, mayor and two-term governor of Connecticut, has been chancellor of the University of Maine System since 2019.

Walking into the hospital last January for a minor surgery was one of the scariest moments of 18-year-old Brenna Alley’s life.

It turned out to be where she found her future. 

Moved by the compassion and competence of those who cared for her, the high school senior from Jonesport decided that day she wanted to become a nurse. 

But like many rural Americans, she couldn’t see a clear path to a nursing degree that wouldn’t require her to leave her family and community behind.

Then she learned the local University of Maine at Machias, now a regional campus of the University of Maine, was partnering with the University of Maine at Augusta (UMA) and area hospitals to bring a Bachelor of Science in Nursing program to Washington County, where the nursing workforce is shrinking and the oldest in the state.

Brenna is now part of the inaugural cohort of the Downeast Nursing track and exactly the kind of student the University of Maine System (UMS) exists to serve: eager for educational attainment and economic mobility, and determined to live and work in Maine, where their professional knowledge and skills are desperately needed.

Not long ago, a multi-university program like this within our system would have been unthinkable. Despite a single governing board and state budget line, our institutions functioned independently and competed fiercely for a decreasing number of high school graduates.

Now, working together is how we get our students to work.

Our growing commitment to collaboration is guided by the best interests of learners like Brenna and our fiscal responsibility to Maine taxpayers. And it is possible because of our unique, unified accreditation granted by the New England Commission of Higher Education in 2020.

This system-level accountability for academic quality enables our public universities to better leverage their signature strengths and share limited resources more seamlessly — all while maintaining high standards and the region’s most affordable tuition.

To reduce barriers statewide to high-quality, high-value degrees and the workforce, we have launched system-wide direct admission for high school seniors, guaranteed admissions for community college graduates, tuition discounts for major Maine employers and transformative student success and retention initiatives supported by a $320 million challenge grant from the Harold Alfond Foundation. 

As the Downeast Nursing track demonstrates, through strategic sharing of facilities and faculty, our public universities are now ensuring that geography and financial constraints do not limit access to opportunity and needed programs and services. UMA delivers allied dental education and community care at the University of Southern Maine’s Lewiston campus and, soon, at the University of Maine at Presque Isle (UMPI), and the University of Maine School of Law is increasing access to justice through a rural legal aid clinic located at the University of Maine at Fort Kent.  

The flagship UMaine, the state’s only institution to have achieved R1 Carnegie Classification for research performance and productivity, now provides R&D support to all UMS universities — catalyzing record levels of innovation investment and impact. UMPI, an emerging global leader in online competency-based education, has welcomed other UMS universities to deliver their degree programs on its wildly popular, proprietary YourPace platform. We have even launched our first system-wide minor, providing more pathways to rewarding careers in the state’s vital tourism, hospitality and outdoor recreation sector. 

The result: Despite the nation’s most challenging demographics for higher education, UMS has now achieved seven consecutive semesters of student enrollment growth and our highest retention rate. In December, S&P Global Ratings actually upgraded its outlook for our system despite downgrading the higher education sector overall.  

With heightened attention to affordability, Maine people can be confident that the taxpayer and tuition dollars they invest in our system are delivering a greater return than ever before. Because when our public universities choose collaboration over competition, students like Brenna don’t have to choose between their past and their future.